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| "Just My imagination" by The Temptations |
We may have stepped in to the human realm from a previous human existence, or from a godly realm – the six heavens, both realms that are driven by desire, and to which we may traverse to at death.
It is a continuous process, a free interchange between realms, which is driven by the mind. We need to keep this in mind. This is samsara.
Sense cognition operates by providing an image to everything and everyone, and with a tag that describes it, a name - a designation, and appellation. We determine it all, from our knowledge. It is the nature of the human world, our world - one that we create for ourselves. It is no different in the godly realms in the heavens, except that our physical form does not support us in the heavens.
The self cannot be found anywhere if we look for it. Yet we have a sense of self. It seems to be suspended in our imagination, on tenterhooks, without which the self, falls.
What are these tenterhooks?
If we consider what disturbs our mind, we could, firstly, see objects that bother us which appear as forms - images in our mind. These may lead to bad feelings (as well as good feelings) - mental feelings – domanassa and somanassa (that lead to perceptions of dislike and like).
This thing that disturbs us, it could be something very current and real. Or it could be something, one of many things, that is in the back of our mind which is a source of concern to us. It maybe one of many and even one that may not be that very important but one that, nevertheless, keeps us reminded of it.
And, this thing becomes some sort of venture, one to which and to where the mind ventures. Since it gives a bad feeling we usually don’t want to go there. If it gives a good feeling we are always there, thinking about it at every moment.
We can, now and again, have perceptions of it, of the worst possible kind in the case of bad, of our ultimate destruction, the “what if” moments - if this happens this will happen to me, and that happens then that will happen to me, and so on.
And it will continue to feed feelings, which feelings will fuel further perceptions of doom. And then our mind will pick up things along the way running into various other related issues from the past, from memory, stored perceptions in memory, from experiences, from experiences of others, and so on.
This is mentation or the process of mental formation, which is a process within what is referred to as sankhara. These are manifestations, and manifestations, and yet more manifestations that recur, feeding of each other. To support all this we have a mind, which now jumps from one to another, but no where in particular.
If we are unable to arrest this mind, to tether or mind down to a sense of now, of here, of the present, of one-pointed concentration on the here and now, possess a mind without a master, it will become just a flow, a flow of thought, a stream that just rushes-by taking us, consuming us in it’s flow.
In this flow we can drift for hours, resulting in nothing, nothing practically useful. It can be quite deleterious, quite injurious physically. We could have aches and pains, stiffening of the back, the neck, heaviness in the shoulders and neck, and all types of ailments. We could have a lack of mindfulness, of forgetfulness or carelessness, of care-freeness.
If we are of strong mind we can muster our courage to overcome it. If we are weak and succumb to the flow, then that is when our ego switches on to a mode of self pity. We will ask our self - why is it happening to me, why me. We can then, begin to feel depressed. Rather than having a mind bent on overcoming this by strategizing we will have a mind which tries to console, console ourselves. And, we will become pensive and recede inwards, becoming unresponsive to our surroundings.
If we are strong at that moment and work towards overcoming it then we will see in us a spurt of activity as a result of strategizing and planning, trying to achieve tasks, trying to sort out our problem, something that we will strive to do in meditation, finding ways and means, skillful means (upaya) or expedient means.
And so, we become it, we are oblivious to what is happening to us. We are unaware of the power of this mind. This is the nature of the tenterhooks. It is a suspension, a suspension on nothing in particular, and a suspension made possible when we jump from one to another, just as a monkey would when on one branch and another. This is the world, our world. It is the nature of the mind, of the worldly being.
Now if we become momentarily unworldly, that is we acquire an awareness of our self-nature (mindfulness), which can be done by using the force of our mental stream - a certain mental stream that reveals the worldly nature of mind, then we will find, by examining very closely, that at any particular time, for instance a day, in an day, we live in various streams of consciousness, of thought. Our mind drifts in a certain stream until it is disturbed, only to enter another stream, and yet a another stream, all of it absolutely without mindfulness.
We live all of our lives perhaps with this, in this type of mind. Realization of this alone and the ability to realize that we are in a certain stream of mind at a given moment, the causes for which, usually, we are unable to find or analyze, is indeed a realization.
We suffer in these various mental streams. It is the suffering that arises out of ignorance. We have no control of our thoughts, our mind jumps from one to another, and we are oblivious as to why it happens. If we have a sense of awareness we can take steps to prevent such mental streams from taking us over.
And sometimes it may well be that, we think, we have realization. It is a false sense of realization, a manipulation of the mind though another stream of thought this time born out of a mind manipulated through the dhamma.
The dhamma in fact becomes a tool of manipulation for the ego mind. It is the same fooling around that happens when we kid ourselves into believing that we do good to others without any benefit to ourselves or we preach the dhamma so others may benefit by it. It is an act willed by the self in a stream of thought that masks the agent of self as its perpetrator.
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