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Flying Monks and River Rocks
Towards the middle of his talk, Ricard describes cognition as a mirror. While it
can reflect emotions such as anger and happiness, consciousness is not, in itself,
tainted by those emotions. So the state of being of consciousness is simply to be
aware--it's our ability to be cognitive.
He then suggests two ways we can use our understanding of consciousness to
battle negative emotions. The first is to find a specific antidote. If we feel anger,
we may think of something that makes us calm or happy. Because consciousness
can only reflect one emotion at a time (according to Ricard), changing our
focus—finding the antidote to a negative emotion--can change our state of
consciousness.
And that’s not all! As we all know from reading Freud, we tend to obsess with
order and reputation. So when we are jealous, for example, our minds return,
over and over again, to this jealous emotion, reinforcing both the emotion itself
and our tendency to seek it out. So what if, instead of focusing in on the specific
moment or cause of our jealousy, we turn our mind to the examination of
jealousy in general? What is it? What purpose does it serve? Perhaps. Like that
cloud of anger Ricard describes in his talk, if we look at our emotion from the
outside, it will seem rather small, something that dissolves away as soon as we
observe it.
Now we have two solid techniques to bring ourselves towards a state of wellbeing.
Whoa! We gotta try this out!
So...at some point this weekend when you have stress, or you are angry, or sad,
or disappointed, or even (heaven forefend!) mean, please try the following.
Pull a Siddhartha (yes, I have not forgotten him) and look out to the world for
beauty. Remember, our Siddhartha tells Govinda that it is in the love and
veneration of things rather than in thought and words, that we may understand
eternity (Siddhartha 145-7). So, whether you are on campus or at home, focus
(that means push time and space away from your cognitive mirror) on a
tangible, lovely thing. Look at a beautiful tree. Watch a squirrel run across the
yard. Find beauty in the symmetry of the bricks of a building or in a small red
leaf on a cracked cement path. Look hard, focus outwardly and see the wonder
of the ordinary things of this world. After all, that ordinary thing is not only tree
or a squirrel, a brick or a leaf, but because it has ”also long been everything and
always is everything” (Siddhartha 145).
Now, do you feel better? Please write an informal reflection about your
experience and bring it in on Monday/Tuesday. All I need is three small
paragraphs describing of the negative emotion, the steps you took to replace
that negative by focusing outward, and, of course, the end result (did you
become calm, happy, serene, or, uh, not.
These aren't going to be graded, but I would like to see how our first attempts at
changing the mind have worked. By the way, if you want to add drawings,
poems, fall leaves, or photographs to your assignment, please do so. (Scroll
down for nice, happy photo.)