3 posts tagged “philosophy”

I was struck the other day by this thought. It began with me remembering in my pocket-notebook that I have no control over anything outside my mind, which is a bit of a misleading thought since nothing is outside my mind, but in the dualistic Western sense of reality it is very important to remember, all the same. What happens to me, whether by specific people or circumstance, is beyond my control. This lead to some other interesting thoughts and a hasty ditty, and I finally got around to typing them out of my pocket-notebook:

I must remember
I have no control over what happens to me, or what actions others take upon me, except to control my own actions. I can only control what happens within my mind - which is everything.
Be the person you would have all other people be, and your aura will inspire emulation.
How could we think the outer world is anything but smoke when all that exists beyond the body, speech, and mind is free of our influence, as well as our experience - in fact it will never be a part of our reality at all yet we postulate and use the imagination to construct elaborate delusions about the surrounding expanse of space and the activity it contains - while really all of experience significant to us is happening right there in our mind, our skull.
No! A second thought.
The mind is completely free from the body - it exists elsewhere entirely - but it is aware of the body. It is stuck to it with karmic tar and deluded into thinking it belongs to the body and its transient world, somehow. It is synced with the body to preserve experience and reality - scared to be free - tied to Samsara/body by negative karmas, habits, and attachments (karmic tar).

Be free
Be free
Freedom is not law-bound
Freedom is not suffering
Freedom is not harming
Be free
Be free
When we are free we will grow
wings of compassion
and fly to the aid of our fellow sentient beings

The six realms of existence happen daily in the chaotic mind, gunked up with negative karmic tar. When I am afraid for no logical reason in the dark, am I not in the animal realm? I sometimes fail to remember that these obstacles are just ephemeral states of mind, and the way to clean that tar is the path of compassion and wise action - especially through patience in the face of suffering.  

My blog's name is Shunyata because it represents the Buddhist teaching I most admire as a means toward enlightenment. Enlightenment is, as my guru would say, a two-winged bird needing both wings - perfect wisdom and compassion - to fly. Perfect wisdom comes, I feel, from aligning one's perceptions with the true nature of reality. Shunyata, roughly 'emptiness', represents the idea that the nature of all within Samsara is simply emptiness - everything is empty of independent arising and permanence. Something that's been on my mind a lot lately is my whole conception of reality. We are here in the now, and though we imagine a past and a future in our linear minds, they are merely memories and extrapolations based on those experiences - the product of our imagination that is huffing away in the now to process those conceptualizations. You and I share a kiss, a moment later that experience that was just a significant part of our mind-trip, our reality, is reduced to memories in the minds of two individuals, tainted with emotion and confabulation. Everybody's reality is the same in this regard, it is all a mental process after all. Then the memories fade in those two mortal minds until they are snuffed by the Void - burnt in Yama's furnace. Reality is so flimsy that way, shifting every moment into an entirely new form. I wish everyone who read this instantly understood how wondrous and beautiful everything is - for the same reason the phoenix is wondrous and beautiful. Blessed Yama. Blessed Void. Blessed third noble truth.