Throughout the eternity we have all lived through, we have accumulated the concept of Atta. A newborn baby already thinks and feels different sensations and immediately clings to the self, in continuation from the last life. Indeed the teachings say that the first sensation at any rebirth is the joy of a new life, of being someone or something. Then recognition of other things follow: comfort, discomfort, food, mother etc., and words in higher life forms.

The Buddha teaches us that it is natural to have the belief of the self and other things, we have had them for such an eternity. Yet the Buddha teaches us to understand, recognize, and then realize the truth about realities as what they truly are: realities that arise and fall away, in never ending successions. Until we realize fully their true nature, we go on being misled by our attachment to them as "I" versus others and things, and when good things happen to "me" and those "I" love there is satisfaction, gladness, elation. But when bad things happen there is dissatisfaction, anger, and such unbearable sorrow. This occurs over and over as we go through what we thought of as a unique lifetime, which in reality it's just one in zillions upon zillions of rounds of rebirth, with innumerable more to come.