Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even if it leads you off the well worn path.
Steve Jobs https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/connecting-the-dots.html
I guess what I do here... is connect dots? Connect dots between all the snippets of learning I come across from great mentors and teachers, from my life experience, from the poetry that spills out of me and from my own inner reflections.
So I am going to connect the dots between the video I seen with David Bohm and Krishnamutri , the videos I watched lately with Tara Brach, my reading of Radical Acceptance, as well as all the others I read recently including The Three Magic Words & A Complaint Free World, from all I learned from the teachings of Eckhart Tolle over the years, A Course in Miracles ( have to get onto the next ten lessons, don't I?) and The Tao Te Ching, and all the great dharma talks that were originally derived from Thich Nhat Hanh that I have encountered, especially this last one I listened to ( see below). This little quote, (supposedly but not for sure, from Lao Tzu)...connects all beautifully.
Watch your thoughts; they become your words;
watch your words, they become your actions;
watch your actions, they become your habits;
watch your habits, they become your character;
watch your character, that becomes your destiny.
Lao Tzu ?
It is truly all about the thinking isn't it? If we want to transform and change our lives or the world...we need to first begin by understanding what is happening in our minds...more specifically what we are thinking, watering and believing.
In a dharma talk from a practiced student of Thich Nhat Hanh, Thay Phap Dang...the same truths cited above in Lao Tzu's teaching... is offered in a beautiful Buddhist perspective. The teachings here center around the idea of needing to recognize our behaviours so we can trace them back to their roots for better understanding. We need to understand in order to sublimate the negative behaviours for positive and thus change the way we perceive, relate, feel and experience our emotions, and cement "belief" in our psyches.
Most of us are living on "auto pilot" going through Life directed by our habit minds, not really conscious of what we are doing and not experiencing Life in a full and healthy way. We do not see a problem so we do not see the solution...but there is a solution: transformation.
How do we Transform?
First step Notice what the Mind is Doing?
We need to notice, first of all, any 'unhealthy' or 'un beneficial' behavioural traits that are strong in us. Thay Phap Dang offers these for example of the many we can develop a tendency for: aversion, attachment, reactivity, domination/control, envy/jealousy, anger, doubt, destructiveness, negative thinking, sensuality/passion seeking, and judgment/criticism. These things do not serve us or the world. When they become firm in us they block the way to understanding our true positive nature and potential.
Once we see these traits n ourselves we recognize that they create our personality, our habitual pattern of living that we sometimes get so attached to, seeing ourselves as these separate and unique selves or egos. Ego is just an idea we have of self...an identification with our behaviours and our behaviours are both our actions and our thoughts.
Our behaviours , according to this teacher, is just habit energy which is comes from impulses ( a neural pathway) when latent energy is triggered and the mind consciousness now has new growth in it from seeds that were once stored in stored consciousness.
Those seeds that were once stored dormant in store consciousness have become the personality traits of aversion/attachment, reactivity, domination and control etc etc. By watering we allow the energy to be released ( and it is all just energy) and to grow/travel up through the mind, latent energy and along the neural pathway to become our impulses, then our habit energy which becomes our behaviour. Our personality is just our behaviours that we express to the world. It is not, however, who we truly are!
Second Step: Wisdom and Insight
We can practice transforming our behaviours that do not serve into behaviours that do by enlisting the help of wisdom or the "clear mind" which is like a "light saber" that can cut through the negative behaviour in a process of "looking deeply". We recognize and shine the light on that which we are thinking and doing that does not serve. This wisdom is a light of tranquility, calmness and concentration.
We can develop and enhance this wisdom and insight through a practice. The teacher in this video tells us that the practice includes taking refuge in a teacher or mentor; being sincerely and honestly open to share our vulnerability and our lack of knowing; detaching from body and mind's need for pleasure; maintaining virtue and learning the dharma well; by being energetic and diligent in our desire to diminish suffering in the world; by being mindful of how we outwardly express ourselves...making what we say count and avoiding rambling, complaining and pointless talking; and finally by being willing to look and see the human mind for everything it is by going inward.
Of course, this is just my summary of the video...more or less a regurgitation of what was said. Please watch it yourself if you want to have a better understanding of it.
My point is ...it all connects doesn't it...all this learning?
Anyway, all is well!
Plum Village ( July 24, 2016) Behaviour and Wisdom-Summer Retreat-2016- Thay Bhap Dang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HJhVCwIwME
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