The Zen Diarist

Author website of Andrew Marshall

Archives

Categories

How’s your Monster Mash?

by Leave a Comment

Our biggest and best creation of all is a true monster. Our most successful masterpiece is a mash-up of characteristics that is at the root of all our problems. We may think it is our friend but our ego is a disaster area and is bad, very bad, for our inner well-being.Monster ego

The ego is not necessarily, or even usually, a matter of big-headedness but is the result of a strengthened sense of “I” which in turn leads to a strong sense of “me” and “mine”. So “I” have “my” property; “I” have “my” standards and reputation; “I” have “my” wants, feelings and emotions. That means “I” have things that can be lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed.

Because the “I” is based on an incorrect view, it is vulnerable. So “I” create a world around “me”, an imaginary world with imaginary boundaries and, like a child playing games, “I” am convinced it is all real. Until I doubt the reality of this world of mine, I go through life pursuing those things that will maintain and even strengthen my imaginary world. Things that threaten my world cause me fear or even anger; when things are lost, I bear disappointment and pain.

But the ego cannot let up and cannot admit failure. It continually builds up new pictures, new desires that, when fulfilled, seem to make everything all right – for a while. Round and round we all go. And it does go on – on and on – until something within us begins to dawn: Uncle Ego isn’t such a good guy. The games he has us playing aren’t making us happy after all.

If we look at the hardship and suffering in the world, with a little reflection we can see that most of it stems from the actions, words and omissions of egos. With crazed minds, people blow each other up because “my” way of life, or “my” religion is the right way and everyone else is wrong. Crime in society is motivated by what “I” want. Economies are out of balance, often resulting in poverty and subject to the whims of the stock markets. Even tensions in families and workplaces arise because of conflicting wants and expectations of many “I’s”. In short, it is the ego that gives rise to all our negative ways of thinking and negative emotions such as pride, anger, hatred, jealousy and greed. It really does have to go.

Adapted from The Great Little Book of Happiness

Related posts:

  1. It really is a matter of choice
  2. Forgiveness is doing yourself a favour
  3. Guilt – why it robs us of self-esteem
  4. Opening the heart, no surgery

Who are you, really?

by Leave a Comment

“Just who do you think you are?” That was a question my parents would often ask me when I was a boy – not from any philosophical standpoint – just as a remonstration for something said or done that in their view amounted to mischief or cheek! Little did I know then that I would spend my adult life exploring that question. So let me ask you, very politely, “Who do you think you are? Who are you?”

The normal response to that type of question would be something along the lines of, “I’m Jim (or Alice or whatever our name happens to be,” wouldn’t it? That might be followed with a description of our occupation, where we live or any of our personal details. The fact is, though, that answer is false. Conventionally we have to say it and will always say it because we have to communicate in a world that is full of conventions; but it isn’t right when we look at things in a deeper way than normal.

Does it matter?

You might say to me, “Does it really matter when all we’re looking at is happiness?” Well, yes it does matter because the most basic and fundamental threat to our own happiness is not who or what others think we are; it’s who we think we are. We all see ourselves as separate human beings – individual, self-contained units – and as long as we see ourselves in this way, there will be things in this world to protect ourselves from. We will see danger “out there” to our peace and happiness. So what do we do? We build barriers, barriers of protection in our minds (and often physical barriers, too). The trouble is that these barriers affect our thinking, our feelings and our behaviour. They stop us engaging fully with our world and with ourselves.

For our own sanity and well-being, we have to overcome this mental picture that creates a false sense of identity or reality. Keep reading these posts because we’ll be looking at how to do this.

Adapted from The Great Little Book of Happiness

Related posts:

  1. When tragedy strikes
  2. Blamelessness – part of letting go
  3. Inner peace and how to find it
  4. Tranquillity: the body, mind and emotions

When tragedy strikes

by Leave a Comment

The world is a marvellous teacher for producing things that shake us out of our stupor when we are taking things for granted and feeling comfortable with everything. Society is stirred up time and time again by catastrophic events, either natural or manmade, and the degree of shock is dependent to a great degree on the extent to which our own world appears to have been violated or threatened.

Day in, day out there are news reports of people in various parts of the world blowing other people up and committing all manner of atrocities. These tragedies are often only mentioned in passing – until one of them is close to home, in the country where we live, for instance.

Isn’t it much the same in our individual lives? People are suffering everywhere but if news comes to us that a close friend or relative has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, it can affect us deeply. And, if we are honest, our emotions are unsettled not only because of any compassion we may feel but also because the normality of our little world has changed. The one who has always been there may not be around for much longer; and the closer they are to us, the stronger the emotional reaction is likely to be.

There are millions of examples you and I could no doubt think of where we would say that change, vulnerability and impermanence threaten human happiness. But in fact we would be wrong. The reason we would be wrong is that the threat to our happiness doesn’t lie in the things that are going to change. The cause is the way we see those them, or rather our failure to see things as they really are.

The key to happiness is largely a matter of perception and we have to correct our traditional view of reality. Our natural desire for happiness can only be met by achieving a stable state of consciousness and we do that by re-training the mind. Sometimes it takes a major crisis to spur us into doing something about that – but maybe it is better not to wait for a big event and just get on with it now.

