How did the body become my self (sakkāya diṭṭhi)?
22. The body became “my self” because I identified the body as “my self.”
23. I identified the body as “my self” because there was no object to identify as “my self,” other than the “feeling of self.”
24. The “feeling of self” was the result of personalization of the emotional reaction.
25. It was only the subjective experience of perception and emotion that I personalized, not the body.
26. This personalization as “mine” lead to a “feeling of self,” which needed an identity as an object.
27. The only object I found as identity was the body, but this body that I refer to is only a collection of mental images.
28. I not only see a collection of mental images as the body and “self,” I also feel a sensation as the body and “self.”
(1) Although the body is seen as an objective experience.
(2) The body is felt as a subjective experience.
(3) It is the feeling of “self” that makes me feel the presence of “my self.”
29. The image that I am aware of as the body or “self” is constructed using feelings, and sensations. In other words what we call the body is only a mental construct created by the process of perception.
30. My “self” or “personality” therefore is the result of personalizing the subjective experience of perception, represented in the form of the five constituents of the process of perception.
31. Therefore in short, suffering is not the suffering of a true “self” but the suffering of five constituents of perception (body, feelings, sensations, construction, and perception) that are mistakenly personalized as “self” (sankhitthena pañca upādānakkhandhā dukkhā).