Many people believe that consciousness (thinking power is called brain consciousness) is uniquely human. The French philosopher René Descartes proposed the philosophy of “I think, therefore I am”, but if that is the case then you don’t exist because when you were a baby, you couldn’t think. So that idea is wrong.
Animals also don’t think, yet they still exist: it’s not just about thinking.
So how do animals and babies operate? With their subconsciousness: they feel directly. Sometimes feeling comes first and thinking comes later.
What about love? Some people believe it is attraction from physical desire or emotion, but true love comes from understanding. It has to have a much deeper connection because if you can’t understand yourself, then you can’t love yourself, and you can’t understand something in someone else that you can’t understand in yourself. So if you can’t understand yourself, you can’t love yourself, and you can’t love other people. It’s just two people in attraction, deluding themselves.
In that situation, thinking power comes later because before that it was all subconsciousness: directly feeling something that you can’t explain. When I ask students “How do you feel about it?” sometimes they reply “I don’t know.” Surely you have some feeling, try! When you have examined and explained your feelings, you are more aware of them; your thinking power is involved. You can use that power to analyse their feelings.
When someone dies, you feel sad. For everyone it is a slightly different feeling, but the feeling lasts for everyone because you don’t use thinking power to analyse it. The feelings control you. So come to philosophy class! Learn to clear away your blindness, learn to see from more angles, and start with observing yourself. Raise your subconsciousness into your brain consciousness.
When you’re angry you say “Yeah, let’s go and smash something!” That’s brain consciousness supporting subconsciousness. Your subconsciousness are leading, but when your brain consciousness calms down and observes from many angles, it becomes stronger and you can control your negative feeling.
When you see the colour blue: everyone recognises the colour blue, but that sensation is not anyone’s, it’s not sitting out there, it’s actually inside you. Each sensation is in each person, so truly the blue sensation is inside you, the information of the whole universe is inside of you. You wake up your inner universe. The outer universe is to help you wake up your inner universe.
This mat I’m sitting on is not blue. Blue is actually the only colour not in the mat: it’s the colour of the light that gets reflected into your eyes. Light is actually dark. Light only looks bright when it touches and reflects off something. If you turn light off, there is no colour. So all material things have no colour; this is an illusion world.
We are fooled by our senses. They are tricks of tricks. Since you know you are lost in the trick of life and you take everything too heavily, we have to find a wisdom that makes everything lighter, more joyful and easier. We have to find a way to make everything more peaceful for you and for others.
What are your suggestions to make inner peace? What are the best suggestions from you all?
- Accept all the good, refuse all the bad
- Hold nothing
- Learn philosophy
- Freedom
- Enjoy the present
- Harmony
- The body is a temple
- Patience
- Wisdom
If you want to develop your peace creating ability, all the above are about thinking positively, which doesn’t work. It’s like a mirror, you have to clean off all the dust – you refuse the negative and peace will appear.
Searching for the positive is stressful. Just say no to whatever is not peace, what is negative: then you will find freedom. If you search for freedom, you will not find it. When you use the power to say no or refuse to follow, that’s where the peace creating power comes from.
The wisdom of philosophy is to teach you to say no to the negative. Refuse bad character, carelessness, focusing on the negative. When you enjoy dancing, you are not looking for pleasure; the dancing is the pleasure!
From a talk on 25 September 2011.
