Effective introspection begins with the realization that the experiences one believed to be "real" were nothing more than a real state of mind. Today I look at my past life and see that the devoted partner, the idyllic home in a pleasant community, and the opportunity to pursue a life of service in one's work -- that all these things were vaporish mirages, without any sort of substantive foundation in any dimension that might be characterized as "objective reality."
"We are what we think," the Buddha preaches in the first aphorism of the Dhammapada. "All that we are arises with our thoughts, (and) with our thoughts we make the world."
Now obviously, a prisoner does not make the jail with his thoughts. However, the precise attributes of the experience of being imprisoned are his alone, and products of his mind. This is what experienced prisoners are expressing when they say "You can either do hard time or easy time."
This is an important lesson in the process or disillusionment, a word which has no positive connotation. But a moment's reflection tells us that no progress is possible until we are disillusioned. "When they think they know the answers," the mysterious sage Lao-Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, "people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, (they) can find their own way."
Painting by Salvador Dali.
1 comment:
That quote reminds me of a thought that just occurred to me earlier today. The people who think they know something well enough are usually the most clueless.
Such a notion keeps me skeptical and relooking at my own philosophy. Despite such scrutiny, the basic principle that the root of evil in human interaction is competition against others, aka, predation, seems to be holding. It holds as I view world human events.
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