Hello and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 163.

I am your host, Noah Rasheda, and today I'm going to talk about sticks and stones, words, and the meaning we give to words.

As always keep in mind you don't need to use what you learned from Buddhism. To be a Buddhist you can use what you learned

simply be a better whatever you already are.

If you're interested in learning more about Buddhism check out my book, known nonsense, Buddhism for beginners, available on Amazon, or listen to the first five episodes of this podcast.

And you can find those first five episodes easily by visiting SecularBudism.com and clicking on the start here link.

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In the last podcast episode I talked about the games we play and the correlation with the Buddhist concept of right view or skillful view.

And I want to continue somewhat build it on this topic going into perhaps one of the biggest games that we play.

And this is the game of telling stories. And I guess I should go back perhaps it's not just telling stories, it's first creating stories.

I think of the stories that we inherit from our society.

Stories about this is this and that is that and this means this and that means that perhaps the most important story that we will hold to or attach to throughout our lives is the story that we have about ourselves.

The story that we carefully craft the one that we try to ensure that others have of us.

These are complex layers of a story that is very meaningful to us.

And it affects the way that we see things because we're constantly perceiving ourselves through the lens of the story that we have of ourselves.

But then comparing that reality to the story that we perceive that others have of us.

And so many of our actions and go into crafting this narrative to ensure that others perceive us the way we want others to perceive us.

And that already is two realities, right? The one that I have of myself, the one that I have that you have of me.

And then it can get more muddied and more complicated because I also have the perception of what how you perceive that I perceive myself.

That's a third layer and this process goes on and on.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about this in the Buddhist context, presenting kind of the Buddhist thought behind the expression that so many of us, Westerners know, at least in the United States,

the expression sticks and stones may break my bones, but words shall never hurt me.

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