In honor of Black History Month, Tricycle is presenting a special video series, “Teachings for Uncertain Times,” featuring 13 teachers of color, here on our blog, Trike Daily, throughout February. The videos are free to watch.

In the following video, Rev. Dosung Yoo, resident teacher at the Won Dharma Center in Claverack, New York, explains how our disjointed notions of self, and the way we view our body, mind, and occupation, contribute to our suffering.

Behind our anger or frustration, low self-esteem, judging, or comparing mind, et cetera, there lives our ego, our sense of self. Because of our ego or notion of selfhood, all kinds of attachment, desires, or kind of wandering thoughts arise,” Rev. Yoo says in his talk. “Just like the earth revolves around the sun, our mind, our life revolves around ‘I, my, me,’ and this is the ultimate cause of suffering.”

The solution, Yoo says, is to study and investigate who we really are beyond the image that we’ve created.  

Download a transcript of this talk. It has been edited for clarity.

Watch Rev. Dosung Yoo’s Dharma Talks Series, “The Heart Sutra” 

Watch other videos in the “Teachings for Uncertain Times” series