Awareness

I think the Bible explains growing up the best. When you are a baby, you have self-awareness, but it is limited. If a baby rolls by a full terrace, it doesn’t care. But when you are 16, you think, “How do I look?”

In this analogy, you get bitten by the snake. You become aware of your nakedness. This progresses until you are fully self-aware.

For whatever reason, Buddhists have turned this natural and beautiful process of growing up into something completely idiotic with concepts like the “ego.” There is no point in sitting under a tree: you grow older anyway. What you do in between actually matters.