Delusion disorder is ubiquitous. It is much, much more prevalent than ordinarily believed.

We humans are aware of our limitations as animals.  Although we don’t know when it will occur, we know that we shall die.  We are impermanent.  We are destined to become worm food.

It’s natural to take ourselves to be the victims of a terrible hoax.   Death mocks all our projects.  It undermines all our hopes and dreams.  All our struggles to create meaningful lives seem useless.

In response, we invent a fiction:  the reified concept of a self.  In personal terms, this is the view that I am a continuant substratum underneath my qualities.  If so, it’s possible that I may survive death.

This reified concept of a self must not be confused with the conventional, everyday notion of being an agent, an actor.  There’s no controversy about the fact that we are constantly deciding what to think, say, or do or what not to think, say, or do.

The most serious delusion is based upon the existence of a separate, substantial self, which is the reified concept of a self.  Since illusions are nothing but misapprehensions of what is real, because there is nothing real about the reified concept of a self, belief in it is not an illusion.  It’s worse:  it’s a delusion.

Yet this most serious delusion is understandable.  It’s a fiction created to protect us from impermanence.

Most people operate within a maze of unexamined judgments.  Their fundamental beliefs about the world are inherited from their cultures and are passed along from generation to generation.  All egocentric understandings of reality are based on the fundamental presupposition that the reified concept of the self is real.  It requires an intense, prolonged struggle to break free from this most serious delusion disorder and develop wisdom.

In fact, it requires a different way of life.  Since our beliefs shape our experiences, freedom from the most serious delusion disorder requires undermining the fundamental beliefs that shape all our experiences.  This different way of life is based on mastering meditation.

Why go to the trouble of doing this?

It’s because ignorance has consequences.  Delusions don’t somehow stand by themselves in splendid isolation!

In particular, the delusion disorder that the reified concept of the self is real has two primary consequences:  antipathy (hostility, anger) and clinging (greed, attachment).

All our dissatisfaction comes from these three poisons:  delusion, clinging, and antipathy.

This understanding goes back to Gotama (The Buddha).  Even though delusion disorder is ubiquitous, we all have a way out, namely, letting go of the belief that the reified concept of the self is real.  According to him, the cure is, in effect, to embrace impermanence.

Delusion disorder is not cured by better conceptualizing.  It’s impossible to think our way out of the conceptual maze we have inherited.  This is why mastering meditation is necessary:  it’s the only way to get beyond or outside our egocentric attachments.  Meditation dilutes the three poisons of delusion, antipathy, and clinging.

Gotama says in The Dhammapada:  “Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance.” [Easwaran translation]

Sages are those who free themselves.  They are characterized by a non-egocentric attitude of compassionate non-clinging, in other words, an attitude of selfless giving or loving.  Unlike the rest of us, they do not experience dissatisfaction at all.  [It's important here to distinguish physical pain, which is unavoidable, from dissatisfaction or suffering, which is avoidable.]

To undermine the most serious delusion disorder is to let go of the reified concept of a self.  Doing this is awakening (enlightenment, entering nirvana).  Anyone able to master meditation is able to do this, and, although it is difficult, mastering meditation is simple.  The good news is that all of us can do it.

The happiness formula is not well understood.  Since we all would like to be happy, if we understood how to become happy, presumably a lot more of us would do it.

The truth is that it is difficult for human beings to be happy.

If we distinguish physical pain from suffering, all sentient beings experience at least occasional episodes of pain.  Suffering, though, is uncommon among nonhuman animals.

By way of contrast, suffering is nearly universal in humans.  Suicide is the deliberate taking of one’s own life.  No nonhuman animals commit suicide, and suicide occurs in all human societies.

Since happy people do not commit suicide, the happiness formula is not well understood.  This is hardly controversial.  Recognition of the ubiquity of human suffering goes back at least as far as The Buddha’s First Noble Truth, which was formulated about 2400 years ago.

So it seems that there must be something tricky about becoming happy, some feature that makes it difficult.

Since humans have all the abilities that nonhuman animals have, that feature is not something nature hasn’t given us.  Instead, it’s a feature that comes from an ability that we have that animals lack, namely, written language.

As David Abram and others have argued, the Greek alphabet was developed from the Semitic aleph-beth in about the eighth century B.C.E.  Soon only other humans and their technologies were speaking to us.  The mountains, wolves, clouds, and lakes fell silent.  We began to live most of our lives in our thoughts cut off from their larger-than-human context.

