The Mind
“All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” —Buddha
Ever had a bad day and felt the world was feeling down with you? Or experienced joy so great that good fortune greeted you around each corner? This section takes a closer look at the workings of the mind, through lenses like Yogacara (“Consciousness Only”) Buddhism, Western and Eastern philosophies, psychology, and our own personal reflections.
To what extent am I an astronomer? In The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, George Kubler* suggests that time is conveyed in signals... whose message is based on the past, like old light seen by astronomers. The signal energies, similar to karma, transmit impulses from the past.... Like the ancient light of the stars, karma has been accumulating from time immemorial. [...]
The act of seeking, at this subtle level, is directly related to one of the twelve links in the Buddha’s teaching on dependent origination. The tenth link is called bhava in Sanskrit. In English, it is translated as becoming or continuation. The way in which seeking is related to this link is through its involvement in moving the mind’s attention away from the present and into the future. When we seek, we are always seeking after something in the future, because of the fact that in the present we feel discontent. [...]
A couple months ago, during a conversation about DRBU planning, Professor Mark Mancall from Stanford University posed a question: “What does contemporary Buddhist architecture look like?” He said he’d been asking people this question lately whenever he has a conversation about Buddhism, and so far, he said, no one he’d talked to seemed confident that they had an answer. [...]
… the flat tire represents mental structures that arise according to conditions from past karma, which influence how we perceive. Imagine your car has a flat tire and the ride is very bumpy. Rather than stop and fix the flat, you keep driving. What could be a smooth ride with functional tires becomes very uncomfortable, [...]
Back in 2003, I first came across the original BTTS (Buddhist Text Translation Society) version of the Shurangama Sutra, which was available online. That sutra and its commentary had a profound effect on my view of the Dharma. In Master Hsuan Hua’s commentary, there were a few of his teachings that influenced me the most [...]
…we are deeply driven by biological impulses and genetic predispositions, heavily programmed…. But …it is possible to learn how to better understand and direct our own minds, and to overcome some of our programming. After reading an earlier post in which I wondered what my subconscious might be doing behind my back, a friend sent [...]
My last post on Late-Capitalist Youth looked at Nietzsche’s call to control our passions, in order to gain a sense of freedom and new direction for our lives—but the Buddha looked at self-overcoming as well. To move towards a new patterning for our desires, we need to have some space for the conditioned systems of [...]
So what went wrong? As Lacan and Zizek point out, our dissatisfaction begins with a sense of lack. For Lacan this lack is basic to our psyche. Why did each of us get so confused and dissatisfied with such a simple project? We are conscious and aware. If we have enough to eat, a place [...]