Attachment
The quicksand of the soul
Siddhartha mustered this insight
So many, many years ago
How do I know?
How do I relate?
Do I make this up?
Do I confabulate?
How many paths?
How many ways?
We can seduce ourselves
Clinging to this fantasy gaze
Fear not my compatriots
The wisdom comes from age
Tempered in the forge of reality
Allow the mind to disengage
….
DCG
When your outlook is dim
We tend to notice what in life is grim
We relate to the world
Thinking that the fix is in
Our energy diverted
A diminished reality
We see only the negative
How can this be?
I tire of this habit
Beholden to this claim
I tire of this feeling
That subjects me to shame – Who’s to blame?
The physics of emotion
In all antiquity
Questioned by the mystics
The essence of energy
Suffering can be averted
If the mind employed is free
Free from attachment
Siddhartha Gautama is key
If we manifest our destiny
The impoverished minds will plea
God please save us
They shout at the devil – reactionary philosophy
If we manifest our destiny
The wise men say
We change our reality
Orient to the positive
Attract to the good in this way
Whatever befalls us
10% is what we make it
As for the rest of our experience
90% is how we take it
The myth of Sisyphus
Camus counters with disdain
The obsession absurd
Is it an irony of perception?
An irony all the same!
DCG
A person who thinks all the time, has nothing to think about except thoughts. One can lose touch with reality while engaged in this practice and therefore lives in the world of illusions. Repetition of words and chatter in a mind that is actively reckoning and calculating is not bad if done in moderation, but if executed excessively, then we become lost to the true nature of our experience in the world. That is to say that we have forgotten on “how” to experience the world around us, and even within us! We confuse signs, numbers, words, symbols and ideas for the authentic world. We have become detached to the true relationship we once held with nature because we erroneously and mistakenly confuses our thoughts and ideas for the world itself. We miss the essential connection to nature by a contrivance of mind. We fabricate, construct, and make conclusions from logic that only serves to hide the true essence of our experiences. Our experience is convoluted and replaced with our mental representations of what we actually experience.
Reality is the sound of the gong, not our symbols or words that describe the sound it makes. We do not need to determine what key the pitch is in, if there is any major or minor harmonic resonance in the sound we hear. Whether any dissonant aspect of what we hear for our experience to be complete need be explained. We simply just listen without judgement. In analogous manner, our approach to solve human problems is precisely the activity we employ to overcome these problems that we want to resolve. so what exactly can we do? The ideals we create are all manifestations of these problems we are trying to escape from. In our attempt to solve our quandaries, we cannot help but create much of our paradox in that our attempt to get away from them is contingent on our ideas of them.
“I know that I ought not to be selfish, and I would very much like to be an unselfish person, but the reason I’d like to be an unselfish person is that I am very much a selfish person and would far more love myself and respect myself if I were unselfish.”
When you look into yourself, there is nothing you can really do. We cannot feel any other way than what we feel at the moment we feel it. We think if we come to a dead-end that we fail. The answer to finding the way is in our allowance of it to happen without interference. If we find that we cannot transform ourselves, one should not be discouraged since it is not be a gloomy announcement. Rather, we have discovered a very important communication. This is telling us that we cannot transform ourselves because the “you” that you “imagine”, that is capable of transforming ourselves, does not really exist.
An ego, or an “I” is separate from my emotions and thoughts, it is separate from my feelings and my experiences that we are supposed to be in control of. We cannot control them because it is not there. The “I” is our image of ourselves. It’s composed of what other people have told you about yourself, who you are and how they have reacted to you that gives you an impression of the sort of person you are. The image we usually have about ourselves, what our egos tell us, does not include our social contexts and all of our relationships within our self-image. What we conceive to be ourselves is simply the marriage of the illusion of the futility. As Alan Watts puts it….”We are the apertures of the universe exploring itself.”
The western schools of thought from antiquity to today often philosophize about the distinctions and nature of our being. They invent a vast lexicon that enables them to describe our reality, and have argued about it since the birth of the philosophical branches such as Ontology, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. But if we look to the east, we find alternative schools of thought that have a variation on the approach and recognize that we are both the preceptors of sensory perception and rationalistic logic. We use both methods to shape the world. As an empiricist, our perceptions create the world. But when we do not contemplate it, there is no need to label or name what we experience since it is what it is without our labels, words, or symbols. As a rationalist, we create, interpret, and experience the world by way of proxy through our minds, thoughts, and ideas.
