Emotion Reflects Condition

I went to a talk at the Satipatthana Meditation Centre on Saturday called:

"Modern approach to Buddhism: Aspect of mindfulness meditation"

The speaker was Sayagyi (teacher) U Htay Aung, and he is from Myanmar.
A very interesting talk relating science and Buddhism. Lots of food for thought!!

I’ve always been interested in the ‘no self’ aspect of Buddhism. The fact that if you can clear the mind and understand it so clearly through meditation is intriguing.

A baby's mind, it is suggested, has no sense of self, but as the child grows up the power of memory grows through the use of language. With the use of language the child learns about ‘I’. and therefore self awareness. As the memory increases with the use of ‘I’, ‘Mine’, ‘My’, ‘Me’, with such things as My toy, my food etc.

Through social conditioning and time this increases and grows stronger to a point where we see everything as a ‘mine’. My mother, my father, my car, my house.

This leads to attachments of physical things. Which leads onto ‘ego’. Why do become sad, happy, angry, etc? Because our sense of ‘I’ (ego) is compromised in some way by these attachments.

Control the ‘self’ control the mind!!!

This is a very interesting webpage extract:

Life is made up of an interrupted flow of life-packets (quantums of life). Each life packet contains a self which feels and acts and dies off within about 1/20th of a second. That is, about 20 different `selves,' feelings, acts come up within about 1 second - with a definite gap between each self.

Since the critical fusion frequency (the rate at which stimuli can be presented and still be perceived as separate stimuli) of the human memory is also about 20 per second, the memory projects and interprets as if there is a permanent self inside the body which acts and feels. Because of this ignorance of selflessness, emptiness and unsatisfactoriness, various volitional activities are done by the individuals. The root of volitional activity may be due to the illusion of a permanent self, greed or hatred.

Read the whole thing
http://www.lankalibrary.com/Bud/energy.htm

This reminds me of a statement made by John Searle in his book ‘Minds, Brains and Science’
“The idea of self awareness is an illusion caused by the brain”


“If there is any religion that would cope with modern science needs, it would be Buddhism” Albert Einstein