Oakville Zen Meditation
Ignorance with desire/attachment/clinging (I want), dislike/hatred (I don’t want) is one of the so-called 3 poisons causing our negativities called suffering.
There is a difference between ignorance in the common sense, and its Zen Buddhist meaning.
In the Zen Buddhist sense of the word, rather than a general lack of knowledge, ignorance means our illusions, delusions, misunderstandings, and unawareness of the factual concrete realities of Self and life in general. Ignorance is created by our mind-made permanent fictional daydreaming state involving self, others, and life in general .
It is our default thinking mode composing the majority of our 80 to 120 thousand thoughts/day as defined by fMRI, and therefore a major source of potential unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and suffering.
Today I will speak about the false sense of self as a potential source of suffering
1 False sense of self:
We wrongly believe that each of us is a separated, self-sustained, independent, and indispensable living being making us different from all other living beings. Apart from being genetically different, such a perceived fictional self does not exist. This is why, in Zen, we call it the “no-self.”
Zen Buddhism teaches that this misunderstanding of self that is - I am a separate being from others - is causing our suffering, struggle, and many other negative feelings because we perceive others differently from self.
While facing the same situations with others, we can have dramatically different feelings / behaviors depending on our sense of difference and separation from them.Therefore, setting ourselves apart from others, and being stuck in our ego-driven mindset could lead to suffering, hate, intolerance, and violence in the world.
As Thich Nhat Hanh used to repeat:” We are all interconnected, and cannot survive physically, and emotionally as a separate, independent entity, We are transient interbeings”.
On the contrary, feeling interconnected will enhance understanding, tolerance, and even compassion among us which is not the case presently .
In conclusion:
We don’t have to surf the Internet to read about fake news and virtual reality. Our mind is a great generator of fake news and the virtual world all the time. Zen Is calling us “ daysleep walker” . Just watch your thoughts and emotions on a regular basis and ask yourself these 2 questions:
“ How do my current thoughts reflect genuine concrete realities of life or are they just serial blips issued from my mind-made fictional daydreaming world?
“ Does this thought have / will have a positive or detrimental impact on my serenity”, and on others.?
Next week , we will dissect other sources of suffering such as our mind-made fictional world and fake news.
