My mental world is populated with all sorts of things that I will call thoughts: thoughts about people, quandaries, histories, plans, fears, anticipations, products, body, food, work, family, trivia, geography, biology and building materials.
These thoughts are a barrier to my Buddha nature.
I am learning to let these thoughts go, by observing them and quietly watching them move through my mental skies like clouds.
It humbles me to think that people are both buddha and also a seething bowl of squirming thoughts and desires like my thought world is. Six billion people. And that's just people. But animals other than humans are less cognitively-developed (if developed is the right word) as humans, and I suspect it is this self-awareness and development that is our both our glory and our point of divergence from peace.
I have had thoughts of bicameralism in my head since Dr. Tory Hoff taught me in university about Julian Jaynes' book 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'.
I see Vipassana meditation as being an antidote to this breakdown and an effective method to incorporate elements of the unconscious into the superego and then back a step into the ego. Introspection, consciousness, self-awareness.
Thich Nhat Hanh spoke to my heart in 1992 when I read his book 'Peace Is Every Step: the Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life'.
I don't have that book anymore, I gave it to a visitor from New Mexico who said in return I was welcome to drop by any time.
Today I am going to read a little.
.JPG)
