Fascinating Articles on Self-Control

http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/09/how-to-improve-your-self-control.php

http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/03/self-control-instantly-replenished-by-self-affirmation.php

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-merest-thought-of-money-replenishes-self-control.php

http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/04/top-10-self-control-strategies.php

http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/03/how-to-increase-your-self-control-without-really-trying.php

Breathe

With this breath, I accept the truth.
With this breath, I let go of that which will go.
With this breath, I take hold of that which will be held.

道生一、一生二、二生三、三生萬物

A Bell Rings Through the Forest

As I watch the world change,
Clouds are born and dissipate,
Mountains grow and crumble away,
A bell rings,
Its reverberations cut through moments like a sharpened blade.
The clear forest air fills with solidity.

Strength?

I went with some friends to a Buddhist temple the other day.  They just came to look around, but I went with the intention of meditating.  It's a pretty magnificent temple, and I find that it's a little easier to clear my mind there.  While I was meditating, my friends continued to walk around, and I wondered, briefly, what they thought about my interest in meditation.  At that moment it struck me, although not for the first time, that meditation has deeply changed my life, and that there is as much to explore in the "world" of meditation as there is in the physical world that we traverse with our feet.

Lately I can tell that my mental world (mindscape?) is somewhat pocked by adverse thoughts.  In a sense, I feel that a new creature has come to life inside of me, or rather that some primitive, previously dormant creature has awakened.  Of course, the feelings themselves are not completely new, but I haven't felt that they were so strong or influential in a long time.  It is bizarre because I can sense that these thoughts are somehow able to manipulate other thoughts into supporting them.  It's as if I can view reality through my "normal" lens or this relatively new, reawakened one...and sometimes the reawakened lens can move itself into a position of primacy.

The challenge arises when I consider the question of what should be.  Should I resist these thoughts?  Should I embrace them?

Shunryu Suzuki:

"So whether or not you attain enlightenment, just to sit in zazen is enough.  When you try to attain enlightenment, then you have a big burden on your mind.  Your mind will not be clear enough to see thing as they are.  If you truly see things as they are, then you will see things as they should be.  On the one hand, we should attain enlightenment—that is how things should be.  But on the other hand, as long as we are physical beings, in reality it is pretty hard to attain enlightenment—that is how things actually are in this moment.  But if we start to sit, both sides of our nature will be brought up, and we will see things both as they are and as they should be.  In the emptiness of our original mind they are one, and there we find our perfect composure."

Part of me is tempted to say that these adverse thoughts don't really matter.  My external behavior will remain mostly the same no matter what.  But I think it is delusion if I tell myself that they don't matter.  While they may in truth be beyond wrong or right, my thoughts are what matter most in my life, and it is extremely important that I watch them and understand them.

_ / | \ _

sameness and difference are the same
difference and sameness are different