Non Self, Skandas, and Thoughts

Thursday 8:43 p.m.
In the dhammapada, the boy goes through the skandas, which are body,senses, perceptions, mental formations (including volitional impulses) and consciousnesses, the "heaps" of which we are composed. When you get to the mental formations i.e. thoughts, you might repeat these phrases: they are not mine; I do not own them; they are not my self.

These lying basturn thoughts!

You are supposed to take responsibility for your thoughts and how you think them.

The main differentiation between folk is surely what they're thinking, their thoughts.

In the Disbelieving Congregation, of course, we don't believe in thoughts.

Nothing exists in the manner of its appearance, including thoughts.

But we have to have them and think them just like every other bugger.

There must be amazing numbers of causes and conditions to support just one thought. Most thoughts aren't worth thinking. Until we perfect our minds (and that might take some time!), we're going to have to put up with thoughts which are disagreeable and unpleasant. I do not like having angry or anxious thoughts and I've been focusing my imperfect mind and developing mental formations surrounding stuff recently that is not a help at all. Anxious or angry thoughts can arise due to tiredness, at least as one of the things conditioning them. Everybody gets tired. Almost everybody has crap frames for thoughts to develope in at some time in the day.

The photies of the trees were taken on the way to get my bus pass. The photies of Kirk Brae, which I have sometimes cycled up, were taken from the top of the bus.

When I went on the bus, I put my bus pass on the wee monitoring thing and the info about the operating dates flashed up. I thought I saw a 9. Disconcerting thoughts arose about the validity of the pass for a month if it said the 9th of December. On the way back, I saw the 9 flash up again.

I'm trying to meditate on top of the bus, but my peace of mind was disturbed by thoughts concerning the invalidity of the bus pass. I counted the dates. It was a fortnight till the 9th of December. I'd paid with my cash card for a month. I was going to have to go back to the Ridacard shop and get this sorted out. Longer on the bus. I'd thrown away the receipts. I'd have to hit a cash line first and get a mini-statement to show that the basturns had taken £45 off me for a fortnight of bus travel instead of giving me a month on the pass. Don't get annoyed. Keep cool. Can I speak to your supervisor, please? I checked the bus pass on the wee monitoring thing the driver has before I got off to complain. It said 23/12/09. Bugger all wrong with the bus pass after all!

Stupid, lying basturn thoughts full of anger and anxiety.

On the bright side someone sent me a link to an article about this joe testing some monks for gamma waves and neuro-plasticity. It said they were experts having done between 10,000 and 50,000 hours meditating. If you do the sums, you can do 10,000 hours by doing four hours a day for eight years. It would take you at least that long to learn anything well, like how to play a guitar. 10,000 hours is really a minimum. 50,000 hours can be accomplished by doing two hours for forty years. Since I've been meditating for twenty four years, I must have done well over 10,000 and I'm still a stumblebum. Bunch of beginners really. My guru would have put in up to 1,176 hours during his seven weeks in the dark over the summer. Stuff like that plus maybe twelve years of solitary retreats and whatnot ... well, why don't they stick the plugs onto somebody like that? Probably because they (the juju masters!)can't be bothered, especially after yon Benson bloke wanted to stick rectal thermometers up the the last lot.

Of course, most folk don't meditate at all!! The evolutionary tails. But I won't say anything about flatheids tonight. No, I won't!