The Magic of the Mind

Shoshin

The mind is magical & mystical in a 'nothing special' kind of way...

I give thanks to the Buddha for the thoughtless insight....

Do you find the mind magical and mystical ? Have you experienced its magic? Has it worked its magic on/for you ?

DairyLama

My mind is fantastic space filled with rubbish.

federica

My MInd used to always be like this:

Nowadays, I make Efforts to be like this:

What I'm striving for, is this.

Shoshin

@SpinyNorman said:
My mind is fantastic space filled with rubbish.

I hope you're recycling the recyclables ...

anataman

The magical nature of the mind is a garbage bag! - surely it is only if you if you regard it as a garbage bag

What would happen, however, if you started regarding it as a really magical thing?...

Shoshin

@anataman said:
The magical nature of the mind is a garbage bag! - surely it is only if you if you regard it as a garbage bag

What would happen, however, if you started regarding it as a really magical thing?...

"Abracadabra"

anataman

Yep - I can dig that video

It roughly encompasses my enquiry!

...\lol/...

Shoshin

@anataman said:
Yep - I can dig that video

It roughly encompasses my enquiry!

...\lol/...

A member of the magician's circle...But no "monkey" tricks

anataman

It> @Shoshin said:

A member of the magician's circle...But no "monkey" tricks

When you are houdhini - who needs 'monkey tricks'!

Shoshin

@anataman said:
It> Shoshin said:

I weed myself laughing @anataman (Well nearly)

Shoshin

Bodhidharma :
"The most essential method which includes all other methods is beholding the Mind.The Mind is the root from which all things grow.If you can understand the Mind, everything else is included" (Magic included)

It would seem that the deeper one explores the mind, the more magical & mystical it becomes...

I wonder if any members have made their own mind map of the mind ? (with the Dharma in mind)

pegembara

Did someone call the mind magical?

The young Sheng-yen was on a brief sabbatical from the military, visiting local Ch'an teachers when, while up late one night meditating, he found himself sitting near an older man, also a guest of the monastery, who impressed Sheng-yen with his steady and peaceful demeanor. Asking the elderly monk if he would answer a question or two, Sheng-yen proceeded to pour out his heart for two hours, giving voice to all of the questions that no one had been able to help him with during his many years of spiritual practice. And at the end of each question, the monk, whom Sheng-yen would later find out was actually a revered Ch'an master, would simply ask, "Is that all?" Finally, Sheng-yen had exhausted his litany of questions and, in a moment of confusion, hesitated, not knowing what to do. Bang! The monk struck the platform they were sitting on and roared, "Take all of your questions and put them down! Who has all of these questions?" The effect on Sheng-yen was immediate and profound. "In that instant all of my questions were gone," he writes. "The whole world had changed. My body ran with perspiration but felt extraordinarily light. The person I had been was laughable. I felt like I had dropped a thousand-pound burden." The words of the Buddhist sutras [scriptures], which once seemed foreign and impenetrable, now came alive as Sheng-yen's own experience. "I understood them immediately, without explanation," he writes. "I felt as if they were my own words."

DairyLama

@anataman said:
The magical nature of the mind is a garbage bag!

I used a bit of paradox to titillate the Zennies.

Buddhadragon

"I attain all my knowledge through observing the mind within.
Thus all my thoughts become the teaching of the Dharma, and apparent phenomena are all the books one needs."
(Milarepa)

anataman

Tittilation of Zennies - sounds like a cool spoof movie script in there somewhere!

pegembara

Yes, the mind can play magic tricks indeed.

“Monks, it is just as if a master magician or the disciple of a master magician at a crossroads creates the magical illusion of an elephant troop, a horse troop, a chariot troop, and an infantry troop, and a clear-sighted person carefully examines, attends to, and analyses it. At the time of carefully examining, attending to, and analysing it, he finds that there is nothing in it, nothing stable, nothing substantial, it has no solidity. Why is that? It is because there is nothing solid or substantial in a magical illusion.

“In the same way, a monk carefully examines, attends to, and analyses whatever consciousness, past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, sublime or repugnant, far or near. When carefully examining, attending to, and analysing it, the monk finds that there is nothing in it, nothing stable, nothing substantial, it has no solidity; it is like a disease, like a carbuncle, like a thorn, like a killer, it is impermanent, dukkha, empty, and not self. Why is that? It is because there is nothing solid or substantial in consciousness.”

http://suttacentral.net/en/sa265

"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

―Morpheus, to Neo

namarupa

No matter how much rubbish may fill up the mind, we can create a secret door into our own quiet room, or if you prefer, a prayer/altar room. Magic.

DairyLama

@anataman said:> Tittilation of Zennies - sounds like a cool spoof movie script in there somewhere!

Yes, I like it! Funnily enough I have a couple of draft film scripts somewhere dating from my flirtation with creative writing. I had an idea for a comedy based on living in a Buddhist community, along the lines of Father Ted, but comedy can be painfully difficult to write.

QuangKsanti

I prefer the term "mysterious" or "wonderful" over "magical" as I wouldn't consider an illusionist a magician.

I notice it's rather hard to see where mind ends and the outer world begins.

anataman

I love the all encompassing symbol of nothing - a circle.

And infinity - just a circle twisted in on itself..

A circle nonetheless.

One and the same...

pegembara

@ourself said:
I prefer the term "mysterious" or "wonderful" over "magical" as I wouldn't consider an illusionist a magician.

I notice it's rather hard to see where mind ends and the outer world begins.

Without the mind where would the world be and without the world where would the mind be? There is no separation between subject and object.

"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle."

Kaccayanagotta Sutta