Try to maintain that right view that the quality of your actions coming from the quality of your intentions is the most important thing you have to care for. That kind of thing, you want to hold on to. That, you identify with.

"The Buddha says there are five kinds of loss, three of which he says are not serious. When we listen to his list of things that are not serious, we find that a lot of things on that list are ranked by the world as very serious: loss of wealth, loss of your health, loss of relatives. But as the Buddha said, you don’t go to hell from losing those things. And when you lose them, you get them back — as you have, many, many times in the past.

What’s serious, he says, is loss of virtue and loss of your right view. These are areas where the world says, “Oh, those things are not important.”

So you can see the Buddha’s values are very different from most people’s. He looked at things from the perspective of the really-long-term. If you lose your virtue, you’re going to create the kind of karma that could pull you down for a long time to come. If you lose your right view, you’re tempted to do anything at all because you feel that your actions have no consequences, they’re not real, so you don’t have to be careful. That attitude can be really detrimental for many, many lifetimes.

So, things like that you say are not-self. You realize your wealth isn’t really yours. Even your health isn’t really yours, It’s nothing you can hold on to and direct. You can make some adjustments in the way you live and the way you eat, but you can’t guarantee that they’ll keep you healthy.

Back when I was younger, there was a woman who was a famous nutritionist. She appeared all over the TV, talking about how if you ate the right vitamins, you would never get cancer. Well, sure enough, she herself got cancer.

So even though we can stave off things like loss of wealth and health and relatives to some extent, the Buddha says there has to be a limit to what you’re willing to do. In other words, you don’t break the precepts to protect your wealth or your health, even to protect your relatives. Try to maintain that right view that the quality of your actions coming from the quality of your intentions is the most important thing you have to care for. That kind of thing, you want to hold on to. That, you identify with."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Self & Not-self"