A long overdue introduction

[Zodai]

Have you looked into the possibility of autism?  As a fellow autistic myself; I can say that I've seen stories like this before.

 

That said - thank you for your assistance in getting the site back up!  May the reading continue forever!  :3

[Darklord Rooke]

@Nayleen: Have you considered insight meditation?

 

Insight meditation (Vipassana) focuses on awareness of our thoughts and the world around us, and has been known to help those suffering from depression.

 

 

Vipassana meditation teaches us how to scrutinise our own perceptual process with great precision. We learn to watch the arising of thought and perception with a feeling of serene detachment. We learn to view our own reactions to stimuli with calmness and clarity. We begin to see ourselves reacting without getting caught up in the reactions themselves.

 

 

 

DISTURBING EMOTIONS: THE REMEDIES -

 

How do we strip the alienating emotions of their power without becoming insensitive to the world, without draining life of its richness? If we merely consign them to the depths of the unconscious, they will reemerge with renewed force at the first opportunity, continuing to strengthen the tendencies that perpetuate inner conflict. The ideal, contrarily, is to allow negative emotions to form and dissipate without leaving any trace in the mind. Thoughts and emotions will continue to surface, but they will not proliferate and will lose their power to enslave us.

 

.....

 

Freeing the emotions

 

The second method is liberation, in which, rather than trying to stem each emotion that afflicts us with its specific antidote, we use a single antidote that acts at a more basic level on all our mental afflictions. It is neither possible nor desirable to suppress the minds natural activities, and it would be futile and unhealthy to try to block its thoughts. When we examine the emotions, we find that they are dynamic flows without any inherent substance of their own - in Buddhist terms, "empty" of real existence. What would happen if, instead of counteracting a disturbing emotion with its opposite - anger with patience, for instance - we were simply to contemplate the nature of the emotion itself?

 

You are overwhelmed with a sudden tide of anger. You feel as if there's no choice but to let it sweep you away. But look closely. It is nothing more than a thought. When you see a great black cloud in a stormy sky, it seems so solid that you could sit on it. But when you approach it, there's nothing to grab on to; it is only vapor and wind. The experience of anger is like having a high fever. It is a temporary condition, and you do not need to identify with it. The more you look at anger in this manner, the more it evaporates under your gazem like white frost under the sun's rays.

 

Where does the anger come from, how does it evolve, where does it disappear to? All we can say for sure is that it is born in the mind, lingers a moment or two, and then dissolves there, like waves that arise from the ocean and dissolve back into it. But a close examination of anger finds nothing substantial, nothing that can explain its tyrannical influence over our lives. Unless we pursue this investigation, we end up being fixated on the object of anger and overtaken by destructive emotion. If, on the other hand, we come to see that anger has no substance of its own, it rapidly loses all power. This is what Khyentse Rinpoche has to say on the matter:

 

Realise that a thought is only the fleeting conjunction of myriad factors and circumstances. It does not exist by itself. When a thought arises, recognise its empty nature. It will immediately lose its power to elicit the next thought, and the chain of delusion will be broken. Recognise that emptiness of thoughts and allow your thoughts to rest a moment in the relaxed mind so that the mind's natural clarity remains limpid and unchanged.

 

This is what Buddhism calls liberation from anger at the moment it arises by recognising its emptiness, its lack of its own existence.

 

Using the Emotions as Catalysts

 

The third technique for neutralising afflictive emotions is the most subtle and trickiest. When we look closely at our emotions, we find that, like musical notes, they are made up of numerous elements or harmonics. Anger rouses us to action and often allows us to overcome obstacles. It also contains aspects of clarity, focus, and effectiveness that are not harmful in and of themselves. Desire has an element of bliss that is distinct from attachment; pride, an element of self-confidence that can be firm without lapsing into arrogance; envy, a drive to act that cannot be confused with the unhealthy dissatisfaction it entails.

 

As difficult as it is to separate these various spects, it is possible to recognise and use the positive facets of a thought generally considered to be negative. In effect, what gives an emotion its noxious quality is the way we identify with and cling to it. This triggers a chain reaction during which the initial spark of clarity and focus becomes anger and hostility.  The skills we gain from meditation experience help us to intervene before the reaction is initiated.

 

Emotions are not inherently disturbing, though they seem so the moment we identify with and hold on to them. The pure consciousness of which we have spoken, and which us the source of all mental events, is neither good nor bad in and of itself. Thoughts become disturbing only once the process of "fixation" is set in motion, when we attach ourselves to the qualities we attribute to the object of the emotion and to the self that is feeling it.

 

Once we learn to avoid that fixation, we do not need to bring in antidotes from the outside; the emotions themselves act as catalysts for freeing ourselves of their baneful influence. This happens because our point of view changes.

 

This kind of practice requires great command of the language of the emotions. Allowing powerful emotions to express themselves without falling prey to them is playing with fire, or rather, trying to snatch a jewel from a snake's head. If we succeed, our understanding of the nature of the mind will grow accordingly; if we fail, we will find ourselves overwhelmed by the negative qualities of anger and its hold on us will be strengthened.

 

Three techniques, one goal

 

These techniques are simply different ways of tackling the same preoblem and achieving the same result: not to fall victim to the afflictive emotions and the suffering they can lead to.

 

We must never forget, however, that the source of disturbing emotions is attachment to the self. If we want to be free of inner suffering once and for all, it is not enough to rid ourselves of the emotions themselves; we must eliminate our attachment to the ego. Is that possible? It is, because as we've seen, the ego exists merely as mental imputation. A concept can be dispelled, but only by the wisdom that perceives that the ego is devoid of intrinsic existence.

 

 

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them. There will be no "hard fall" when things turn bad and he is confronted with adversity. He does not sink into depression, since his happiness rests on a solid foundation. One year before her death at Auschwitz, the remarkable Etty Hillesum, a young Dutchwoman, affirmed: "When you have an interior life, it certainly doesnt matter what side of the prison fence you're on ... I've already died a thousand times in a thousand concentration camps. I know everything. There is no new information to trouble me. One way or another, I already know everything. And yet, I find this life beautiful and rich in meaning. At every moment."

 

Once at an open meeting in Hong Kong, a young man rose from the audience to ask me: "Can you give me one reason why I should go on living?" This book is a humble response to that question, for happiness is above all a love of life. To have lost all reason for living is to open up an abyss of suffering. As influential as external conditions may be, suffering, like well-being, is essentially an interior state. Understanding that is the key prerequisite of a life worth living. What mental conditions will sap our joie de vivre, and which will nourish it?

 

Changing the way we see the world does not imply naive optimism or some artificial euphoria designed to counterbalance adversity. So long as we are slaves to the dissatisfaction and frustration that arise from the confusion that rules our minds, it will be just as futile to tell ourselves "I', happy!" over and over again as it would be to repaint a wall in ruins. The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-coloured glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality. To that end we must acquire a better knowledge of how the mind works and a more accurate insight into the nature of things, for in its deepest sense, suffering is intimately linked to a misapprehension of the nature of reality.

 

 

The first excerpt is from 'Mindfulness in plain english' ( http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0861719069 )

 

The next two (longer) excerpts are from 'Happiness - A guide to developing life's most important skill', written by Matthie Ricard ( http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Guide-Developing-Lifes-Important/dp/0316167258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380198430&sr=1-1&keywords=Happiness+Matthieu+ricard )

 

I strongly recommend both of these books. Both books are about inisght meditation and both books are written by Buddhist monks.

[Guest]

#totescriedwhenireadthat.  I love you too Nay <3