Since separation is the cause of suffering, this divide is the major cause of human suffering.

Our written language enables us to use the principles of instrumental reason and rational discourse to solve problems with respect to objects outside our thoughts.  This works so spectacularly well that we have come to dominate all nonhuman animals.

Does it matter much?  Are you as happy as your dog?

Few of us are.  How many people do you know who are genuinely happy?  What has gone wrong?

We have become bound by language.  We fail to understand how to live happily because we fail to free ourselves from literacy.

From the time of ancient Indian sages to Steven C. Hayes and the ACT therapists of today, some thinkers have been urging us to become happier by learning how to keep literacy in its place.  What works to solve problems outside our thoughts fails to work for our private experiences.

Suicide seems a natural response.  Not understanding how to escape from guilt, worthlessness, blame, grief, and other aversive private experiences, people give up their lives rather than to continue suffering.  Because they don’t understand the happiness formula, they find that the only way out.

With respect to public objects, our happiness increases with our ability to control them.  However, with respect to private objects, attempts to control them backfire.  The happiness formula requires giving up the attempt to control private objects!

For example, suppose that you don’t want to continue to experience the grief you feel over the death of a loved one.  How can you avoid it?  What can you do?  The more you fight it, the more you’ll experience it.  The happiness formula requires accepting it.  To use the happiness formula, become one with the grief.  That’s the only way to freedom from it.

This is why mystics and others have always recommended mastering certain breathing or spiritual practices.  If you want to master the happiness formula, master one of those practices.

Is concentration improvement possible?  If so, how?  What is its value?

Be forewarned!  If you have never attempted to do any exercises to improve your focus, you are likely to be shocked the first time you do and realize how frantically busy and distracted your mind usually is.

Focusing is a mental function, something a mind does.  What, though, is a mind?

The noun ‘mind’ comes from the verb ‘(to) mind.’  To mind something is to pay attention to it, to be aware of it, to have it as an object of consciousness.  There’s no mystery about what it means when used ordinarily in sentences such as ‘Mind your manners’ or ‘Did you mind that you weren’t invited?’

The point is that, since a mind is not a thing, avoid the mistake of reifying the noun ‘mind.’  Unlike a brain, a mind is not physical object that has a place.  A mind is a set of activities such as perceiving, dreaming, hoping, imagining, and fearing.

As Franz Brentano noted, all those activities are about something else.  To perceive is to perceive something (such as a rock or a sound).  To dream is to dream something; there’s no such thing as a dream that isn’t about something.  To hope is to hope for something.  And so on.

In this way, there’s a correlation between minds or mental activities and their objects.  If there were no objects for mental activities to be about, there would be no mental activities.  If there were no mental activities to be about objects, there would be no objects.  No minds, no objects; no objects, no minds.

This is a venerable view.  For example, Sengcan, the third Chinese Zen patriarch, says in Affirming Faith in Mind:  “For things are things because of mind,/ as mind is mind because of things.  These two are merely relative . . . ” [Rochester Zen Center translation].

How is this relevant to concentration improvement?

Sengcan also says that “If all thought-objects disappear, the thinking subject drops away.”  This can happen because “both at source are Emptiness.”

If so, mind is empty of thought-objects and thought-objects are empty of mind.  Since, at least if your mind is like mine, minds are full of thought-objects, this is counter-intuitive.

Beware!  Sengcan enjoyed the vision of sages [see my post "Vision of Sages"].  He mastered concentration improvement.

Without concentration improvement, our minds are incessantly filled with “useless thoughts and words.”  Realizing this means taking a spiritual (breathing) practice such as zazen meditation through the point of (spiritual) awakening, which is letting go of all those opinions and thoughts we so fondly cling to.

Even just beginning a practice of concentration improvement, though, and sustaining it for a few weeks will enable you to prove to yourself that concentration improvement is possible.

I have described elsewhere how to begin.  Essentially, just sit still counting your inhalations and exhalations from 1 to 10 and then repeat.

Obviously, that’s a very simple practice.  However, if you have never done it, actually doing it may quickly shock you into realizing how undisciplined and out of control your mind usually is.  Thoughts and words will quickly and frequently lead you away from counting.

