Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
New Year's Resolution ...Who Makes It ?
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
Anatta No self, Not self, Selfless...
So when it comes to making a new year's resolution ....who is actually making it ?
It's possible that the reason as to why it is more often than not broken is that the determine motivated self that made the resolution, no longer exists, as the new year evolves that motivated self has been (and continues to be) replaced by one of many less motivated selves ....(We are just a bundle of fluctuating selves all jockeying for the manager's position ie, the Queen Bee or Kingpin 
)
It would seem that the best New Year's Resolution a Buddhist can make is to find the self (or die trying 
)
Killing yourself to live
6
Comments
It's made in a moment and if in another moment is not followed through then that's what happens.
So what is the resolution? Is it a skhanda? Is it a construct of mind?
Interesting question/s
So a theory...off the top of my head
It could be a combination of both ….which form a chain reaction of sorts… when peripheral 'awareness' (through ongoing conditioning) rapidly becomes focused upon and absorbed into the actual process of aggregates in motion which habitually becomes stuck ( clogged down with cravings/desires which arise when data is received through the sense doors) and this triggers a false sense of a self being present...
This sense of Self awareness also begins to take it for granted that it’s the real deal the doer behind the doing & thinker behind the thought ( one becomes one's habitual behaviour patterns )
When in fact ...The Self...just being ....a case of
Mistaken
dentity 
Hence why for the most part us so-called selves operate in a somewhat haphazard manner...With this awareness focusing upon/being sucked into one aspect of self/craving/aversion and then another
So when it comes to the maker of the resolution being the Skhandas and or Mind construct .... it would seem it is a combination of the knowing mind becoming charmed by the craving and desires arising from the data received through the sense doors aggregates in motion AKA self generation....
Craving = My NY resolution is to meditate more this year (says the guilt ridden self that is in the dominant position)
Aversion = Bugger this, I don't need to meditate more, besides I don't have the time (says the self that's full of excuses known to charm the somewhat susceptible unguarded mind )
But "I" could be wrong..(Which is known to be the case on more than one occasion
Hey nobody's perfect 
Perhaps this is why the Buddha said something along the lines of ….
"sabbe dhamma nalam abhinivesaya" (Nothing whatsoever should be clung to)
...Not even NY's resolutions
I am aiming to attain a more encompassing, consciousness only, point of view.
By which constructs such as "me" and "other" are simple conventional conceptions occurring within a process of consciousness.
If anything, our resolutions are the combined product of our sensory-perceptive-mind skandhas, plus fluff of store consciousness karmic leftovers.
But in the macrocosmic scheme of things, all this pondering is indulging in hair-splitting dualistic thinking.
Two selves ...
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/talk.religion.buddhism/ZmIL4e9EIDE
It is a construct of mind but Mind is not constructed ... (see above)
That’s a really funny cartoon. I generally think New Years resolutions are a waste of time, because often they aren’t kept. It’s like the gym membership that you get to lose weight after the holidays, but then go only twice in three months.
Instead, I think the New Year is a fine time to reaffirm vows you’ve already taken on. And the most important of those is, in my opinion, to be a better human being in 2018.
Proost!
There’s some truth there regarding in the macrocosmic scheme of things …However in order to have Experiential Understanding , one first needs to ponder the possible reasons as to why one finds it so hard to maintain one’s NY resolution…( It would seem that the habit of making and breaking stem from the same source)…
By pondering, I mean the use of the springboard of one’s intellect to exhaust all intellectual reasoning leaving the only option left which is to take the plunge into the unknown let go of the intellect and go with the flow There one should start to obtain some Experiential Understanding…
However maintaining ongoing Experiential Understanding is not a given…
Epiphanies happen ( some no doubt can...without putting much thought into it have an epiphany, witnessing in its full glory the macrocosmic scheme of things) but these realisations don’t always stick around long term …They have a habit of getting lost in old habits (old habits have a habit of returning in a moment of crises)…
I guess in order for one to keep the E U flowing one needs to remain mindful watch the mind diligently…(Which sound more like a contradiction of sort, because the aim is for an unfettered mind
...Well that's [Zen] Buddhism for ya 
).
I went to the gym today and for the first time the whole parking lot was full! Haha! Partly because kids still not back to school but still. I was once a New Years resolution gym goer but now a reg.
Hey @Jeffrey I hear ya
Here like every NY there are hordes of people pounding the footpaths (jogging)
As we may know there are different classes of Bodhisattva.
In the Mahayana, it is initially a behavoural model that we align and practice in. In other vehicles it is a natural consequence of awakening/unfolding into Buddhahood.
For those not interested in the Hood or mantle of the Awake (Buddhas), what exactly are you doing? Play Buddhism? Fake it till you awake it?
So here are the Buddha’s new moment resolutions:
I knew we duz haz plan!
http://www.religions.mrdonn.org/buddhism.html
I find the whole idea of a new year to be bizarre and nonsensical. There is no such thing as a new year; it’s an imaginary construct. But if we are to track the time that it takes the earth the revolve around the sun, then every day, no, every moment can serve to mark a new beginning. Neither a circle nor an ellipse has beginning or end. We choose.
I choose to believe that every day is a new year. Only convention says otherwise, and convention exists only in the human imagination — just like limited liability corporations.
Yes, it's a fabrication. That's why resolutions tend to fade over time.
I may be the odd one out here but of course a resolution is a vow to do better.
They get broken for the same reason we skip a session of meditation. We don't feel like following through.
"I" am not just something to throw away just because I'm seen as a means to an end. "I" am an illusory tool we use to share information.
Who makes resolutions?
Bodhisattvas, that's who.
Everyday is a new day resolution for me and a opportunity for change.
I resolved some years ago not to make any further resolutions. So there.