Unsatifactory state of mind

• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 11:39

  Whenever you are free to observe, you will notice, that many of us, are habitually preoccuppied with our thoughts or engage heavily with what we are doing! The heaviness of mind comes with indulgence with ourselves, the more preoccupied we are, the more heavy and unwilling to be parted with our thoughts! Rouse anyone from their thoughts and you will find their attachment to themselves! Some are light, and will respond readily to outside distractions! Others are heavy and dull, unwilling to leave their inner stream of thoughts,or appear slow to respond, distracted by their inner thoughts! These are signs of habitual patterns which are developed over the years. The ubiquitousness of the heavy dullness or cloudiness have accompanied us for so long, that we are ever so ready to fall into its familiarity, that we often fail to embrace the occassional glimpse of clarity are we sometimes experience!
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 11:46

  Or some of us are always in a state of restlessness, a certain impatience. We aspire much achievement potential in us, but never really focus hard enough to really achieve any much to our satisfaction! Instead we feel mired in whatever we are engaged at the moment, end up feeling unhappy with our lot! But do we ever got around to solving this unsatisfactory state of mind?
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 11:49

  It is the preoccupation of "me"ness that is making us unhappy, the more indulgent you are, the more unhappy you are! We blame or attrbute the cause to everything and everbody else but ourselves! Are you going do something about it?!
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 11:55

  Some of us go on a mission, to save this, to save that....Others take courses and seek empowerment! What is it that really empowers us? The are many answers, but which holds true?
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 12:41

  Some turn their ambition to a successful career, business etc. Mire themselves deep in work, keeping their mind occupied! Others, seek a higher power either to ally themselves or seek solace. Many will never feel a need for change, as they are still comfortable with status quo. Others, despite shopping around and changing types of empowerment, are still unhappy and unsatisfied. But there be many are unwilling to change because, they do not yet know the deeper cause of unhappiness. The more sophiscated the belief system will bring a higher level of coherence and promise! Also, having invested heavily in a belief system, they might suffer the loss should they change! Some achieve success, they will still be unhappy if they are still engaged in the habit of mind/thought indulgence!
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 13:06

  All lot those inclined to Buddhism, especially those steeped in Confuscianistic values, cultivation usually take a back seat, due to expectations from family and community. Unless restlessness slows enough that we start to take stock, personal cultivation will always take a back seat! I propose we value add personal cultivation as a skillful means to our daily lives, promoting inductive reasoning that come from meditation. All too often we attain knowledge through deductive reasoning, as that's the way we are schooled. We should allow experiential learning to complement our way way of understanding. We need to reconcile the two different approaches. I hope fellow forumners will help amend this thread to help to make more coherent! Refining the coarseness or the subtlety of the subject will help! Thank you!
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 14:29

  If you settle your mind just a little bit, you may discovered that are habitual moods or mode you are likely to fall back on, maybe you all easily angry, defensive of possessions, lustful for possessions or women/ men or both, envious of what you do no have or maybe; you are just successful to be bothered! But remember, these are driving factors in your present future action, controlling you, even though you are not aware of it! Or, it could be others, controlling you by pushing your buttons! These are propensities that are a big factors in affecting our lives, so we need to be aware of them and how they affect our decisions or actions in life!
• Weychin

  28 Jun 12, 14:36

  Some of us do a rectifications of faults when we finish our pujas, how does that help? We recognise our unhelpful or harmful acts or thoughts and not allow it to become a habitual thing that we do continually. With every mindful reminder, we become less and less inclined to be affected by our habitual patterns! Everything observation of our behaviour start from gross to subtle, so too our cultivation!
• simpo_

  29 Jun 12, 11:49

  Thanks very much for the sharing.

• Weychin

  29 Jun 12, 14:52

  XwMuch as I am grateful that you can relate my postings! Thanks to you too! What is "self"? All of us so familiar to self, for using it as a intermediary for dealings a inner/external or me/ others that we never really take time to define what is ! We just assume "I", mind, body as one and the same! It is exactly that we base our actions and decision with reference to the collective entity called "I", that we adopt positive/ negative values and attach emotional values whuch reinforces present and future actions! The "I"stream of thoughts seemed so real and permanent, how can it not be unreal? Do we really dare even contemplate that I may not even exist! Or on the other extreme, a hedonistic eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die?! If we don't define self first, then it might be harder to know what is no self! I hold a personal opinion that the slowly dawning of mindfulness can be brought about with both introspective and extrospective observations. By showing compassion and observing others, we can draw from the experience empathy; and then mindful of our own process. Often, as when we are mentally drained, feeling empty, rather than giving up, is then we stop and looking inward, contemplating transitory nature, and our grasping for permanence! Likewise, in recognising our inner processes and thoughts is also helpful in understanding suffering, reflected in others!
• Weychin

  1 Jul 12, 08:06

  I've read AEN's article on eternalism,nihilism and the middleway. However, I'm not sure whether whether people who claims to nihilists is does so just for the sake of rejecting the restraints of authority, or censure on moral grounds, to live in full abandonment, or that they even really contemplate, or they even ever cultivate themselves! When one is well and full of vigour, one dons the armour of invincibility, and lives to gratify one's sensual and material desires! Kinda of like animalism, itself, except that"We all die, just not today! " But being subject to be led by one's craving, and positing one's death as a end all, however,one is still not free from clinging on to oneself or one's own dear life? Will a person be that easily to let go of oneself without contemplation and cultivation! If a person is lucid just before he dies, will there be fear and confusion?! Or, losing one's dignity by grabbing any faith offered at one'e death bed, how well one will will depend on the merits the person have acculmulated during his lifetime, is'nt it so?!
• simpo_

  1 Jul 12, 09:03

  Just a sharing... Nothing definitive

  Once come to the point of realising no-self.

  Realise that all along there is no self ... just the aggregates.

  There is no need to go from a 'sense of self' towards no-self. In another word, at each penetrating moment it is already without self... This have been a subtle but crucial insight.

  Thought, thinking, mental opinions, ideas, strategies form a continous flow as if someone(me) is there. Relax them and they will disjoint and disconnect. 

  Thoughts will pop out and go away.... in a disjointed manner... deepening the insight that there is no self all along.

  These aggregates arise not in an environment of a 'me' and an environment outside 'me'. They appear in a non-dual manner without subject and object... as a series of dynamics dependently originated.

   

• Weychin

  1 Jul 12, 15:06

  Yes, when one has the mental subtlety or finesse to to realise thoughts not a continuos stream. My thoughts are more on the establishing a groundwork prior to perception of no self, when one's relationship with mind/ self is a hazy dazy one! It has to do the way we structure our understanding, it's pathway. The grasping of self must be undone by letting go, both intellectually and experientially, when sense of self is pushed to point exhaustion(not extinction yet!), yet in daily life, our interactions are very much I/other based. My assumptions are based on my experiences, my unhappiness and the quest to end it! One of the inspiration is the Shurangama Sutra, for which my inquiry stops at the point after which the Buddha, after Ananda was rescued from the woman who charmed Ananda, asked where does the mind reside? Inquiry stopped at this point, even at the second book when I lost the first one! It is only after twenty or so years, that I stumbled into this website, where AEN was debated with a certain Sgforumposter over Self, where there was a understanding of the aggregates.
• Weychin

  1 Jul 12, 15:17

  The point I am trying to make is the way of us "seeing", our world view, so to speak. Whether it is seen as a perception shift depends on whether we can reconcile the two different way of looking at things! There should come a point of convergence! How hope I am making sense here!