The key to concentration improvement is to notice when you have let go of counting and immediately return to it.  That’s the essence of training the mind to do what you want rather than vice-versa.

If you practice intently like that for a few minutes every day for a few weeks, you’ll notice that you’ll be able to stay with the counting for slightly longer and longer stretches before going off on some thought train or other.  The fact that those stretches increase proves that concentration improvement is possible.

Anyone who denies that simply hasn’t practiced properly.  There’s no real issue here.

When you begin, you may quickly become dismayed at how distracted you usually are.  You may begin to fear distraction unto death!

Well, just keep practicing properly.  Part of the explanation is that, since you have never before attempted any concentration improvement, you have failed to notice just how distracted you usually are.  That insight should motivate additional practicing.  After all, it’s good to have a method for diminishing distraction.

How could you improve your life without paying attention to it?  Your only real chance of improving it comes when you train yourself to pay attention to experiencing the present moment more and more frequently.

This is why some sages have said that the secret to living well is simply paying attention, not permitting the distractions of useless thoughts and words, living fully in the present moment.  Isn’t the present moment the only moment we have to live well?

In that sense, how could anything be more important than concentration improvement?

This is why some sages have recommended practicing as if your hair was on fire.

What is the vision of sages?  It’s the apprehension of those who master life.  I explain one way to understand it by the end of this post.

Those who master life are successful philosophers [also see the post "Define Philosophical"].

Philosophers are people who are determined to master life, to live well, to become wise, or to die in that attempt.

In other words, they are seekers wholeheartedly committed to living well.  So the purpose of philosophy is to live well; by way of contrast, it is not to spend life merely attempting unsuccessfully to live well or not even trying to live well.

Though vague and abstract, this provides an initially useful categorization of human beings. A human being is either a nonphilosopher or a philosopher. A philosopher is either as-yet-unsuccessful or successful.

Imagine two vertical lines on a sheet of paper; label the columns from left to right ‘1‘, ‘2‘, and ‘3.’ Each person is either in category 1 (nonphilosopher), category 2 (as-yet-unsuccessful philosopher) or category 3 (successful philosopher, sage).

In other words, the dream of philosophers is to master life, to attain category 3, to become sages, to be wise.  It is only those who realize that dream who have the vision of sages.

Like life as a 1, life as a 2 is unsatisfactory. Being a seeker is transitional.  It’s easy to get stuck in 2 (as I have!).  Being a sage is not the same as being a master thinker.  Please don’t confuse thinking well with living well.

If life is worth living, and it is, then it is worth living well.  It is worth mastering.  What does that mean?

Mastering life requires living an examined life.  In Plato’s famous words, for humans “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Mastering any valuable task requires disciplined, focused, persistent practice of the right kind.  Mastery never happens accidentally.  Philosophy is no different in this respect from any other valuable task.

It is not obvious how to master life.  The truth is that it is very difficult to master life, to attain the vision of sages.

Is having the vision of sages and enjoying life as a successful philosopher worth the price of living an examined life?  There’s no way to tell without doing it.

Please don’t make the common mistake of confusing studying philosophy in a classroom with being a philosopher. Don’t confuse living well with merely thinking about living well. Philosophy is an academic discipline, but it’s not merely that. Though it is possible to study philosophy, it is impossible to become a successful philosopher merely by reading or thinking about it. Philosophy is a way of life. It is useless unless practiced, unless improvements in apprehension show themselves in behavior.

Some good thinking is necessary to living well, but it is not necessary to become a master thinker in order to live well and becoming a master thinker is detrimental to living well if it detracts from practicing philosophy.  It is not even necessary to be literate to be a sage!

If the vision of sages isn’t just some kind of sophisticated conceptual understanding, what is it?

I don’t know.  At least not yet, I’m not a sage.

Even if I were a sage, it would not be possible to communicate the vision of sages verbally.  That is impossible.  Many sages have warned against even trying.

This warning points in exactly the right direction:  the vision of sages is nonverbal.

Some psychologists have recently noted that “[m]uch of the human world becomes verbal” and that “[e]ven the most obviously ‘nonverbal’ is probably at least functionally verbal for humans” [Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, p. 46].

Many animals are able to learn how to respond relationally to various kinds of nonarbitrary combinations of stimuli.  For example, rats can be trained to scamper down the more dimly lit of two passages.