It is when the mind is attuned properly, that we will see that there is no difference of being what you are as the knower and what you are as the known. In this state we are simply attuned to the ever-present now. Between ourselves and all that is in the world outside us becomes a unified happening. A oneness with the world.
If we see ourselves in a correct way, then we align with the rest of how nature functions. There is nothing wrong with us, but we needn’t feel guilty because we “feel guilty”! When we meditate, we simply watch what is going on without judgement, or analysis. When we hear music, we do not understand it though our words, but only through the musical vibration itself. We become aware of the vibrations that stimulate our being and go no further in analysis of this experience.
What is going on outside us that can be observed, is also the process for what goes on inside of us and that we can monitor this as well. All nervous system activity that is experienced outside of ourselves, (sights, sounds, tactile simulations, tastes) can likewise be experienced (via mental thoughts, ideas, concepts) from what is stimulating us on the inside. The notion of time is never of consequence in meditation. The focus is always on the ever-presence of nature.
Still the mind, become a friend and blend in with what is not in motion by listening to what is in motion. Do not let the mind take you to the past or the future, but remain in the present. Learn to listen to what is present. Hear the sounds that are all around you. The activity of observing our breath can be of great benefit to a mind that is awake. It is something that we do without our willing to do it since it is an autonomic function of our respiratory system. So to do we listen to the sounds that we hear from where we sit. We are only concerned with what is as it is. Simply just an eternal now to be experienced as it happens. Live in the moment and the mind will calm it’s echos of futile pondering. When we are happily absorbed with what we are doing, we have forgotten about “ourselves” and our egos. We can’t very well do that and worry or think anything serious.
A restless mind is one that is not operating with receptivity. It has closed itself off to what can be experienced without the “self” involved. A well-trained mind does not disturb the presence of what is by forcing the experience. We simply just watch what is happening. Inside of ourselves, and outside of ourselves happening simultaneously can be allowed to just be.
There are times when we begin to have self-doubt about much of what we have tried to carry out in the world. When reflecting upon our lives and wondering if we have made a difference in the world, we sometimes neglect that which makes our spirits lighter. We often become detached from a healthy lifestyle by allowing routines and small matters consume our lives. When one reaches this place, we begin to reflect upon that which will take us to another state of being, a place that is usually provoked by something we love, something that will transform our thinking and bring about happiness…..For me that element is…playing some music.
Unfortunately we can often become distracted, and become over time practice behaviors that become habits that will lead us down a darker road than the one we should have liked to walk. Sometimes the habits of our thinking can distort the nature of ‘things-as-they-are’, and we become disconnected to fundamental healthy living choices. There are many tales and talisman of those who become “disconnected”. If our focus is too narrow, or too broad, we just may be leaving much of our experience to the realm that erodes these experiences. We then little by little become stricken with a decay in our thought on how we should relate and live in the world. Thus we begin a process of alienation that started with an imbalance somewhere in our own habitual routines which ultimately pull us away from what is truly important in our lives.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” – Albert Einstein
Causes of Addiction – A Revealing Truth
So our placement in the world, our views about the world can somewhat determine our “Being” in the world. Our decisions about how we live, are ultimately important when finding meaning in our relationships.
When we become disconnected from
we may be heading towards hurtful discord and disharmony.
Being Disconnected is an anti-Taoist state of being
The quintessential question we often displace is about being! How does one fit into the world? We can become distracted, overstimulated by our passions, but there may be some consequences to our choices that we make about our relationship to the world and in the world. We must first understand what in this world is critical for our “Being!” How should we relate to it, the people in it, and what sources should we align ourselves to?
Through the process of immersion one can reconnect to the world. If we follow paths that lead us down a meandering road full of distraction, such as problematic learned behaviors, maladaptive dissonant behaviors, or faulty poor environments which damage our awareness and dissuade our better natures; then we may find ourselves in an existential bewilderment.
One must use all of our senses and abilities to “Feel” this immersion. It is not purely intellectual. It is also emotive and felt from the “Heart”! I cannot stress the importance of this connection since much of our “detachments” derive from within the mind, but are not solved without the heart being involved. A disconnection can be largely caused by our will’s overpower other parts of our sensing apparatuses. Thus we become lost, yet still don’t know why we have disconnected our way from the things that sustain our being the most: family, friends, hobbies, music, et cetera. We give into our ego, and distort our other relationships that alienate our Being. Alternately we can become lost in our passions, and leave our intellectual judgements at home on the porch. Like the saying ….”If you don’t wanna run with the big dogs, than stay on the porch!” An anachronism that seems to fit in this case.
