Thought for the Day

Rodin's Poet/Thinker[Source:NothingandAll]

If you look at the label cloud on the right sidebar of this blog, you will see that the label "thoughts" has quite a big font size and darker font color. This means that I have a lot of posts which I categorized as thoughts.

Now, is thought a good thing?

To be frank, this is something I don't really understand yet. So I don't know if I can explain this well. Anyway, the reason that I am bringing up this subject is because I came across a book written by Tejguru Sirshree Tejparkhiji with the title "Detachment from Attachment" today. I did mention something briefly about attachment in one of my previous post. It is a very good book. I am only halfway through.

However, I would like to share some of the passages with you because I think it might be useful for you to understand yourself and your world better. But before that, let me ask if any of you has ever struggled with your thoughts? I had such an experience before. You know, it is almost like your thoughts are a separate entity. That sounds scary, doesn't it? Like hallucinating.

Maybe it had to do with feeling insecure. I tried to analyze my behavior and thoughts.

Anyway, to cut the long story short, whenever those bad thoughts surfaced again, I scolded them. And they vanished, just like that.

This may sound like a trivial thing to talk about for some of you. But have you ever considered why there so many unhappy people in this world? Have you ever noticed that the mentally challenged (or retards, which sounds politically incorrect) are happier people.

This reminds me of an activity organized by the Social Welfare Society at the university where I studied. We invited some children from the Spastic Society over. We had games and dancing. The children were having so much fun and you could simple, pure joy in their faces.

Dancing children[Source:Global Giving]

Before I move on, let me share with you a video I have seen quite some time back. It looks a little like a presentation show tailored for the service industry. Johnny's thought for the day is inspirational. Click image to watch.

Here are some of the passages I find enlightening:

"Mind is unsteady and constantly fluctuating in which continuous changes are taking place. If in the morning, the mind is filled with jealousy, it is anger in the afternoon, greed in the evening and confusion in the night. Every moment is changing. Sometimes it is sad and sometimes happy. One moment it is filled with trust and the next moment if is full of distrust and suspicion. For a moment it is very sincere and the next moment it is filled with deceit. What is showing compassion one moment changes to anger the next moment. The one that was ready to die for someone, jumps up the next moment to kill the same person. The mind, which is wavering in this manner every minute, does not deserve to be trusted. Unfortunately, we have become one with this ever changing mind, we have become attached to it. We have identified ourselves with our mind. We have developed faith and reverance toward this erratic and fickle mind. In reality, mind is an illusion. This means it does not exist, but only appears to exist. It is necessary to understand how this mind gets created. There is no existence of mind, but it seems to exist. It is just like a straight wooden stick which when put in water looks bent, while it is actually not bent. It is like a rope which looks like a snake in the dark, while actually it is not. It is only because of darkness that a rope looks like a snake. Similarly, it is only because of ignorance that the mind seems to exist, but it actually does not. To know the mind, it is necessary to see it under the light of wisdom."

*****

"Man gets attached to his own thoughts. Due to this attachment, he becomes attached to every thought that comes to his mind and becomes identified with it. Due to this tendency, the same unhappy thoughts keep recurring time and again. If these thoughts happen to be of depression, then attachment to such thoughts can even prove to be the cause of his death. We should not fall prey to our thoughts. All around, we find people falling prey to thoughts. If through meditation, you just start witnessing them, then the glue that attaches you to the thoughts starts giving away."

*****

"You must look at thoughts as though you are looking at your children. When children start troubling you, you teach them to keep quiet. In the same way, when thoughts come and bother you, you must train them to sit quiet. The attachment toward children often becomes the cause of misery for their parents. Likewise, your attachment to thoughts can become a cause for your downfall."

If you would like to find out more, you can visit the Tejgyan website. The book has some suggestions on meditation methods on witnessing and dissolving the fixation for thoughts.

Okay, it's clear to me that our minds can be our best friend as well as our worst enemy. So, be careful with our thoughts. For now, let's escape from our thoughts for a moment and enjoy the following music video - Amazing Grace by Chris Tomlin. Susu kacang, I think you want some, right?