Humans, though, seem to be unique in the sense that we are able to learn how to respond relationally to various kinds of arbitrary combinations of stimuli (as if those stimuli were combined in a nonarbitrary way).  Since the combinations are arbitrary, the cues required to relate them would not come from the natural way the stimuli are related but from contextual clues.

When relevant contexts are studied by stimulus equivalence researchers, those contextual clues seem to be verbal.  For example, “flying bat” would be understood differently in a cave as opposed to on a baseball diamond by those who have learned English.

If so, objects can be related arbitrarily in an indefinitely large number of ways that allows those who understand the verbal clues to make sense of the world.  In this way, most or all of a given human’s experience is verbal.

Nearly all of us live our lives in either category 1 or category 2.  This is often also true for sages, except that they have an escape into nonverbal emptiness the rest of us lack.

I’m suggesting that the vision of sages refers to the domain of life beyond both the non-verbal or pre-verbal experience of all non-human animals and human infants as well as the verbal experience of nearly all human children and adults.

Successful philosophers, of course, were once human infants and are still able to live in the verbal world of human experience.  However, they are not trapped by that verbal world.  They are not condemned to live in it perpetually, without relief.

The vision of sages is a way of talking about spiritual liberation, freedom from having to experience the world only verbally.

If so, this is why it is impossible to conceptualize your way to understanding the vision of sages, to think your way to freedom.

There is also no reason why, if you are willing to pay the price, you, too, cannot enjoy the vision of sages.  It is your birthright, but you must claim it.

What is its price?

Letting go of verbal reality, getting beyond the domain of incessant conceptualizing, mastering a practice of emptiness (such as zazen meditation).

If you are normal, you have a suffering mind.

What’s very strange is that there are intelligent, thoughtful, and experienced people who deny this!  That simply shows how much they are trapped by their own thoughts.

By the words “suffering mind” I am referring to a whole range of psychological discomforts from a barely noticeable uneasiness to everyday dissatisfaction to the intense distress that precedes suicide [see the posts "Suffering:  Its Nature and Cure" and "Pain-Its Nature and What To Do about Pain"].

The word that Buddhists use originally meant being off-center like a wheel whose axle was off enough to create a bumpy ride.  Do you go from one satisfaction to the next or is your life an up-and-down ride?

If additional evidence is required that having a suffering mind is ubiquitous, study its prevalence in any human society for which there are adequate records and contrast that to the fact that no other living organisms commit suicide.

I used to take an informal poll the first week of every course.  I’d simply ask the students to raise a hand if they had personally considered or attempted suicide or knew someone who had.  It was only very occasionally that I had a class in which some student failed to raise a hand.  Nearly all had experience with the suffering mind.

Psychological studies have shown that half of the people in our own society either attempt suicide or struggle with suicidal thoughts in their lives.

Here’s the important point:  there is nothing abnormal about you if you have a suffering mind.

Given that it’s normal, the question should be:  “What can be done to alleviate it?”  In this post let me simply state my belief that suffering is optional.  There are humans, called “sages,” who reduce and even eliminate it.  Furthermore, every normal human being has the innate capacity to become a sage.

In this post I’d like just to emphasize that there is a serious problem about suffering and to stimulate you to wonder “What causes suffering?”

The Bible is the most influential book of western civilization and, not surprisingly, there is a story about the origin of suffering in its opening book.  I write ‘not surprisingly’ because this is the book that spawned the three monotheistic religions and, if not to alleviate suffering, what is the purpose of religion?

Answer quickly to yourself:  is it good to understand the difference between good and evil?

Presumably, it is.  How could we be moral and lead good lives without understanding the difference between good and evil?

Yet the Biblical story of The Fall tells us that that understanding is the beginning of human suffering.  Once we learn the categories of good and evil, we are able to judge whether or not some person or event falls under them.

Once the first woman and man ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge “the eyes of both were opened” [Genesis iii 7].  Once they understood, they became ashamed and the God YHWH punished them.

What is the price we pay for understanding good and evil?

Every child experiences it, and every adult lives with it.

We lose innocence.  We can question ourselves and ask if we are worthy.  We can question the past and ask whether or not some event was good.  We can think of ideals that make the present moment wanting.  We can imagine the future and begin to worry about what will happen-especially understanding that we will die and that there’s nothing to be done to prevent that dreadful event.

In short, we begin to suffer.

