Saturday, February 23, 2008

U02:01 - Meaning of Life-7 Suffering
the shame of a shiny new red car

7. SUFFERING
But acquisition of identity through external and internal form is ultimately futile, becoming an unremitting cycle of wanting, leading to the madness of violence and suffering that is the human being's life on earth.


It's just not natural, all this living in the mind, identified with thought. So problems naturally arise. First, the mind ultimately isn't stupid. Just misguided. So it identifies with some external form, like say a new car. My new red shiny new car. And it feeds itself off that new car. It identifies with that new car. In its world, in some weird mental way, it becomes that new car. But deep down it knows it isn't that new car. And before that new car becomes an old car, it loses infatuation with it, dis-indentifies from it, and goes on to the next new shiny red thing with which to identify. This becomes an endless cycle leading to constant dissatisfaction. And the same kind of thing happens with thought forms as well.

All this thinking and identification leads to some interesting consequences. Emotions. Now the body has a set of emotions that are natural and form in response to the external environment. Usually in some survival mode. The mind sees a threat and the body reacts. But living in that virtual reality, the mind sees similar threats in its thought forms, virtual threats, but the body reacts with real emotions. That's why Miguel Ruiz points to our emotions as guides. The emotions are real. Feel them, process them, then follow them to the misguided thought. That's the culprit.

But when the emotions aren't processed. When the chain of events isn't followed. When the thoughts aren't examined. What happens? Suffering happens. Misery happens. Depression happens. Also violence, aggression, and wars. In other words, the human condition. Otherwise known as insanity. The daily workaday world of madness happens. Buddha said so; Jesus said so; all the sages say so.



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