From Soul, to Self, to Annihilation of Self.16

Cont'd

Now that we understand a little what true freedom and liberation means, we need to understand something else: the ultimate source of all our unhappiness: our own thoughts. Ricard quotes Alain "When we are unhappy, we can't help thinking that certain images are armed with claws and stingers to torture us with".We sometimes get the feeling that our life is falling apart e.g. when our beloved (our parents, spouse, lover, children) or a close friend or a long time colleague dies, or is in a serious illness, or during a break up with our mate, in a financial or job crisis etc. There seems to be no way out at all. As Ricard says, sadness settles like a pall over the mind...Unable to imagine an end to our pain, we withdraw into ourselves and dread every coming moment." When we lack adequate inner resources to enable us to deal with suhka e.g. the joy of being alive, the conviction that we still got the ability to flourish despite all difficulties, an understanding of the ephemeral nature of all things, our happiness will be afflicted by distress.

According to Ricard, "great external upheavals" may not be what cause most distress to us. Thus depression and suicide rates drop dramatically during times of war and natural disasters often bring out the best in man: courage, solidarity, will to survive, altruism and mutual assistance. What tie knots in our breast that obstinately refuse to be unraveled and sorrow or sadness that refuse be consoled, that oppress us and cause us untold misery are often just "thoughts". Ricard says that "thoughts can be our best friends" but they can become our worst enemies when they make us feel that the entire world is against us, when every perception, every encounter and the very existence of the world become sources of torment. "It is our thoughts themselves that rise up as enemies. They stampede through our mind in droves, each one creating its own little drama of ever-increasing confusion. Nothing is right outside because nothing is right inside." Ricard says that the "knots are not tied in our chest by our unfaithful husband, our object of desire, our dishonest colleague, or our unjust accuser, but by our own mind. It is the result of mental constructs that, as they accumulate and solidify, give the illusion of being external and real." Its ultimate source is our "self", our "ego" or in traditional parlance, our "soul". "What provides the raw material for that knot and allows it to form within us is an exacerbated sense of self-importance" : " anything that does not respond to the self's demands becomes a disturbance, a threat or an insult." According to Andew Solomon, "In depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present qua present no longer exists at all" (The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression 2001). According to a great Buddhist master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche: "these trains of thought and states of mind are constantly changing, like the shapes of clouds in the wind, but we attach great importance to them. An old man watching children at play knows very well that their games are of little consequence. He feels neither elated nor upset at what happens in their game, while the children take it all very seriously. We are just exactly them."  (The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones 1993)

Unless we acknowledge and understand the true causes of human misery, of our dukkha (suffering) and of our sukha (happiness), "our well-being is at the mercy of the storm." We can "respond to heartbreaks by trying to forget them distracting ourselves, moving away, going on a trip and so on, but these are merely plaster casts on a wooden leg." Ricard quotes Nicolas Boileau: "In vain he flees his troubles on a horse--They shake the saddle and see him on his course" (Epitre V à Guilleragues 1995)

Knowing now that the main cause of our suffering is our natural mental
habit and tendencies to make distinctions in a dualistic fashion, we
must now learn how to avoid suffering and increase the chances of our
happiness. Ricard asks, "How can we prevent the perpetual re-ermergence
of disturbing thoughts?" He says, "If we resign ourselves to being the
perpetual victims of our thoughts, we are like dogs who run after every
stick thrown for them. Closely identifying with every thought, we follow
it and reinforce it with boundless emotional entanglements" Obviously
we do not want to be in that kind of state. Is there anything we can do?
Most certainly yes. And Ricard teaches us how.

And he asks our questions for us: how do we go about making peace with our emotions?  He starts at
the beginning. He advises us "first, we have to focus our mind on the raw
power of inner suffering.Instead of avoiding it or burying it away in some dark corner of our
mind, we should make it the object of our meditation, without ruminating
over the events that caused the pain or reviewing every freeze-frame
from the movie of our life.When a painful emotion strikes us, the most
urgent thing is to look at it head-on and to identify he immediate
thoughts that triggered and are fanning it. Then by fixing our inner
gaze on the emotion itself, we can gradually dissolve it like snow in
sunshine". According to his experience, once the strength of the emotion has been sapped, the causes that trigger it will seem less tragic and we will have won ourselves the chance to break free from the vicious circle of negative thoughts."

(to be cont'd)