Who thinks if there is no thought.
Who is aware when we’re dreaming.
This is the original text, and an edited version can be found in the Fragments of Reality -book.
Zen Thoughts
August 12, 2004Blog
Motives
August 12, 2004It is easy to act outright. It takes more nerve and courage to question first and evaluate the motives of one’s actions. And it’s almost extreme to make up one’s main after all those steps and being able to act rationally against one’s first hunch…
Yesterday I had a good conversation about ownership. These days I’m going through a process whether to acquire a car or not. Barely there has been a moment in my adult life when I did not have my own vehicle (usually a fast one). Now I’m selling my bike but seriously thinking of not getting anything as a replacement.
Why do we need a car? In many cases if one lives in a big city it’s much cheaper to rent a car or use a taxi instead. This same analogy applies to a summer cottage / yacht and other stuff as well. Even though the financial calculations would indicate clearly that there is no point buying anything – still we do it.
Illusion of freedom is one of my favourites. At your own will you can go whenever and wherever you desire. Yeah, right. Thinking about my past years there haven’t been that many of those spontanious acts of freedom carried out. Living in the downtown is more hassle free without using a car no matter whether one has it or not.
Another good point was that one do not want to think about the costs all the time. It’s easier to hand out a thick pile of cash at once and then pretend that the capital costs are not real. When using taxi one has to think about money every time.
As a car owner one pretends to ignore the endless maintenance costs, insurances, taxes, and of course the petrol costs. And the biggest of all in more expensive vehicles is the huge depreciation of capital. Quite a lot of money to be burned just to have a nice option to use the vehicle if one would need it and being able to forget the money issue at least for every 400 kms or so.
How about the real motives? Above were the obvious ones. But the true ones have nothing to do with the transportation from A to B. Our mind is a master to hide the true motives under rational surface with convenience and practicality etc. Who can admit that owning one’s own vehicle has nothing to do with self-esteem, ego, showing off or ownership (i.e. feeling of security by owning)? If not why is the world full of exciting and exotic cars with more horsepowers and gadgets one would need to get from A to B even in the normal range of family cars. And most of all we have the taxis and public transportation anyhow where one can work at the same time while travelling. I am what I consume and possess might not be that far from the truth still today. Poor nature and environment. They have to bear the consequences of all our useless nonsense.
Illusion of a Free Will
August 10, 2004We’re free to do whatever we desire. We have a free will—or
do we?
How free is our will? Are we able to decide what are we
going to do tomorrow? We can plan things but we cannot
always guarantee that things are going to turn out the way we
have planned. Other things can happen. So where is the free
will?
Even if we forget the future and just focus on our behavior
I’m not sure that we have any freedom at all. Pick a situation
that could happen in your life. How do you think you will
behave? What kind of decisions do you think you will make
in this situation?
For example, you’re in a traffic jam and already late for a
meeting. No big deal. You have been in the situation before.
How do you act? Do you behave differently every time? Most
likely not. You just follow the pattern or habit you have
mechanically repeated time after time. You react. Even if the
situation is a brand new one for you, you still have an idea of
how you will act in the moment when it happens. We are
stuck with our own thinking and perceptions of the world.
We are dragging our past with us, and it ties us to the behav-
ior patterns and sets the limits to our freedom of choices.
How free is a will that cannot innovate and create new
dynamic responses every moment? Repeating old formulas
does not sound so free after all. Couples who have been
together for a long time know what each other will say or do
beforehand—each has learned the other partner’s thinking
pattern. Very original and free, indeed.
Free will is an illusion. From the outset, it looks like every-
thing is possible. By observing the issue more carefully,
though, we start to realize that the true freedom of will is
mainly limited to our point of view (perception)—how we
take the events that occur in our lives. Are we sad, disap-
pointed, angry, frustrated, and so forth?
Next time you’re late for a meeting and traffic is really
jammed, instead of getting red and speeding around, try
catching yourself in the middle of getting angry and just
change your behavior. No point getting angry—you’re already
late. You cannot reverse the clock. Why not be in a good
mood and instead enjoy the ride. This will be less stressful,
and you might even avoid a ticket. Sounds more free to me.
The trick is to keep this new perception going—all the time.
Don’t follow the old thinking formulas every moment—be
awake. If you do this, you might even do something unpre-
dictable, fresh.
This is the original text, and an edited version can be found in the Fragments of Reality -book.
Flow of Time
August 9, 2004Flow of time is an illusion. Time is motion. It has a dura-
tion—a measurement of motion from one point to another.
Quantum mechanics do not behave this way and, therefore,
Einstein was more than a bit upset: “God does not play dice
with the universe.”
The paradox is that we are always in motion—if not phys-
ically at least in our mind. We are never really in the moment.
Our mind wanders around endlessly either recalling past
memories and experiences or projecting things for the future.
Our mind reacts for the current moment while not being able
to experience the current now time as it is. We do not see the
world as it is. Our own view of the world is adjusted and
biased, depending on our personal history, cultural back-
ground, social and behavioral standards and expectations, as
well as experience and memories of similar situations in the
past.We see what we know, and we know what we have expe-
rienced in the past. See the loop?
We crave security and predictability. We want to have sta-
bility in our lives. Unfortunately, “now” is always new—
unknown. It is a dynamic process that cannot be known
beforehand. It destroys part of the known in order to create
something new. Therefore it is called the “change.” Still, we
want to be able to be in control. We cannot stand the unpre-
dictable—at least our mind thinks so.
Have you tried to keep your mind still, not thinking about
the future or the past? Not thinking about anything while
walking in the street. Purely observing and appreciating what-
ever comes your way. What happens? By not letting your mind
label and judge things around you and squeezing your obser-
vations into a historical framework (your experience or preju-
dice),you start to see clearly and register more than ever about
the world around you. And the best part is that you can even
recall those things later on. You can visualize your entire route
to work or home, with all the details and passersby, not even
talking about their clothing or what they were saying and so
on. All this is possible because your mind is not “working,”
thinking about the past or worrying about the future. You’re
free to live in the moment—always in the timeless now time.
How could you know something beforehand and label it
because the now moment is ever changing, new all the time,
the unknown? Still our static mind wants to control some-
thing dynamic. And it always fails, but we do not see it. Our
mind has its tricks to hide its own faults. It lays blame in all
the other directions. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Our
expectations are not fulfilled. We are sad or angry, frustrated
or surprised, thanks to our mind. But who created those
expectations and thoughts in the first place? They did not
happen, as the physical world exists, objectively. They were
our own mind’s creations, which we treated as real. They
became real for us. They are our own “static” creation, which
did not align with the real world—the now time.
It’s time to stop extrapolating the past for the current
moment and take life as it comes. Without objections or
force. Just by letting go and letting it flow.
This is the original text, and an edited version can be found in the Fragments of Reality -book.
Truth
August 5, 2004Like it’s said we are our worst enemy. To be more specific – it’s the truth. The truth about ourselves. We cannot stand it. This applies to people, states, governments, organisations and ideologies.
Through out the history people have been killed for their point of views. No matter whether it has been Socrates, inquisitions in the Middle Ages or today’s policital prisoners or limitations to the freedom of speech.
Everyone of us is continously doing something we do not like ourself. Most of the times we just ignore those parts of ourselves or simply do not see them. At least we actively try to hide or forget our not so perfect actions, deeds, thoughts or sayings. We get irritated and angry when the truth comes out. But we do not get angry to ourselves. We get angry to those who remind us about the truth. Test yourself next time someone is getting your blood level rising. Who would get angry of something that is not true?