Ajahn Kovit Anekachai said that we can't hire someone else to observe our feelings, even if we have lots of money. And if we don't watch what is going on inside our minds, it won't be seen by anyone.
I used to ask my Vipassana teacher many questions, on various subjects. But his answers all boil down to one thing: that is to learn about ourselves.
I wonder how many people in this world can say, with absolute confidence, that they truly know themselves. And it's rather intriguing (or alarming!) that we are with ourselves all the time but we don't know much about it.
Regarding the spiritual path, the area that I need to work on is my unusually big ego. Amazingly, without trying to logically convince myself otherwise, I just need to observe how I feel, how I react to what is going on around me. The more I observe myself, the less highly I regard it. I mean, I see my nasty sides and my positive sides. But seeing my arrogance with my own eyes is a much more compelling evidence than being told as such. Like I can't give up my bad habits unless I see how harmful it can be.
I suppose the idea of the Vipassana practice is to take this self as a sample of a human being, in a sense that most ordinary people (as opposed to enlightened ones) have similar basic emotions, like love, hatred, anger, jealousy, greed, or being obsessed with something, such as thinking. And without awareness, we tend to respond with our instincts and suffer accordingly. Essentially, Buddhism is about how to get out of these endless ups and downs, being thrown into devils and angels.
Not only that I have seen how mean I can turn out to be, but I also observe that I can't really control what I experience ALL the time. For example, lately, I feel happy for no particular reason. I haven't gone fashion shopping for two months (the longest stretch of time that I ever deprive myself of my beloved activity). My love life is non-existence. My appearance, without makeups or accessories, is OK for someone approaching forty but it's nothing extraordinary. Yet, I feel fine.
I used to ask my Vipassana teacher many questions, on various subjects. But his answers all boil down to one thing: that is to learn about ourselves.
I wonder how many people in this world can say, with absolute confidence, that they truly know themselves. And it's rather intriguing (or alarming!) that we are with ourselves all the time but we don't know much about it.
Regarding the spiritual path, the area that I need to work on is my unusually big ego. Amazingly, without trying to logically convince myself otherwise, I just need to observe how I feel, how I react to what is going on around me. The more I observe myself, the less highly I regard it. I mean, I see my nasty sides and my positive sides. But seeing my arrogance with my own eyes is a much more compelling evidence than being told as such. Like I can't give up my bad habits unless I see how harmful it can be.
I suppose the idea of the Vipassana practice is to take this self as a sample of a human being, in a sense that most ordinary people (as opposed to enlightened ones) have similar basic emotions, like love, hatred, anger, jealousy, greed, or being obsessed with something, such as thinking. And without awareness, we tend to respond with our instincts and suffer accordingly. Essentially, Buddhism is about how to get out of these endless ups and downs, being thrown into devils and angels.
Not only that I have seen how mean I can turn out to be, but I also observe that I can't really control what I experience ALL the time. For example, lately, I feel happy for no particular reason. I haven't gone fashion shopping for two months (the longest stretch of time that I ever deprive myself of my beloved activity). My love life is non-existence. My appearance, without makeups or accessories, is OK for someone approaching forty but it's nothing extraordinary. Yet, I feel fine.
Comments