What does the human mind look like, and why must it be abandoned
Close your eyes and imagine a cockroach.
Now, imagine that you're having dinner and suddenly discover a cockroach in your food.
What thoughts and emotions arise within you?
The thoughts and emotions that surface in that moment are the ones you need to let go
of.
Feelings of disgust and anger toward the Cockroach and thoughts that all cockroaches should be eradicated are likely to arise.
But what happens if you don't let go of these feelings?
You might start checking your food for cockroaches every time you eat, and this could become a habitual Behavior.
Even just seeing a picture of a cockroach might evoke feelings of disgust and stress.
From the cockroach's perspective, it simply entered your food in a random act of survival.
The cockroach ending up in your meal was a mere happenstance.
However, you cling to this incident and develop a hatred for cockroaches.
Who suffers the most from this hatred toward cockroaches?
It's you who suffers.
Ultimately, what makes you suffer most is the environment and conditions in which you live, where you capture experiences with your senses, forming countless thoughts and emotions in a single mental snapshot.
These snapshots include the images captured by your eyes, The Sounds recorded by your ears, the sensations felt by your skin, the tastes experienced by your mouth, and the smells detected by your nose
- Each containing a myriad of thoughts and emotions created at the speed of light.
Our meditation practice involves recalling and discarding each mental snapshot stored in your mind.
To discard a snapshot is to let go of the thoughts and emotions that were created by yourself at that moment
In other words, discarding the snapshot means discarding all the thoughts and emotions that were recorded in the mental video captured by your senses at that time.
Once you've discarded the video, along with all the associated thoughts and emotions about the cockroach in your meal, you will no longer have any feelings toward cockroaches.
You won't kill the cockroach out of hatred, but simply because it's a potential health hazard.
You'll focus on maintaining cleanliness to remove the environment where cockroaches can
live.
Every being acts in order to exist.
Creating thoughts and emotions of hatred and resentment towards other beings in the world, just to maintain your existence, is a foolish waste of energy.
Exist!
But know that hatred and resentment do not contribute to your healthy existence.
You must discard all thoughts that do not benefit you.
That is the only way to find happiness.
