To put it in another way, at each moment we are what we experience, and there is no real possibility of being other than what we are. Wisdom therefor… - Alan Watts

The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo — the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.

The Dhammapada, a collection of sayings of the Buddha, begins: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts.” This is, in effect, the same statement that opens St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… All things were made by him (the Word), and without him was not anything made that was made.” By thoughts, or mental words, we distinguish or “make” things. Without thoughts, there are no “things”; there is just undefined reality.

To understand this is to realize that life is entirely momentary, that there is neither permanence nor security, and that there is no “I” which can be protected.