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The Mind.
ravkes
Veteran
How does one reconcile the fact that all thoughts are conditioned with needing thoughts/thinking processes to survive? So you let your mind control you sometimes, and watch your thoughts objectively at other times?
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Your thoughts, or your "mind", on the other hand, is something else. It is your mind that you are attempting to gain full mastery of, so you would not let your mind control you at any time in the final reckoning.
Perhaps I misunderstood. If so, please clarify?
What we call ourselves, is it not simply a collection of memories and tendencies? We know that brain trauma patients can lose certain memories depending upon the location of the injury and even their personality can change. Remember the famous case of Phinas Gage? His injury practically transformed him into another person.
Of course, self-transformation is possible through conscious effort. However, I think that transformation is limited to the physical constraints of our brain.
Animals do not gravitate towards that which is pleasurable.
They distance themselves from that which is not pleasurable.
(difference).
We - as human beings - are also animals, and in spite of the great evolutionary process which has somehow or other seen fit to place us at the top of the food chain, and in spite of our purportedly advanced brains, which have developed logic and reason, argument and discernment, we are still subject to some of the instinctual behaviour, traits and inherent characteristics which other animals also have.
Whilst we have - as is so often discussed here - free will and choice, and we exercise those every waking moment, we also have basic underlying instinctive reflexes which without us even necessarily being conscious of it, actually keep us alive.
Good thing too, huh?
The idea is that you control thought, and not thought control you. But this is a subtle point and the best method that I know of is a consistent and determined meditation practice - awareness, constancy, patience, determination.
Best wishes, Abu
Positive reinforcement is showing the dog that its behaviour is unacceptable, and likely to produce a negative response in other pack members.
The dog, however, doesn't deliberately act this way to produce a negative effect. It's just doing its best to take control of a situation, in a world it does not understand. The less we respond in the way the dog is trying to make us respond, the more it will enact its behaviour, because that's all he knows ho to do... It becomes a vicious circle... As a member of the canine world, he can't be expected to improvise or think outside the box. all he knows that the harder he tries, the less we are happy... so he tries harder, because he thinks he's failing to lead properly.
In actual fact, it is we who need to look at things from his point of view....
Positive reinforcement steers the dog away from this negative effect/result, towards a reward for a change in behaviour.
For example, a dog that will keep running away and not come back, is doing so for a reason.
By reinforcing positive behaviour, we change that reason, and make it realise that the reason it had before, is less preferable to the reason we are giving it now.
we turn him into a happy follower, rather than permitting him to be a poor leader.
We make his options, less favourable than ours.
Objective and subjective are both just constructs. Some added thought overlayed on top of just experience as it is. So mindfulness is waking up from both objective and subjective notion into your experience as it is.
To cross the street you are mindful. It doesn't mean that your mind blanks out and you are not allowed to preserve your life. In fact when we are mindful we are open clear and sensitive to our environment. Being more mindful means aligning with the openness clarity and sensitivity of our nature. It is recognizing that we ARE space. Rather than that we need space (freedom).
So as we go to school we are mindful. Strictly speaking we don't have to go to school. We don't want to starve. And we may enjoy a career.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUCRZzhbHH0&feature=popt00us01
No, not positive punishment at all.....
Distracting the dog from doing something we perceive as unacceptable behaviour, by giving him a better option. There's no punishment....Maybe I need to research this more, but it's all about making the dog happier to follow a different course of action....
Thanks....
I imagine mind as consciousness. Consciousness arises in contact with objects. This is true for all sentient beings, including woofies. As such consciousness is conditioned by experience (memories of stuff happening). Trauma, etc. may block memories from arising to the level of momentary awareness but the memory still resides in sub-subconscious (unaware consciousness).
Habitual behavior (volitional action - karma) conditions consciousness in a big way. So, it's how we respond to stuff happening, in the NOW, that creates how we're likely to respond in the future. In the case of Mindfulness, it's training (volitional conditioning) to remain in tranquil sensitivity and observe the state of our own MIND or to remain in tranquil sensitivity and imagine stuff that counters our negative conditioning.
Body/mind not separate.
Enlightenment is an accident, training makes us accident prone.
Oops! missed 'feed'. In the case of feeding the tigress there was no idea of feeding self. Momentary circumstances called for some action. That action was engaged out of pure altruistic intention for the benefit of all, without concern for anything else.