J, who was the author of The Fall in Genesis, used earlier Mesopotamian traditions (probably including the tale of Adapa as well as the Epic of Gilgamesh) in the story.  The themes of loss of innocence, sexual awareness, wisdom, and nature’s paradise probably stretch back to the beginnings of human language and symbolic activity.

This is just what we should expect.  After all, where could the suffering mind come from other than our own minds?  Of course suffering comes from ourselves!

This is really, really good news.

Why?

It opens the possibility that we can transcend our own understanding, that we can get out of life within the fog of our own thoughts, that we can get out of our own heads.  Since we made it, why can’t we unmake it or make it better?

If that idea doesn’t excite you, you are intellectually dead.

Like pain, suffering is an important evil; however, unlike pain, it is optional.

Whereas ‘pain’ denotes bodily discomforts, the topic here is psychological discomforts [See the post "Pain-Its Nature and What To Do about Pain"].  It is not always possible to eliminate pain, but, at least for a sage, it is always possible to eliminate psychological discomfort.

What, exactly, is suffering?  What causes it?  How can it be eliminated?

Just as pains range from so mild as to be barely noticeable to intense agony, so psychological discomforts range from being barely noticeable in the background to acute distress.

Here are some concrete examples of psychological discomforts:  the mild annoyance you feel at having to go to work on Monday mornings, the years of torment and loneliness you felt after your beloved spouse dumped you, the sadness when that glorious sunset diminished into the purples of early evening, the anger you felt when your car was stolen, and the “not again” despair that gripped you when you were fired from a job once again.

All negative emotions such as grief, anger, and fear are examples of psychological distress.  [In the chapter "Imbalance about Emotions" in 5 Ways to Diminish Failure Almost Instantly I argue that our emotional systems are dynamic and nonlinear and in How To Survive College Emotionally I analyze emotions and provide detailed guidance on how to deal with them.]

All suffering is caused by attachment and all attachment is egocentric.

Whenever you want reality [see the post "Define Reality"] to be other than it is, there’s a gap between the world and what you desire.  Since you are not omnipotent, it is not always possible to change reality to suit yourself.  If you stay stuck wanting something different, all you are doing is generating an egocentric attachment that will cause you to suffer.

For example, if on Monday morning you would rather sleep in or go fishing or work on your book, you will experience a mild resentment that you have to go to work.  If you want your life to be as it was before your lover dumped you, you are creating your own unhappiness.  And so on.

Detachment is the cure for attachment.

Until you let go of what you want, until you free yourself from the powerful grip of egocentric desire, you will remain attached, and, therefore subject to psychological discomfort.

Want to free yourself?  Become detached; just let go of all egocentric desire.  This breaks the grip of the ego/I.  It frees you from your self concept [see the post "Define Understanding"].

It’s important to understand that there is nothing to gain.  Believe it or not, you already have everything required for living without any suffering whatsoever!  Innately, you already have the ability to live as freely, peacefully and joyfully as a sage.  Why, then, aren’t you doing it?

It’s because you are going through life lost in a perpetual cloud of thought.  You are imprisoned by your own concepts.

There’s nothing wrong with thinking:  how else are you going to solve problems?  However, there’s something very important that is wrong with incessantly thinking, namely, loss of freedom!

To live well (wisely, peacefully, freely, excellently) is to live as a sage, a successful philosopher.  The difference between sages and us is that, instead of being controlled by their thoughts, they are able to control their thoughts.

Being fully in control means being fully free.  The more control you have, the happier you are (which, of course, is why we punish people by diminishing the control they have).

So, freeing yourself from suffering requires mastering your thoughts.  How?

The only way is to master the practice of controlling them.  My own practice is zazen meditation, but that’s only one among many that can work.

What’s really strange about psychological discomforts is that many people attach to them!  Instead of committing themselves to doing what it takes to free themselves, they latch onto them as excuses for living poorly.  It’s the victim mentality that prevents living better.

For example, it’s thinking that you can’t live well because your mother was an alcoholic, or because your uncle sexually molested you when you were 10, or because you aren’t good-looking enough, or because your brain won’t work well if you stopped smoking or ingesting alcohol or other drugs.  Then you set up your life so that it won’t challenge you.  It’s all stupid, foolish, counter-productive, and unnecessary.

Since nobody is perfect, we all have factors that work against living well.  So?

