Do we own our feelings?

Body and mind are impermanent, suffering and are out of our control.

We cannot stop the chattering monkey in our mind, but we can listen to him/her and let the chattering go.

As we know, our health also is impermanent, one day we are not able to do do the things we wish to do.

Here is was dying people mostly regretted on their deathbed;

She talked to old people who was dying in Australia and summed it up in five answers. Maybe the answers had been a bit different in another culture.

Number five shows that the fear of changes  may make us to put up a facade, and stay in old habits and patterns.
So the knowledge of the ever changing world can be of great value, o not get stuck.

Number three says that people regretted that they hadn't shown their feeling more often. I guess that means feeling of love, gratitude and compassion etc. I don't thing we are proud of our feelings of shame, hatred, jealousy and so on, Maybe many of us have been afraid of the word "no" though; to say no to demands from other people, to crazy suggestions, even from one self....
But I think its possible to say no in a friendly or neutral way.


Yesterday I visited a prison.
Not very rigorous guarded, though fence round it and security controls and so on.

A small house for six women.
Even though they may not have made heavy crimes, they probably regret some of the impulses they hadn't stopped before the crime.

Maybe some feelings had been too strong and had led to imbalanced acts.

Maybe they had acted in rage or in feelings of revenge.

So some feelings and thoughts may be best to give some space and some breath before we let them out.

 If we do some meditation we will be trained to look at our own feelings and thoughts.

If we have meditated a long time, we will even be familiar with the experiences of no-self and non-duality.
Feelings and moods can be inherited in us from parents or even from older generations.

If we admit that we cannot control our thoughts and feelings, that they live a life of their own, we can be compassionate with ourselves. And we may put some space around them.

And we may understand that its the same for other people, they can also be hunted by inherited thoughts and feelings. Often from a very young age, when we are  deeply dependent on others.
 

The Stanford experiment also shows that it is very easy to fall into a role.

I hope the guards at the prison I visited is more mature then in the experiment.

If we have no essence and even lack a moral compass, many of us can be quite cruel, or play our "role" too seriously....  










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cora Diamond on eating animals - with the help of Wittgenstein´s ideas

Image
Cora Diamond is a new name for me, even if she has worked as a professor in Philosophy in the states for a long time and is still  teaching at the university of Virginia, even she is over 80 years old. She has written a lot about Wittgenstein and that has helped her to express her view of the topic. Although she, like Wittgenstein,  has lived in a hut in Norway - and actually brought Tractatus with hes - she seems to be different and for sure more glad than W. Anyways, its W: s writings that interests her and especially his critics of metaphysics and ethics in philosophy. As it is said in Tractacus  : " Whereof one  cannot speak , thereof one must be silent." And of ethics philosophy should not speak - why? Is it like in Buddhism - its better to sit in silence and let know yourself, than to speculate about what will happen when we die? But for sure there ethical guidelines in Buddhism,  but the behaviors is often named skilful, not good (or bad). Another
Read more

I think, therefore I am NOT

Image
So Descartes was wrong. He said that he could doubt everything about himself except that he was thinking. That proved that he existed. The word "I" is the central point here. What does it mean? Perhaps we are sure that we know the answer. Is it the thoughts? In that case - where are you when you aren't thinking? Is it your job, your title? In that case - what happens if you loose your job or change job? Is it your house, your nation? Under my course to be a mindfulness instructor, the teacher, Ola Schenström, made us ask to each other; "Who are you?" After each answer the question was repeated by the questioner.We soon discovered that there were no end to the answers - or maybe an adequate end could be; "I don't know."Or maybe; "It seems I have no essence." Other thinkers have come to the same conclusions; Buddha, Sartre and more recently Damasio and Parfit. Sartre, for instance, has said that we are the sum of our actions. We ha
Read more

Wittgenstein and Buddha -buddies?

Image
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the famous philosopher, reflected in the posthumously published  book "Philosophical Investigations" about the picture above; Is it a hare or duck?  He meant that we make, or must make, a statement what it is. And I suppose he meant that we often or always has to interpret the world around us. But two different interpretations can both be right! Language and thoughts controls what we see.....   You can compare with the picture of a glass. Half empty or half empty?  Who decides? Yes, it's you... And whatever you say is right.  But you can be aware of what you think. That can say more of yourself than of the glass....  You can be aware of that you always do interpretations of things that happens.  If you have a pessimistic or a naive point of view, you can be aware of the view and your statements.  Buddha and Wittgenstein were both aware of that different persons uses different perspectives.  But Buddha spoke about the "right 
Read more