Day Dreaming Our Life Away. We are slaves to our thoughts, they wear us down, tear us apart. Instead of realising that thoughts are empty of all concepts and have no external meaning, we carry on thinking that are real. We are enslaved by these thoughts and emotions, every moment of the day. They are our masters. At times we may suddenly come to, as it were and become aware that we have spent the last 5 or 10 minutes, or whatever amount of time, in a day dream. But these sudden awakenings soon disappear again, as we start to analyse out thoughts so off we go again into another session of dreaming We think the I, is somehow a real and solid entity. In our attempt to safeguard and protect what is, in reality, a non - existent self, we create the seeds of our own downfall. But in essence, there is no one to protect, that our attempts to find pleasure only keep us further trapped in ‘the wheel of becoming,’ as our existence is defined in Buddhist literature. Further more, by taking as real, the constant jabbering of thoughts processes; the opinions, concepts, strategies and plans, that we are always formulating, we become trapped by their power they wield over us, Chogyam Trungpa likens these overlapping thoughts to the notion of a monkey, desperately trying to find its way out of a windowless house, the more it fights to find a way out, the more solid do the walls become. Similarly, the more we fight to rid our minds of thoughts, the more solid they appear. We take thoughts as reality, their random generalisations of hope, despair, worry and desire, fixing us with their sense of purpose. Sogyal Rinpoche has eloquently written about the problem of ego thought, “Lifetimes of ignorance have brought us to identify the whole of our being with ego. Its triumph is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even identifying our very survival with its own. That is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping, are at the root of all of our suffering. Yet ego is so convincing and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might even become ego less, terrifies us. To be ego less, ego whispers to us, is to loose all of the rich romance of being human, to be reduced to an empty, colourless robot, or a brain dead vegetable.” So how to find a way out of the seemingly never-ending grip of thought? A certain amount of dedication and willpower is required, as well as constant vigilance. We decide to no longer allow thoughts rule us any longer. Every time you think you are getting somewhere, a thought will pop up, telling you how well you are doing! It has been said that the ego, wants to witness its own funeral, it will use every trick at its disposal to attempt to hang onto its territory. Be aware of thoughts coming and going; don’t try to cling onto any of them, neither try to rid them. Just observe their comings and goings. By letting them disappear from whence they came, they begin to lose their grip over you. By constant observation of your mind, the effect will be like a pond when a stone has been thrown into it, after a while, the ripples die back, the water becomes calm again. Once we have woken up to our true nature, compassion arises within us naturally and empathy towards all other sentient beings becomes second nature, we have let go of self grasping and self cherishing.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 15:54:10 +0000
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