Do whatever it takes to work through them-or forever be enslaved.  Stop making excuses for yourself and take control of your thoughts-or give up the dream of ever realizing your true nature.

Many people place too high a value on creativity.

There’s no doubt that it’s good to be original (inventive) in many domains.  The qualification ‘in many domains’ is necessary, because it is not good at all in some domains, for example, in inventing new ways to kill people.

However, when we think about being original, we often seem to ignore two considerations.  The first is ordinary; the second is extraordinary.

The ordinary consideration is, when we are thinking of contributions, it’s as important (i) to destroy what is bad and (ii) to preserve what is valuable as it is (iii) to invent what is original.

For example, (i) we have inherited from our predecessors some terrible tendencies such as the habits of being genocidal killers and thoughtless polluters.  Are you able to think of any example of inventing something wholly original that would be as valuable a contribution to humankind and the state of other sentient beings and the earth itself as reducing or eliminating those two tendencies?

(ii)  If you value the profession of teaching, then you value the preservation of that which is valuable.  Teachers don’t have to be original to make monumental contributions.

The extraordinary consideration is that there’s nothing to gain in order to live well.  Wisdom does not require doing anything creative or original.

In my view, and in the view of the followers of Master Gotama (The Buddha), what is critical is “realizing” one’s true nature.  Neither that nature nor realizing it involves doing anything original; instead, it’s a matter of uncovering what is already there.

What’s more important than living well?  What would be better to be than to be wise?  

The proper work of a lifetime is achieving wisdom.

Since creativity is not required for wisdom, pursuing it can be a distraction.  Since it’s unnecessary for living well, it’s foolish to put too high a value on it.

If you had an unfettered mind, what would that be like?

It would be to have a mind that “does not stop at one thing even for a bit” [Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind (N.Y.:  Kodansha, 2002; W. S. Wilson, tr.).].  What, though, does that mean?

This is a descriptive phrase that is initially confusing and difficult to understand.

It’s a bit like the phrase ‘straight back.’  Initially, you might suppose that that phrase is used to refer to a backbone that is straight like a ruler.  If you lie on the floor and pull the bottoms of your feet near your buttocks with your knees in the air, you can press down your lower back until it is flat against the floor.  Is that having a straight back?

No!  That’s actually having a rounded back!

To experience a straight back, relax and push your legs out so they are flat on the floor.  You will notice that your lumbar spine is a few inches off the floor, which is its natural position.  Notice that a sitting baby has a back like that.  So the phrase “straight back” actually means having a concave back in which your stomach is naturally pushed forward so that your spine is naturally in its strongest position.

Takuan (1573-1645) was a famous Zen monk and master who wanted to teach others about right mind, which he described as “a state of No-Mind-No-Thought” [p. 35].  That is an unfettered mind.  What sense does that make?  How can there be a state of mind that is a state of no mind?  That’s confusing.

He claims that the concept of affliction in practicing the Way is the state in which the mind is stopped or stuck.  What prevents flow?  What stops mind?

Thoughts.

For a mind to be taken by thoughts is incorrect.  To put the mind in a place in incorrect.  To have the mind congeal somewhere is incorrect.  To stop the mind from functioning freely is incorrect.

What is correct is to “leave aside thoughts and discriminations” [p. 46].  To put the mind nowhere is correct, because then “it will be everywhere.”  To be without thought is correct.  That is an unfettered mind.

This means to let go of (incessant) conceptualizing.  Why?  Two points together suffice for an explanation.

First, since a concept is a principle of classification, to think conceptually, to make judgments, is to separate (divide, sort, discriminate, classify).  For example, anyone with the concept of lion can separate objects into lions and non-lions; to use that concept affirmatively about an individual is to judge that this object is a lion and, so, different (separated) from all non-lions.

Second, separation causes suffering.  If you miss your dead grandfather or the lover who dumped you or the energy you had as a child, you are afflicted (suffering, hurting, dissatisfied).

If so, the more you stop thinking conceptually, the less afflicted you will be.  “If one thinks, he will be taken by his thoughts” [p. 45].  To be taken by thought is to be afflicted (fettered, bound, hijacked).  To reduce affliction, reduce conceptualizing.

“Completely forget about the mind and you will do all things well” [p. 55].

This argument is coherent.  Is it sound?  To find out, test it for yourself.  How?

