When we hear that our personality is no more real than a movie, we may feel dejected, abandoned in an alien universe. The Buddha replies gently, “You don’t understand.” If life were not a process, if thought were continuous, we would have no freedom of choice, no alternative to the human condition. It is because each thought is a moment of its own that we can change.

“Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think.” That is the essence of the Buddha’s universe and the whole theme of the Dhammapada. If we can get hold of the thinking process, we can actually redo our personality, remake ourselves. Destructive ways of thinking can be rechanneled, constructive channels can be deepened, all through right effort and meditation. “As irrigators lead water to their fields, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their lives.”