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from Hatena2012-09-02

  • My wife was reading “The Practice of Not Thinking,” which, contrary to what I expected from the title, is a pretty good book.
    • Many of the task management and productivity-enhancing lifehacks that have been used so far are geared toward increasing stimulation of the brain.
    • It ends up piling up as stress.
    • Even if productivity increases temporarily, it will eventually run out of steam.
    • Thinking about how to reduce stress is necessary for productivity.StressFree
  • When I have trouble concentrating, I often “add stimulation” such as listening to up-tempo music or ingesting caffeine.
    • But this, in my opinion, is increasing suffering (stress).
    • If we want our minds to be at peace, it is better to pay attention to the sensations we are already feeling but ignoring instead of adding strong stimuli.
    • For example, concentrate on the sensation of your fingers touching the keyboard, or pay attention to your breathing.
    • Calm the mind first before concentrating.
  • The mind unconsciously reacts and moves to external stimuli and other factors.
    • For example, when someone pointed out a problem with something I was doing, I would get angry and bite them.
    • First of all, we should acknowledge that human beings are such creatures, and then, instead of spreading our anger or suppressing it, we should look at it and say, “Oh, I am feeling anger right now.Anger Management
    • Anger is only created by one’s own mind.
  • In the end, the battle against vexations is to recognize that they boil up inside you and to reason them away.
    • For example, when I am working, I want to look at Twitter (greed), and when I look at it, I get angry at what is written (rage), and I end up writing emotional opinions.
    • I used to describe these use cases as “distracted” or “not productive,” but now I can see how they can also be viewed as “not at peace” or “tormented by troubles.
  • It was eye-opening to hear that controlling one’s mind is the start and goal of the Buddhist path.
    • One of the first of the eight “right actions” of Buddhism is correct contemplation, which means “thinking what one should think and not what one should not think,” or something like that.
    • When you accumulate things without organizing them, you spread “blindness” that you don’t understand correctly, and even if you pretend you’re not thinking about it, you’re still stressed, and so on.
    • It is very interesting to see how various Buddhist terms are applied to concepts learned in other books and rules of thumb learned naturally.
  • As I read, I remembered how much I liked ataraxia and others.
    • Ataraxia is an ancient Greek technical term used by Pyrrhon and Epicurus to refer to a state of reirendus, a state of mind free from worry.

    • Maybe happiness for me is to be calm without suffering.

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