Oakville Zen Meditation
It’s Not What We Think
One of the strangest mysteries of life is that people, events and things are, usually, not what we think they are. Taking an analogy with a computer, each of our individual perception is triggered by zillion of gigabits coming nonstop from the outside world. This is the data input.
Then, we think and think and think and all of that thinking shapes our values, beliefs, decisions, behavior and life in general. That is information output.
Between the input and the output is our mind filtrating everything for the good and the bad.
This output is made of thoughts very often distorted from the inputs: reality is not what we think.
Our mind-made world is shaped and reshaped non-stop by our 5 senses, previous education, learning experience, judgment, beliefs, people and events.
Many of of our and judgment and beliefs are important and help us survive others are useless and even dangerous. What we think is sometimes based on true external reality but , more often, it is coming from mind-made fictional world. Whatever our thoughts are true or false, right or wrong, useful or not, all of them affect our behavior, how we see things and how we rethink again .
Our thoughts about people, events, things are our personal mental output on how we perceive our outside world.
Whether based on reality or pure fiction, wise or deluded, our thoughts carry, most the time, an emotional dimension that affects our lives 24/7 non-stop. This is why, genuine reality is not what we think.
If we spend our days thinking about things that make us nostalgic, angry, anxious, jealous , worried or craving, we will live in an nostalgic, angry, anxious ,worried lives and craving for this and that.
If we spend our time thinking about sadness, we have sad lives. If we spend our time thinking about how grateful we are, we have lives marked by gratitude. If we spend our lives thinking about harmony, we learn to live in harmony. If you learn to be compassionate with self, you will learn to be compassionate with others...and so on.
To live in harmony with our world, we have to be, first, in harmony with ourselves that is our body and our mind.
It means to accept not only our physical self as it is but also our emotional self-made of positive and negative feelings such as desires, hatred, sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, illusions.
These emotional weather will always be there not only because we are creating them but also because there are also created by our surrounding world such as injustice making us angry, tragedies to make us sad, dangers to bring us fear. However, there will always be love, compassion and understanding to hold us together.
Reminding ourselves all the time, that people, events and things are not always what we think they are or should be can help us to keep a more serene and quieter mind and how to interact with our surrounding world.
When we are at peace, we think better than when we are angry, when we are afraid or even, when we are super excited.
Even with an imperfect past and unknown future, you can find peace in the present. If you are suffering in the present moment, you pay attention to its impermanence or you can evoke compassion coming from us or from others and
Whenever you have an opportunity to consider compassion, practice compassion, or receive compassion, you are inviting peace and harmony into your life.
In a more peaceful present you gain better perspective and think better thoughts.
No matter how wonderful or dreadful your thoughts get, they are still transient immaterial entities.
Good or bad, what we think about x,y,z . are just thoughts. Even coming from your mind, that are not necessary truth and reality. The world is what it is and not what we think it is or want it to be.
Thank you.
