A father sees his young son walking clumsily near a barrier beyond which is a pit. The father holds his son back. The child does not understands and the father says: "If you go beyond this barrier, you fill hurt yourself"
What does "you hurt yourself" mean? Is it the child who will feel the pain? Or the body of the child? For a child who hardly has a sense of self, what is the meaning of pain? of "hurting oneself?"
Can there be "pain" without the thought of "me" or "me = body"? The idea of pain a pleasure is meaningless without self, or else why would pain be shunned and pleasure be longed for? What can pleasure add to a non-person? What can pain do to a non-person?
And what is there in the story of the self, in its career, but the desire for pleasure and the aversion to pain?
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