From Concept to Reality

Old habit dies hard. Our habitual patterns form our personality and personality leads our life. But life is just a string of memories and happenings. Is it not? Without memory we lose the identity, then we lose our world. But what is our world?

Thought creates our world. All the value systems, cultural inputs, our built in personal inclinations, education, ideal, social influence, religions, ideologies, prejudice, good & bad, like & dislike, etc, become our habits and form the personality. These are the basic elements that create our own conceptual world. This is the sum of an individual, that we call 'I'. We cling to it and take it seriously.

We are living in this conceptual world but the hardships of daily life are very real things. The realities of survival, hunger, fear, anger, jealousy, lust, violence, greed etc, are parts of our life. No one can escape from these. They are so real. So what is reality?

Reality is subjective. You cannot describe the taste of orange juice unless you taste it. So to taste the reality we need to look within. With constant and deep observation of ourselves, we find that the emotional things like anger, greed, envy or violence, it can be reduced into mere physical sensations with different frequency of bodily vibrations. This sensation, it arises, stay for a while and goes off by itself. It is just a natural physical phenomenon operates by itself.

For example, when anger arises, by thinking and justifying anger, is to let the angry thought persists and continues. It turns into emotion and affects mind and body. When anger prolongs, head heated up, heart beat faster, breathing pattern changed, all these changes involved in physical and mental process. With identification, the anger becomes me. I am the anger. So the mind-body is inflicted with anger throughout the process because I take anger personally.

Rather than take this as a mere natural physical reaction to an angry thought that having its own life, we prolong it, identify and indulge with this thought. It turns into emotional problem, staying inside and has the potential to explode. Even before we react to take any physical or verbal action, we are already suffering physically and mentally. Yet, this negative mood or emotion may continue to hit us for hours or days as long as we cling to it. We are in a depressed state because we identify and indulge with anger.

If we can understand the process of how our mind and body work from concept to reality, it helps us to see things clearer. All suffering or happiness is a matter of manifestation of physical sensation, or the result of vibration within physical body. We see the reality of suffering or happiness can be reduced to a mere basic unit that vibrates within the body and manifests in term of physical sensation. With this understanding the so called anger will not bother us so much. Because it is just an idea until we allow it to stay long enough to turn into emotion. Then we give it the power or 'permission' to torture us, make us suffer.

Of course, to see anger, jealousy, greed or lust as a unit of vibration and sensation within body, we need a watchful mind. It means we need to look inward to find the answer and verify the reality for ourselves. The movement of interrelationship of mind-body process is unitary. When it happens, it is there, and already in the process, whether it is anger, jealousy or lust. The sensation is there. The movement is fast that we cannot stop it when it comes, also cannot force it to go away. To have peace, is to be able to observe and realize the fast changing mind-body states from arising of a simple thought, be it anger, lust or violence that activates the body, manifesting into physical sensations, then become emotional problem. To calm down the mind is to understand that the reality of peace is potentially there, with right condition, it arises. No one control it and it does not belong to us. It just happens.

To prolong the suffering is to continue thinking and indulge on it, then it will become emotional issue, like adding fuel to fire. To shorten the suffering is to understand that thought is sensation, the identification with this sensation is to give it a chance to continue. It also prolongs the suffering. This is not to cope out, escape or suppress the thought/sensation but to face it and understand it the moment it comes. Never suppress or escape, this will only strengthen it to come back again and again. Once we face it at that moment, the thought/sensation will turn into energy and dissolve within the mind-body process. By this way we are lessening its power and dissipates its energy.

By facing the thought, sensation or emotion, is to be aware of the whole mind-body process. This is an effective and efficient way to cut down mental suffering when negative thoughts arise. Peace is there, only when one can understand and see clearly, the mind-body interaction, without interfering. With this wisdom, then peace arises. One needs not to look or search for peace or happiness, it comes when there is no attachment, it also comes with wisdom.

With this understanding, we realize that we are merely the 'products' (emotional things) created by the movement of thought process. This means, what we called 'I am sad', 'I am angry', 'I am lustful', 'I am violent'; these are merely bodily sensations which vibrate all the time in relation to our thoughts. There is no 'I' doing that, it is just a natural mind-body process. It is there all the time.

Once we cling to a thought when it arises, be it sadness, anger or lust, by taking it personally, identifying with it, it becomes; 'I am sad'; 'I am angry'; or 'I am lustful', there is a 'I' operates in the process, then, that is the beginning of suffering.