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*1346576549* Practice not thinking
My wife was reading "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4094087001/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=247&creative=7399&creativeASIN= 4094087001&linkCode=as2&tag=nishiohirokaz-22">Practice Not Thinking</a>" was a pretty good book, contrary to what I expected from the title. Many of the task management and productivity-enhancing lifehacks that have been published so far are geared toward increasing stimulation of the brain. This eventually builds up as stress. Even if productivity increases temporarily, it will eventually run out of steam. Thinking about how to reduce stress is necessary to improve productivity.
When I have trouble concentrating, I often "add stimuli" such as listening to up-tempo music or ingesting caffeine, which, in my opinion, increases suffering (stress). If you want your mind to be at peace, it is better to pay attention to the sensations you are already feeling but ignoring, rather than adding strong stimuli. For example, concentrate on the sensation of your fingers touching the keyboard, or pay attention to your breathing. Calm your mind first before concentrating.
The mind unconsciously reacts and moves to external stimuli and so on. For example, when someone points out a problem with something you were doing, you get angry and bite back. After first acknowledging that human beings are such creatures, we should not spread our anger or suppress it, but rather look at it and say, "Ah, I am feeling anger right now," and let it pass. Anger is something created by our own mind.
In the end, I guess the battle against vexations is to recognize the vexations that rise up in me and to reason them away. For example, I want to look at Twitter while working (greed), and when I look at it, I feel anger at what is written (rage), and I end up writing an emotional opinion. I used to describe these use cases as "distracted" or "unproductive," but now I see that they can also be viewed as "not having a peaceful mind" or "being tormented by worries.
I was struck by the words that controlling one's mind is both the start and the goal of the Buddhist path. The first of the eight correct ways, or "right actions" of the Buddha Way, is "correct contemplation," which means to think about what one should think about and not think about what one should not think about. It was very interesting to see how various Buddhist terms were applied to concepts learned in other books and rules of thumb learned naturally.
As I read it, I remembered how much I liked Ataraxia and others.
>Ataraxia (rare: Ἀταραξία, "tranquility"; English: Ataraxia) is an ancient Greek technical term used by Pyrrhon and Epicurus to refer to a reirene mental state free from worry.
Maybe happiness for me is to be calm without suffering.
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Hatena Diary 2012-09-02
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/Hatena2012-09-02 using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.