The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now, what we are doing now.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how our thoughts often distract us from the present moment.
S. N. Goenka's quote warns against the tendency of the mind to wander into fantasies, memories, and future anxieties, leading us to miss out on our current experiences. It emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and being present, as our cravings and aversions can overshadow reality, causing us to overlook the significance of the 'now'.
In practice
During a meditation session, one can reflect on the nature of thoughts as described in this quote.
Every sensation shares the same characteristic: it arises and passes away, arises and passes away. It is this arising and passing that we have to experience through practice, not just accept as truth because Buddha said so, not just accept because intellectually it seems logical enough to us. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux, and learn not to react to it.
One learns the art of dying by learning the art of living: how to become master of the present moment.
Rather than converting people from one organised religion to another organised religion, we should try to convert people from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation and from cruelty to compassion.
Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.
There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.
If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.