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January 21, 2025

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Nice post
i also tend to agree with the idea that living in present moment is the key. But how many of us are able to do that. we think that we are living in present moment but we are just thinking.

Problem is we never had think-less state since our birth. so how could we just be think-less present. That's a true miracle if one can achieve. Mindfulness is long road. and less adventurous.

Idealism offends the senses, materialism offends the soul; the one explains everything but the world, the other everything but life. -- Will Durant

I bought and read T.N. H’s ‘Miracle of Mindfulness several years ago and recall not being overly impressed. Still, knowing that on a second reading of some books can sometimes produce a different opinion – so, I’ll have another read sometime.

I’m totally in accord with ‘being alive with the present reality’ and that there is no ‘higher mind or soul – something separate from our everyday mind’, but not too happy at ‘there being only one entity, the mind’. Is the mind an entity? It could invite confusion.

Sorry to be a bit pedantic but entity is usually described as ‘something that exists separately from other things and has a clear identity of its own’. The mind (as far as I understand it) is totally dependent on the brain and senses – no brain, no sense input, no mind. Sure, the mind has a huge influence on us: how and what we think and feel, on our behaviour etc., all of which conspires to generate a false sense of who I am precariously based on ad hoc thought constructs. I guess it’s the way T.N.H. uses the term mind that I find misleading.
The last paragraph here from T.N.H.: - “True mind is our real self, is the Buddha: the pure one-ness which cannot be cut up by the illusory divisions of separate selves, created by concepts and language.” makes more sense to me in that the mind being a complex of etc, and particularly that it houses the construct ‘self’.

One of the insidious aspects of the mind’s contents is the ‘self’ construct. Being about the most divisive concept, the ‘self’ construct may be the hardest content of mind which prevents being in the reality of the present moment. It’s often pointed out in Zen that to study the Buddha way is to study the self. T.N.H.’s or Sukman’s meditation teachings (and Zen generally) could well help one to see beyond the confines of the delusions of the mind to reveal a truer picture of who/what one is.

If we think we are looking for something called enlightenment: Dogen said that the body is already enlightened but unseen due to the activity of the mind – of thinking. Steven Batchelor holds that enlightenment (or nirvana) is there when thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs (mind actions) result in conditioned reactivity (suffering) and that nirvana is freedom from such reactivity.

Quote of the Day
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."
— Albert Einstein —

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