More on this in The Great Little Book of Happiness

Related posts:

  1. Change – good or bad?
  2. Blamelessness – part of letting go
  3. Inner peace and how to find it
  4. The happiest place to live?

Change – good or bad?

by Leave a Comment

Absolutely everything is in a perpetual state of changemTr5c7i

One of the basic causes of human unhappiness is our failure to see that. We depend so much on what we see in the outside world for our stability and well-being. Human nature makes us put up great resistance when change is threatened. Alternatively, we may look forward to things being different but our sense of pleasure doesn’t tend to last very long when they happen. The delight, or dread, is all in the anticipation, it seems.

How’s your everlasting youthfulness doing?

That comes very close to home when we think about our own body. As a child or a teenager, we may have wanted to look older and more grown up; but that looking forward didn’t last for very long once we reached adulthood, did it? Most of us don’t relish the idea of aging at all and we try to hang onto a youthful appearance, suppleness, fitness and so on for as long as we possibly can. I failed on that one some time ago! But seriously, there is in all of us, or nearly all of us, a dread of becoming old and frail, perhaps incontinent, losing teeth, suffering from failing hearing and eyesight and a weakening of mental faculties.

Our failure to accept

The reason for this dread is that we have failed to accept fully – and I mean really fully – the inevitability of change. We know that no matter how hard we try, this body of ours cannot be preserved indefinitely; but there is still a sneaking desire to prolong it as long as possible. Then instead of treating the body as an instrument that is ours to use for a limited length of time, we become dearly attached to it (or maybe abhor how it is now, which is equally as bad) and so our body becomes a source of unhappiness as it deteriorates. Not only does it become a source of unhappiness, it also becomes a source of fear because it is not only aging that results in death. Death can come at any time and some of the possible methods of its approach – cancer, terrorism, fire, drowning and so on – can lead to irrational fears which affect our thinking and our behaviour. Or we can avoid the thought of the reality of death altogether. That’s the more popular approach, of course.

If we can truly embrace our own impermanence, we can more easily accept the vulnerability of everybody and everything in our world to the forces of change.  We should look closely at ourselves to see whether we try to hang onto the “good” things – the ones that we see as essential to our happiness – and feel down when they start to slip away from us. In fact, as we shall see later, there is neither good nor bad but while we continue to label things that way, the seeds of unhappiness are lurking in our minds.

Adapted from The Great Little Book of Happiness

Related posts:

  1. Consciousness – your most important asset
  2. Opening the heart, no surgery
  3. Barriers to our natural joy
  4. Stress? Cut it in 5 minutes or less

The happiest place to live?

by Leave a Comment

happiness image

The news in the UK this week has included the results of a survey on people’s perception of happiness, based on where they live. It’s near to meaningless, of course. The sample was very small and any survey is a wonderful excuse to have a moan. But it makes good news fodder, I suppose.

The fact is, most people, most of the time, are not particularly happy. In our desire for lasting happiness, we tend to blame anything and everything from the weather to politicians for not providing it. We seem to have become a race of malcontents. It’s crazy, so why do we do it?

Master your own happiness

The master of our happiness and, just as importantly, the absence of it, isn’t our state of health or wealth, nor is it our employment or lack of it, our social status or anything else in our environment.  It certainly has nothing to do with our gadgets or apps, how many Facebook friends we have or, despite the survey, what part of the country we live in. These may be contributory factors but, deep down, we know that happiness has to come from inside. The controller of that is simply the mind.

Your mind is the controller of your happiness. It really is that simple. But our minds are very complex. It takes a great deal of effort to change the way we habitually think, feel and react. But we can and, when we do, we control the controller; we become the masters of our lives and of our own happiness.

Each one of us has, since birth, built up a complex and convoluted “library” of likes, dislikes, loves, hates, fears, judgments, prejudices and so on which trigger us into thinking, feeling, speaking and reacting in certain ways. Everything we see, hear, taste, touch, feel and think passes through and is affected by the contents of this library. In other words, we are conditioned or programmed.

Changing the view

To regain our self-mastery, we need to bring in some extra light and knowledge. We need to rebuild our conditioning. This doesn’t involve dismantling the old, book by book, shelf by shelf and brick by brick. We don’t have to analyse every thought and feeling that arises. But we do need to see things, and ourselves, in a different way. When we look at things differently, gradually our preconceptions about many things change. Negative emotions, those clouds that cast shadows across our faces, start to dissolve and appear far less often. We become happier, more contented. This is the value of Zen thinking.

This isn’t something that happens overnight. It is a journey that is often challenging; but there is also a great deal of fun and satisfaction to be had. The Great Little Book of Happiness is intended as a guide-book for the trip. It is a tool to check where you are and give some pointers to the right direction in which to go. All guide books are limited, though. The real journey and scenery you have to make and discover for yourself!

Adapted from The Great Little Book of Happiness

Next week: a fundamental cause of unhappiness.

Related posts:

  1. Blamelessness – part of letting go
  2. Why is happiness such a problem?
  3. It really is a matter of choice
  4. Guilt – why it robs us of self-esteem