My friend would always tease me that I am trying to slowly vaporize, since I have this....well, let's be honest.....obsessive compulsion to give things away. I just hate accumulating 'stuff' and need to get rid of things, all the time. I never really looked deeply into this, just knew that giving things away would somehow always leave me feeling happier, lighter, and freer.I came across this quote the other day, and it struck me that it explained perfectly what I had been doing......trying to reduce the external objects that associate and hence build up my ego.....It was nice to have that compulsion affirmed. Now I'll just keep working towards the end state......vaporization.
"Make your personal footprint, the domain of your own affairs, what you choose to have a personal stake in, as small as you possibly can. Next year reconsider and try to make your personal footprint even smaller, and so on. People have such huge footprints for such little feet. This will supercharge your practice. Our footprints are outward projections of our sense of self. Buddhist practice is about letting go gradually over time of every manifestation of that sense of being a substantial self. Our lifestyles display the most tangible manifestations and are therefore the most obvious place to begin. When that sense of self vanishes altogether, that is Liberation. And Liberation is possible within the parameters of a lay life."
