Making our experiences solid

snow_melting2More on naming our experiences, which we saw in the Sutta yesterday. It is good to pay attention to this spontaneous tendency, as it lies at the root of a lot of our everyday suffering:

When we look outward, we solidify the world by projecting onto it attributes that are in no way inherent to it. Looking inward we freeze the flow of consciousness when we conceive of an “I” enthroned between a past that no longer exists and a future that does not yet exist. We take it for granted that we see things as they are and rarely question that opinion. We spontaneously assign intrinsic qualities to things and people “thinking this is beautiful, that is ugly” without realizing that our mind superimposes these attributes upon what we perceive. We divide the world between “desirable” and “undesirable” and see independent entities in what is actually a network of ceaselessly changing relations.

Matthieu Ricard, Happiness

One thought on “Making our experiences solid

  1. This feels highly significant, considering that we are often our own harshest critic, and can sometimes be quite hard on ourselves. Need to lighten up.

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