Tao Te Ching
Mind
Our minds are a powerful and beneficial ally but an abusive and tyrannical master. We either learn to direct and shape their direction or—by default—we quickly lapse back into status quo, herd instinct conformity and cultural slavery. A good translation of the word "Mantra" as used in Eastern spiritual traditions is "mind protection." Meditation, chanting, and reciting mantras all have this same effect: disrupting the cultural and the conceptual momentum our minds habitually follow. These techniques and others like art, poetry, and other creative endeavors open up a little blue-sky awareness space—opportunities to experience a little freedom and the possibility of redirecting our experience away from materialistic craving and the consequent suffering it produces, toward a little wisdom, compassion, and enlightenment.
As discussed in the Culture theme, birds sing the same songs over and over, generation to generation. As a force of evolutionary conservatism most animals have a narrow range of sounds narrowly repeated again and again. Humans feel independent and unique yet like most animal species, think and repeat the same thoughts and beliefs as their parents, their ancestors, and name this their cultures. Evolutionary change makers however say something new and as a consequence must face antipathy and often persecution from the herd committed to the status quo, against change, and afraid of any new notes. This inherited culture becomes both a building block enabling us to see farther, innovate beyond, and further evolve as well as a conceptual chain that prevents us from going beyond. Spiritual practice like meditation, mindfulness, and mantra as well as studying and learning from different cultures and different wisdom traditions help break these golden chains that ensnare us to the words over the sense within the philosophy and practices of our favorite beliefs and practices.
When an individual gets feedback that they’re making mistakes, when people get abusive and violent toward them, when their safety, security, and lifestyle are threatened; they most often find a serious motivation for change and prioritizes that above almost everything else. Nations, civilizations, and cultures though seem to often lack even this modicum of common sense. For example, much of American culture has gotten lazy. To a large extent becoming a country of Homer Simpsons. Each generation needs to work with their minds in order to translate the wisdom and skillful strategies of the past into modern terms.
Quotes (80)
“To some the powers of bloody war belong, to some, sweet music, and the charm of song; To few, and wondrous few, has Jove assigned a wise, extensive, all-considering mind.”
“Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are, it solely relies on what you think.”
“As mind gives order to the chaos of our actions, so the World Mind gave order to the primeval seeds, setting them into a rotary vortex and guiding them toward the development of organic forms.”
“Minds of living things and the light fabric of their spirits are neither birthless nor deathless.”
“Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetites.”
“All the causes and results of positive and negative deeds have emerged merely from the symbols of conceptualizing thought... pacified by the emptiness which is without conceptual elaborations.”
“All Buddhas past, present and future have one essence. Understand this essence and you will discover your mind’s true nature.”
“Learn the true nature of your own mind. Then let go and dissolve into unstrsuctusred reality. This tensionless state is the yogin’s life.”
“The mind is always present. You just don't see it... When the mind creates the idea of the mind, people are deluded but if you don't use the mind to create the idea of the mind, you will always live in the country of the Buddhas”
“Whoever realizes that from the very beginning there has been nothing other than mind, has acquired the realization of all the Buddhas of the three times.”
“Original nature is your eternal mind… impervious to gain and loss, calumny and eulogy, praise and blame, sorry and joy”
“The Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form. So Buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all.”
“The Mind is no other than the Buddha, and Buddha is no other than sentient being. When Mind assumes the form of sentient being, it has suffered no decrease; when it has become a Buddha, it has added nothing to itself.”
“The innate purity that is the nature of mind… exists within, so do not look elsewhere.”
“If the minds of one hundred men are in harmony, it is like the synchronized gait of one hundred horses.”
“Once you discover the original, inherently complete and real mind, no matter what situation you meet, you will understand completely.”
“Nothing exits outside of our minds... all general ideas are conceptions formed as tools”
“The primal mind transcends conditioning... How can you possibly attain anything outside yourself?”
“The mind is morally self-sufficient, endowed with innate knowledge of the good, and an innate ability to do good. It is one and indissoluble. It fills the whole universe… The investigation of things means nothing more than to investigate this mind.”
“Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, 'The flag is moving.' and the other said, 'No, the wind is moving.' their teacher happened to be passing by and told them, 'Not the wind, not the flag; it is your mind that is moving.'”
“Mind itself is a vast expanse, the realm of unchanging space. It's indeterminate display is the expanse of the magical expression of its responsiveness.”
“The wonderful nature of your mind, unchanging through countless ages, is the essence of all the sutras.”
“There are names like Buddha, God, or Heavenly Way but they all point to the mind which is nothingness.”
“Think of the profit of all as being the real profit and the mind of the whole country as being the real mind.”
“While the intellectual horizon of the normal man is wider than that of the animal—one continual present with no consciousness of past or future—it is not so immeasurably wide as generally supposed.”
“so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it”
“If you want to realize immortality you must realize the deathless nature of your mind.”
“All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.”
“Our mind lets the chain of the past slip away clinging only to the extreme end, which is often made of a very different metal from that of the links lost in the night of time.”
“Everyone knows that 'mind' is what an idealist thinks there is nothing else but, and 'matter' is what a materialist thinks the same about... the 'mind' to which a given mental event belongs is the group of events connected with the given event by memory-chains, backwards or forwards... a mind and a piece of matter are, each of them, a group of events.”
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
“I had no confidence in the mind, for this can discern nothing but the body. It does not see the flame which shimmers around the body and leaps from the scalp and is battered by the wind like a banner This, precisely this, is the soul.”
“Matter as known to us, is but a form of mind [and] the supreme figure in this idealistic development was Immanuel Kant, perfect archetype of the abstract philosopher who brought back to life, magician-wise, the dear beliefs of the ancient faith. Even Schopenhauer and Nietzsche accepted his reduction of the world to mere appearance as the indispensable preliminary to every possible philosophy. And then Darwin came…”
“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind... the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.”
“All of our decisions about what is and is not are just decisions made in accordance with how it appears to our mind; they have no other basis whatsoever.”
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
“This mind, unlike enlightened mind, is always being carried away by one delusion after another.”
“Mind in its natural state is radiantly void. The sense of a permanent ego dims this inner light.”
“To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that need discipline –training… So train your mind”
“When your body vanishes... there remains what does not below to self but was only 'loaned' to it, a universal mind”
“What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.”
“Even though mind is not touchable, even though you cannot see mind, even though you cannot show what it is, it is obvious that if there were no mind, there could be no phenomena even in this life.”
“‘Mind’ is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back… ”
“It is through the essence of mind, which is unborn, indestructible, calm and clear, that we deliver ourselves within ourselves.”
“We deal with our mind from morning till evening, and it can be our best friend or our worst enemy.”
“Despite centuries of modern philosophical and scientific research into the nature of the mind, at present there is no technology that can detect the presence or absence of any kind of consciousness.. there is no objective, scientific evidence even for the existence of subjective experience!”
“Natural selection didn’t design your mind to see the world clearly; it designed your mind to have perceptions and beliefs that would help take care of your genes.”
“Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion… we create elaborate scenarios and then react to them but there is nothing really happening outside our mind.”
“The mind itself—not a 'thing' but an event—and the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that arise, abide and disappear in the mind are equal expressions of emptiness, that is, the open-ended possibility for anything to occur.”
“The mind is always moving, always processing new ideas, new perceptions, and new sensations. That’s its job… There’s no difference between what is seen and the mind that sees it.”
“The mind is not the subject that freely shapes historical actions and biological realities; the mnd is an object this is being shaped by history and biology... the mind is never free of manipulation.”
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