For most of my life, I thought my mind was my master.
If a thought appeared, I followed it.
If an emotion rose, I obeyed it.
If anxiety spoke, I listened as if it were truth.
I didn’t question the source.
I didn’t question the voice.
I simply believed everything inside my head.
But Buddhism taught me something that felt, at first, almost insulting:
Your mind is not you.
Your thoughts are not you.
Your emotions are not you.
When I first heard this, I resisted.
How could the things I feel most intensely not be who I am?
How could the thoughts that shaped my life not define me?
Then I started watching.
I watched how my mind jumped from excitement to fear in seconds.
I watched how anger came out of nowhere and dissolved just as quickly.
I watched how sadness appeared without any real cause, and joy followed it for no reason at all.
If these things were truly “me,” would they be so unstable?
Would “I” change five times in a single minute?
Of course not.
And that’s when I saw something that changed everything:
Behind every emotion, behind every thought, there was something watching.
Something steady.
Something silent.
Something untouched.
Call it awareness, call it presence, call it the true mind — Buddhism calls it the watcher.
The watcher doesn’t get angry.
The watcher doesn’t panic.
The watcher doesn’t cling.
Only the temporary mind does.
The Buddha once said:
“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.”
The storms still come.
The winds still howl.
The rain still falls.
But none of it touches the sky.
When I began to live from that awareness, life stopped feeling like a battlefield. I didn’t have to fight every emotion like it was an enemy. I didn’t have to control every outcome like it was a crisis. I didn’t have to fix every weakness like it was permanent.
I only had to watch.
Watch, breathe, and let it pass.
This is the freedom Buddhism offers—not a life without pain, but a mind that no longer gets trapped in pain. Not a world without change, but a self that no longer collapses with change.
The river flows.
The leaves drift.
The feelings rise and fall.
The thoughts come and go.
And through it all,
the watcher remains clear, calm, and free.
That watcher is who I really am.
And the more I return to it,
the more life feels peaceful—not because the world changed,
but because my attachment to it finally loosened.