Being Unassuming

After the group meditation today, I thought about the practice of being unassuming:  not pretending to be something that I am not. In the chapter in Surangama Sutra called "On Making False Claims", Buddha warns people not to communicate to others their attainments, since there is already a kind of presumption there that one has attained something over others. But I think that assumptions often remain hidden even from awareness. We may assume certain privileges and entitlements that are simply not ours, by virtue of habit or a sense of things being unchallenged for a long time.
    Meditation practice can cut through a lot of this, because it does not add a second thought to a first thought. Rather than jumping towards conclusions, meditative practice leaves thoughts as they are and allows mind to see them as a little bit like bubbles. It's a little  bit like how, when I stir a pot, I ensure that nothing sticks to the pot. I have used this analogy in my personal life to characterize meditation not as a passive  practice but as something that is always real, always aware. I cannot think meditation is just an activity I do for an hour or two, after which I get up and go back to my old habits. This is helpful to contemplate, because whenever I am faced with a challenge, I often presume a self. I go into a mode of "I should not feel challenged" or "this is too difficult for me", not realizing that there is a presumption of a permanent self here. If I don't see there is a permanent self, can I presume to be offended  or hurt by someone else? In fact, the more I see that thoughts are impermanent, the more confident I can feel that there isn't a permanent self at all from which to take a firm stand or position. But part of the practice is to let go of the anxiety associated with the  self.
   The same is true with desires. All desires assume a subject that desires and a usually unattainable object. But at the moment I see an object, is that object separate from mind? It is in a sense simultaneous with seeing, and inseparable from awareness. So why do I have a desire? It's like trying to hold onto the previous thought when it has already passed. Even the belief "I desire" is a thought which has already passed. If I think this way, there is no anxiety to try to let go of a self that wasn't substantial to begin with.
    Desires are sometimes distillations of all that we long for in terms of having a permanent self. But if there is not such a strong feeling of a permanent self, it seems senseless to try to cling to objects as though they were enduring. But if I build the habit of seeing the self as solid and substantial ("I see, I want"), what follows is the entire world, much of which is assumed to be stable and static. The idea that the sun rises everyday, I always have a job to go to, and I always have the same friends forever are examples of assumptions that cannot be confirmed  or proven. Yet, through habit, we make these things appear to be true forever and for always, even making them seem like logical conclusions. As the philosopher David Hume suggests, these ideas are not based on unchanging laws of cause and effect or necessity, but are just habitual ways of seeing that come from past experience. In no way does it mean that these experiences will be the same forever.
    When I stop assuming, my mind can be like a child, just discovering the world for the first time at every moment. This can make me more open to a life  of gratitude for what I have, rather than calculating and assuming that things will always be the same all the time.