20110730

More important than landing on the moon



Who can say which will be more important in the end: landing on the moon or understanding the human mind? said the Dalai Lama.

Indeed. Reading Mindfulness in Plain English enables me to realize how our mind works in a bizarre and tyrannical way. It is just like an unbridled horse, or a stream full of flotsam and jetsam. The sort of awareness taught by the book is no doubt useful in reminding us to be mindful of the present moment, but for an untrained mind like mine, it is so difficult to sustain. However hard I try to keep the awareness that the mind is loaded with patchy thoughts, soon enough a particularly powerful distraction will take over and any awareness I was having just a while ago will dissipate like smoke.

As the Dalai Lama suggested, understanding of the human mind is important. So is the ability to harness it.

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