Sakkaya ditthi is very practical.
See, for example, how certain people fully identify with a youthful face. They cannot bear the fact it is getting older. They want it to stay the same. Why? Because they hold on to this identity-view: ‘i am that (a) youthful face’.
Or, think about identification with health. This is dramatic too. I have this to much. One cannot bear becoming ill and bear decreasing abilities when
one identifies with health and youth. One may even loose all self-respect because one lives with the identity-view…’i am healthy, health is mine’.
One can also identify with race, profession, sex, religion, etc. ‘I am a buddhist’, this is sakkaya ditthi.
If you think you are a very learned man (sakkaya dithhi) and someone treats you as a normal human being…oh…anger will arise.
Still more furious you will become when you think ‘ i am wise’ and another person does not give you the respect.
Or think about someone who thinks…’those (bad) habits (being cruel or unfriendly) are mine, they are who i am’..(very common) …how would such a person let go of such bad habits?
One can see how sakkaya ditthi is, as it were, the tendency to freeze reality, to solidify reality by creating certain self-views and to hold them to be truthful. To hold them for who you really are.
Sakkaya ditthi does not refer to full aware operating identity views but often thoses views operate unaware and habitually. The moment one stand for a mirror they immediately operate and delude the mind with ideas like: ‘i am that body’, or ‘that body is mine’. The moment you walk in the office you are changing. An identity-view takes over. The moment i meet my neighbour i myself become ‘a neighbour’. The moment i see a nice woman i change. I step in an identity-view, or better, sakkaya ditthi takes me.
Sakkaya ditthi is like stepping into a dream-state. Stepping into a movie-like life, with you yourself as actor.
Johnny_Lim says:
“But on the other hand, we also cannot say the 5 khandhas are not ours. Thoughts, views, feelings…etc are clearly residing within our own domain and not in another person”.
To belief the body is mine, i first have to belief there is an I apart from the body. To belief feelings are mine, i first have to belief there is an I apart from feelings etc. The Buddha says there isn’t such an seperate entity-I. There is no car apart from it wheels, chassis etc. There is no I apart from the khandha’s. So, when there is no I there can be a possessor of a body, feeling etc.
An arahant seems to know this for sure.
Siebe