I keep thinking and turning around in my head... what is the ideal way of looking at things? How am I suppose to think and act in a certain circumstance? To solve this problem, we scour through our memory, search our past, and find something in the dregs of our consciousness telling us that when we acted THIS WAY it worked out okay. We also base our habits and actions off of others and every influence we come across. Our brain is a giant database that catalogues every instance and files it away, or maybe, connects itself to the event through an invisible strand to the time or place where this event occurred. If there is no such thing as time except as a human and wordly conception, then maybe our mind and memory is extradimensional, going back (and forth) in time, recalling instances that have happened to us.
Buddhist religions and many other spiritual practices have focused on the importance of now. Nothing has happened before and nothing will happen in the future. Here I use the word "nothing" as no-thing, but really it also means nothing, nil, blank. Nothing is happening in the past and future. Everything is happening right now. Every breath that we take in is new and fresh. We remember our last breath and act because this is how we learn. We would never survive, and for that matter, no species would have ever lasted more than a few seconds if we didn't have the function of memory. Memory is biological, necessary for survival. Our brains are rooted in the classic flight-or-fight syndrome and when we choose a memory, we are choosing the correct response, determined by our brain on how best to act in that situation for our biological imperative.
If memory is for the means of biological safety, why does it remember a beautiful sunset? Why our the most special moments the one that we treasure the deepest? Maybe memory serves two functions. One is for our physical health and the other is for our emotional. We remember the times when we felt most at peace and in touch with the world. It is a feeling that is stored in our mind, when we recount the memory, the feeling permeates our body and tingles to our toes. I would argue that the beautiful times we remember are when we felt most "natural." The times when our mind dissappeared for a brief few seconds and we were able to see the world and it's creatures in the simplest, yet most wondrous light. The light of truth.
Why would our mind want us to remember the few times that we were free from it though? Free from thought...
Recently I have been seeing the mind as something malignant. Like the Hindu ascetics I have cast it as something evil, something that needs to be shaken off and conquered. To be free from thought it so to be happy, the mind spins a web around us and traps un its pulpous snares, trapping us in its bile and sweet stickiness. It bites and nibbles at our happiness and peace of mind until we give ourselves up and submit to its mastery. Yet when we see its maliciousness we can be free. By recognizing its pervasive control over us and our actions, we begin to see that every action we take is usually first dictated by the mind, and the memory, it's evil minion that it draws on.
How wrong I have been..
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