The Buddha suggested helpful guidelines for one's psyche and emotional environment, so that we'd free ourselves from much of our habits and behaviors that cause psychological suffering/discomfort. They were conducive for freedom from the known, as it were. They weren't rules or commandments for punishment and reward in an afterlife. They were for one's own good, in the sense of well-being here in this life now.
Our memory starts working right after something happens. We gather an impression. We also conjure up presuppositions and memes handed down from tradition to paint up so called, "new impressions." What's Real can't be put into memory. Memory is memory. Real is real.....real is what is......not the past in memory.
We don't know anyone. We don't know ourselves. Only know what we see and remember and choose to notice. Do we notice things about ourselves, like how we look when we're not noticing? So why isn't that a part of who we consider ourselves? Who we think of as ourselves contains no information about how our skin renews itself. Maybe in some cultures it might. So, our selves.......are conditional.
We see through the kaleidoscope goggles of our own experiences mixing with what we appear to be seeing at any given moment....mixing memory with new impressions we gather by consulting memory as to what we think we're seeing.
A child might look at a pattern on the wall, and make a big deal out of it, saying, "what is that?" We, as adults, might not even notice what they're looking at. They might be looking at a shadow in between three dots on the wall paper. To us there might not be a pattern. We notice other patterns they don't notice.
The difficult thing to do is reach the end of thought and also being able to use it without being swept into old currents of emotion attached to certain thoughts or opinions.
Talking with a friend about playing music, listening, seeing innocence of their thinking, seeing them as the universe, not just a link in the universe, not just a stepping stone to carry on life, but the universe renewing itself in innocence of forgetting itself as each human being.....the innocence of everyone....that we know not what we do.
As with each new baby, the universe will carry on. As with each cell and organism throughout the universe, it will carry on through renewal.
This impression points at life....beyond word, beyond the world of words and language that we live in. The world of language, symbols, and images is like a dream we dream while awake.
Can we really know anything beyond words? Beyond images, concepts, symbols? Beyond language? That's the thing we've been trying to find out......whether or not we can grab the REAL and put it into memory. The way we've been living is making impressions of what's in front of us and creating images, then creating images of images and stories about those images of images and stories of the stories of the images of images....echoes creating an avalanche...living in thought, losing touch with the real.
Our society demands obedience, loyalty to the machine, to the software of our cultures....to ....to the worship of language and definition according to a given culture's value systems. Words, language, concepts, ....are a river of substitution of the real and present. Images are stand ins. We can be right in front of someone and only see the image we have of them in our minds. We can look ourselves and only see the image we hold of our selves. That image will change many millions of times before we die, so which image was the right one? None of them really. They were masks....added up to fit particular situations. We're attempting to know someone like we know how to count to 10.
Who's to say we're supposed to be anything at any given time in this life?
Be your own authority. Don't answer to me or anyone else, especially when it comes to your life's details......that's what I say.
"Ultimate authority is no authority..."--can't remember where I read that.
When we are in need of peace of mind, acceptance of what has already happened is the hardest and most important thing we can learn.
We know not what we do.....everything is as it should be....for now....until it changes.....again...and again.
Back to the role(s)!!!
Peace