Practice.  Disciplined practice.  “The effort not to stop the mind in just one place-this is discipline” [p. 47].

If so, the disciplined practice of zen is one way to free yourself from the bondage of your thoughts and let your life flow.  Since it is impossible to think your way to an unfettered mind, mastering some kind of meditation is the only way to experience it.

Would it be worth it?  All the sages say so.  There’s only one way to find out for yourself.

What is good friendship?  What’s its importance?

Those who, like me, are attempting to follow in the footsteps of Master Gotama may wonder about the connection between working to remove our own attachments and relating to another person.  What’s the relation between seeking ultimate freedom and good companionship?

Today I happened to read a relevant passage from the “Samyutta Nikaya” from the Pali Canon in which Master Gotama startles his loyal discipline Ananda by disputing Ananda’s comment that good friendship is half of the spiritual life; rather, he says, it is the entire spiritual life!

I take him to mean what I would put this way:  to befriend someone is to love that person.  To love someone is to act in such as way as to promote what is best for the beloved.  (By way of contrast, love is not a feeling. I use ‘[to] love’ as a verb, not as a noun.)

What is best for someone?  Opinions, of course, differ.

I believe that the best life is to adopt, cultivate, and master the Noble Eightfold Path [right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration].  If so, for you to have a good comrade would be for you to have someone in your life who encourages you to adopt, cultivate, and master the Noble Eightfold Path.

(If that’s not the best kind of life, call the best kind of life “X.”  If so, for you to have a good comrade would be for you to have someone in your life who encourages you to master X.)

Do you have one?  Perhaps, or perhaps not.  If you don’t, don’t despair.  Why?

Because, as Master Gotama points out to Ananda, you may rely on him to befriend you.

He says, “by relying upon me as a good friend, Ananda, beings subject to birth are freed from birth; beings subject to aging are freed from aging; beings subject to death are freed from death; beings subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair are freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair” [Bhikkhu Bodhi, tr.].

If you don’t already and would like to have Master Gotama as your good friend, why not?  If you learn how to practice as he recommends and begin practicing, you will soon experience your troubles beginning to drop away.

It’s fine to doubt that, but please, for your own sake, don’t be so attached to your own opinions that you fail to test for yourself.  If you suffer from loneliness, if you don’t have a good friend, you are in for the joy of your life!

Do you understand how to hug well?

Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of how, when he was a young Vietnamese monk, on his first trip to America a woman came up and hugged him.  He was quite taken aback.  Not knowing how to respond, he just stood there.  Reflecting on it later, he decided that it wasn’t such an unseemly custom after all.  In fact, he composed a “gatha” about how to do it well.

Until the first century C.E. or so, followers of The Buddha composed and transmitted “literature” orally.  Not surprisingly, the Pali canon contains many different kinds of mnemonic devices.

A  gatha was originally a section of a text that was composed in verse meters (as opposed to nonmetrical prose).  They helped facilitate memorization.

Today, gathas may be just prose sayings that help one to pay attention, to be more mindful of the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh (in “Present Moment Wonderful Moment”) provides a gatha that teaches us how to hug more effectively.  It’s worth remembering and using.  An effective hug is a mindful hug; an ineffective hug is a distracted hug.

Imagine that a girl comes into your presence.  You know her; perhaps she is your daughter or a niece.  If you are elsewhere, if you are worried about your checkbook balance or busy doing the dishes or otherwise distracted, is she real for you?  Well, she’s there and she’s not there.

If you want her to be real, pay attention to her.  Don’t dismiss her with some words or just give her a pat on the head or a quick perfunctory hug.  If you want to embrace her, hug her well.

As you take her in your arms and breathe in, think or say, “I am so happy to hug this child.”  As you breathe out, think or say, “I know she is real and alive in my arms.”

Why not do the same with your spouse or your friend?  Why not teach them the gatha?

By paying attention to your breathing, you are bringing yourself back to the present moment.  You are reuniting what you are doing (hugging) with what you are thinking about, thus overcoming separation.  Because separation is the source of being ill at ease, this is very important.

Instead of being like a ghost, the child will be real to you—and, if she is paying attention to hugging you, you will be real to her.

As you continue to hold her and continue to breathe, you will become more and more aware of how precious she is.

That’s how to hug someone well.  Why not use it with, minimally, all your loved ones?