Trivia

The vast majority of what you think is trivia, especially the subconscious dialogue that mostly drives how you act. At least one Buddhist teacher says he regards all of his thoughts as lies, which is different from being trivial, but I take his point to be at least in part that he does not take them very seriously.

This is why meditation is the mechanism for awakening in Buddhism. Or, my meditation practice is the only component of my life that explains why I keep noticing deeply buried thoughts about myself and my life that make me think, consciously, boy, I really need to stop thinking that.

Meditation exposes such negative, counterproductive thinking, and it does so gradually and with compassion. Realizing how you beat yourself up sub consciously is not much help if you then beat yourself up for beating yourself up. Your compassion for all beings needs to start with yourself. It is usually pretty clear when people don’t like themselves because they tend to treat other people badly. At the broadest level, one might say that this is just the human problem that the Buddha identified and explained how to let go of. We humans tend too often to treat each other badly because we are not happy with ourselves.

No surprise that the remedy for this malaise, or neurosis, as Chogyam Trungpa might say, is a consistent meditation practice.

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