There are many instances in which one can alienate themselves from that which sustains them. Sometimes it is from powers outside of their control, yet they have to deal with the aftermath of burdens of such events such as parental alienation. How we cope with the events in our lives is our decision. We are responsible for seeking out solutions that will bring about our salvation. Part of the process of healing, is directing ourselves to open our hearts again to receive the natural positive vibrations the universe has to offer us. When we close ourselves to this, we risk the chance of becoming overloaded and thus become jaded!
So what’s your Muse? What will bring you home again if indeed you stray from source of your fulfillment and well-being?
After putting some thought on my current everyday experiences, I reflected a great deal about just what the root cause for some of my current perspectives were bound to. Again the discovery of being “mindful” is an important factor in reexamining prior perspectives that may be operating in the background of our everyday thoughts. While we manage our day to day experiences, our possible misdirected thoughts are fed into our analysis for each and every day and if they go unchecked, they will skew our conclusions. The information we receive from the eyes don’t amount to much, if the mind is blind. Being “Mindful” is being aware of the false conclusions one can draw if one is misdirected by prior incorrect habitual modes of thinking that may not be accurate. They may indeed be formed earlier in ones life, but continue to influence that person through-out their lives if these principles in their analyses go unquestioned, unexamined, and unchallenged in the process.
The practice of attention enables one to wake up! Awareness transforms experience. There is no right or wrong way; there is only being more or less conscious. The goal is to become more fully conscious of ourselves, not to correct ourselves. Because they rely on memory, efforts at self-correction are always removed from the immediacy of the moment.
Jealousy – unconsciously give way to hatred. Struggle against it by thinking equates to guilt. We must instead examine the thought itself and attempt to understand the context. Thought and feelings can then become windows to awakening.
Right Thinking was examined by Gautama Buddha and incorporated in his Eightfold Path that reveals some of the challenges of how the mind can distort experience.
“Thoughts” as Emerson put it, “rule the world” for the simple reason that thoughts determine feelings and actions. We can think ourselves into happiness or a deep depression. Evidence can show that we can think ourselves into healthy state or into unhealthy illnesses.
We can think ourselves into a narrow, limited world characterized by procrastination and paralysis, or we can think ourselves into a noble creative life and the actions that give it shape and substance. If we only take care of our thoughts, our feelings and actions will take care of themselves.
For better or worse, we give to others the fruits of our own thinking by the same token, we are influenced by the thinking of those with whom we associate. It certainly helps to make friends with people who have made friends with their own minds. Observe people who are chronically bored or depressed, and you will find they dwell on negative thoughts. Observe people who are consistently happy, creative, and productive, and you will find remarkable similarities in the quality of their thinking. By our thinking, we create our individual and collective experience of reality. Changing our thinking for the better improves the quality of our own lives, and in doing, uplifts all around us.
The subconscious patterns of thought that can emerge out of an individuals upbringing, training, or exposure from a previous time in their lives to ineffective measures of dealing with their experience in the world can duly proselytize that persons mind set. What is even more difficult to circumvent is the dream states these people experience and are susceptible to unpleasant derivations of their conscious lives if the sleeping untrained mind continues to revert to the faulty subconscious training from an older learned program from the past when they dream. Since they are unconscious in a dream state, the mind will resort to programming fed from the unconscious mind that often takes hold of their dreams.
ca. 563 – ca. 483 BC
The Dhammapada, an anthology of 423 verses, has long been recognized as one of the masterpieces of early Buddhist literature. From ancient times to the present, the Dhammapada is regarded as the most concise expression of the Buddha’s teaching found in the Theravada Pali Canon of scriptures known as the Khuddaka Nikaya (“Minor Collection”) of the Sutta Pitaka.
Buddhist tradition has it that shortly after the passing away of the Buddha his disciples met in council at Rajagaha for recalling to mind the truths they had received from their beloved Teacher during the forty-five years of his ministry. Their hope was to implant the principles of his message so firmly in memory that they would become a lasting impetus to moral and spiritual conduct, for themselves, their disciples, and for all future disciples who would seek to follow in the footsteps of the Awakened One.
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