Life is chaotic. This seems to be true for all of us. There are just so many ways that we are influenced by competing agendas and desires; the emotions of others; our own past which bubbles up as a result of a current event. It's messy. Buddha said that chaos is an inherent part of being.
The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the mind at two levels. The lower level is the one where the seeds of all of our emotions lie - compassion, fear, anger, joy and so on. The upper part of where the senses connect bringing information in. The seeds match with experience to create the response. Psychology has spoken about the mind seeking to make sense of new information by looking in the memory for a way to recognize and categorize this new data. Past experience acts as a driver to current behaviours.
By the time we react consciously, the brain has already been in motion and planning our behaviour. The brain intercepts a stimulus and forms a reaction. It is easy to think of examples. We are driving along and find ourselves yelling or insulting another driver. Our spouse gives us a look and we are in full blown reaction mode. In the natural chaos of life, this is going on moment by moment.
A nun at the Plum Village Buddhist Village offered a fascinating insight - we need a strategy to manage the linkages between a seed and a behaviour arising out of the linkage with a sensory input. This appealed to me greatly. In meditation, we can increasingly link to a mindful, conscious understanding of the sensory input and seed linkages. Thus, we begin to understand that when a certain stimulus, or type of stimulus occurs, it will likely link to an emotive seed and we will respond in a particular way - unless - we have a strategy to respond differently and consciously. Calmness is more likely and increasingly possible.
The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the mind at two levels. The lower level is the one where the seeds of all of our emotions lie - compassion, fear, anger, joy and so on. The upper part of where the senses connect bringing information in. The seeds match with experience to create the response. Psychology has spoken about the mind seeking to make sense of new information by looking in the memory for a way to recognize and categorize this new data. Past experience acts as a driver to current behaviours.
By the time we react consciously, the brain has already been in motion and planning our behaviour. The brain intercepts a stimulus and forms a reaction. It is easy to think of examples. We are driving along and find ourselves yelling or insulting another driver. Our spouse gives us a look and we are in full blown reaction mode. In the natural chaos of life, this is going on moment by moment.
A nun at the Plum Village Buddhist Village offered a fascinating insight - we need a strategy to manage the linkages between a seed and a behaviour arising out of the linkage with a sensory input. This appealed to me greatly. In meditation, we can increasingly link to a mindful, conscious understanding of the sensory input and seed linkages. Thus, we begin to understand that when a certain stimulus, or type of stimulus occurs, it will likely link to an emotive seed and we will respond in a particular way - unless - we have a strategy to respond differently and consciously. Calmness is more likely and increasingly possible.
There is an urgency to this. There are many forces taking advantage of chaos to create fear, for example. as a result of linkages to things like terrorism. We are seeing many examples. Terrorist acts are scary but they are being manipulated for political gain. This means that we begin to nurture the seed of fear and begin more and more fear patterns as our senses pick up the stimuli we are told represents terrorism. That leads to more non-mindful reaction patterns.
All of this is not to suggest that we should ignore truly fearful threats. Rather, it is to have ways to be aware of our responses having strategies for response. This leads to greater presence and consciousness in the moment.
I smelled the air
It reminded me of childhood
I saw the sun rise upon the river
And I recalled a time with my father
I touched the flower
I thought of a spring time moment near the ocean
I tasted the peach
I was recalling the peach pie from my mother
I could hear the waves
And I closed my eyes to music in my memory
I knew these memories
But I forget they can be the roots of my compassion
© Peter Choate, 2016
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