Читать книгу Making Your Wisdom Come Alive - Michael PhD Gluckman - Страница 19

Now, as promised, I will give an example from my own life to illustrate the workings of this meditation. How can I see through the thought patterns that just seem to be me? In this first example, I just took my thoughts to be true. On the first day of math class my teacher was going over many theorems and proofs and my first thought was, “How can I ever understand what she is talking about? I can’t do math.”

Then in an instant I noticed that ‘I can’t’ was just a thought. I still didn’t know if I could do math or not. So without believing in the thought, ‘I can’t,’ and without trying to counter it, I just left an open space to find out. “I’ll see,” I said to myself.

If I attempted to replace ‘I can’t,’ with the thought ‘I can,’ I would just have created an internal battle that would take lots of energy. Who knows if the ‘I can’t,’ or, ‘I can,’ would have won. As it turned out I studied the theorems closely and was able to understand them.

But I know even good students who suffer through school because of this little idea, ‘I can’t.’ And even worse I have known people who failed in their attempts to meditate just because of this one thought pattern.

So, in order to step free of the thought, ‘I can’t,’ you just recognize that when you see this thought you are intrinsically free of it. That means that you are the one who sees the thought, not the one bound by its contents. I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t replace it with better thoughts, or attempt to breathe or chant to get rid of it. That is the beauty of the path of Self-Knowledge.

Now lets look at the guises: ‘I can’t’ is a definition of myself; this is just the way I am, the one who can’t do it. And what is my definition of the world? The world is a tough place, and specifically math is too tough for me. And finally the definition of a mind that can’t do math.

In this case I saw the thought and how it had the potential to control my life. Then I saw the guises that surrounded the thought. Sometimes, as in the next section, I see the guises first and then the patterns became clear.

If you ever have the thought, “Because I think it, it must be true,” now is the time to notice that your thoughts may or may not be true. In either case though, one thing is certain: your thoughts don’t define you. That’s because you are the awareness that sees the thoughts. Later you will see that as awareness you are much greater than anything that your thoughts can define.

So without fighting with your thoughts, you can tear out the root of the thought, ‘I can’t.’ Just see that it doesn’t apply to you, to the nature of the world, or to your mind. That will knockout its support. Then you won’t care about this thought at all. The thought, ‘I can’t,’ can come and go as it wants. That’s because it lost its power to bind you in limitation, and to therefore cause suffering. When you recognize a thought as just a thought you take away its power.