On Peace and Protection

Peace is the stillness that accompanies all of the mind-stories, even the negative ones. Peace is, more often than not, a tacit but omnipresent and silent-sentience inseparable from all appearances including thoughts--negative or positive--but distinguishable and available for all if we simply stay aware and view alluring and disturbing narratives for what they are in the present, just narratives. 

Awareness of this type weakens the grip of the deepest propaganda—ontological, epistemological, medical, economic, political--and opens the door to greater possibilities for all of us. Peace of mind is our most important asset and should be encouraged and protected. This is the role of virtue and other forms of ethical practice and perspectives. 

Acting from peace is synonymous with acting from an open and more informed intelligence, one that may be open to the possible and not bound by the dogmatic. Through peace of mind, dogmatism and sedimented views may be undermined and we may become available to the potential of innovation. It is in our best interest to guard the mind against habitually and culturally indoctrinated adherence to many habitually held narratives, that cause great pain and addiction to pleasures that, in the long-term, do us harm.

The depths of peace reveal formerly held depths to be superficial surfaces. Realities may turn into beliefs and, in turn, beliefs are seen as ideas and they turn into mere passing thoughts. 

Realities vanish and the Who becomes known as that which is aware and that which is aware is the light of lights that grants sentience. 

It is there, hidden in the depths of our subjectivity, a subject who will forever remain unidentifiable, unknowable, and free from limitation. Like form and color, the awareness that is peace and the evanescent dynamics of phenomena are inseparable but must be distinguishable for peace to become known and assimilated into personal, intersubjective, societal, and cultural norms. No need for effort, just take some time and gather the intent to watch steadily and over time without preference for a preferred appearance. Meditation may reveal what has always already been the case, the One that hides in the shadows cast by craving—the clinging to phenomena in the hope of finding stability, peace, and all that we, as human beings, wish for.

Authentic peace of mind will grant us all kindness, compassion, joy, and friendliness; these are the path from and to peace. However, it must be both encouraged and protected with virtue.

Repetition vs. Learning: It's all Karma (action)

Prior to reading this post, please take a look at this video and see how worlds are made, https://youtu.be/UsnGHRZu-s0

If you have ever observed the process of learning, very closely, extremely closely, you may have noticed that sounds, body, and hand movements, i.e., gestures are repeated over and over to help us learn. I am saying to you that the repeated acts (karma) of prayers, table manners, proper grammar, and much more are themselves learning. There is no one inside who learns. There is no fixed self or one who repeats the mantras of prayers or table manners and then learns. The repetition is the learning. Repeating is learning. Repetition sediments what we take to be words, sentences, mantras, prayers, i.e., the repeated, and we, upon reflection--or that's what we call this, reflection, simply another form of repetition--we believe something was learned.

This very same process gives us all of the components or items of our moment to moment realities, be they selves, chairs, other people, or anything else we plan on being there in our future. The worlds are made of mantras. I can assure you that learning is sedimentation. Ever watch how a path is cut through a dense forest? It is the repeated movements over the same or close to the same grounds. In fact, they become the same when repeated thus creating familiarity via repetition, a path is made when repetition of acts of body, speech, and mind take place. This is as true for physics as it is for table manners or swear words. Then, we follow the path without batting an eye. The same is true for the process we call learning. Even our sense of self, our precious self, is formed via repetition. This is the repetition of words, which are sounds that have become words via repetition, feelings, faces, others's sounds and judgments and all manner of repeated, not identically repeated but similar enough to provide memory with comfort and ease of travel, i.e., habits, that settle into incarnations of self-senses.

Words are sounds that have gained familiarity through repetitious patterns of vibration, mouthing acts, sound acts as facial recognition in others who repeat the patterns. We don't really learn anything. We repeat and become familiar. This applies as much to doors as to selves. Our sense of self is mere familiarity with innumerable micro-actions of body, speech, mind, perception, environments, and more. There are innumerable causes and conditions at many levels of subtlety most of which go unnoticed. There is simply no need to pay attention to the familiar. Once a group of repeaters has formed a community, of various types, is formed. Communities are repeaters. Karma (actions) forms all relations, persons, places, things, and actions.

This is not true, this is how you may watch your experience being made along with your worlds, as time moves toward a future built with all of the persons, places, or things that have a place in the sedimented mantras we count on each day, week, month, year, decade and more. You are not being asked to believe this but to see it, to feel it, to know it is what is occurring.

All of it brought about by desire, kama-loka, the "desire realm." 

States of Mind?

Life is living, perpetual motion. Does there ever appear to you to be a state in play in your experience? The word state is variously used to indicate a "condition" of something, be it person, place, or thing. A condition of something in the state in which that thing is found to be. It is a condition of the being of something or of something's being.

Does mental activity have a state? Commonly it is said that there are states of mind. I know we commonly say, "He is in some state," to indicate that someone is in a condition of some sort or he is in some place or another. But is there a state of affairs? Is there really a state or condition which simply is? Which is not in motion? Which is not in time? These are important questions to ask when it comes to experience. Please give this some thought because the next post or so will presuppose you have done so.