Living Fully

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Living Fully

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The Art of Enjoyment: Transforming Life Through Mindfulness

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Why is youth so beautiful to the eyes and mind, while old age is often seen as ugly and miserable? This perception suggests that the mind is neither inherently young nor old but is shaped by its conception of the world. This perspective is not an inherent fact of youth or old age. Instead, the inability to appreciate the beauty of old age compared to youth indicates that our minds are historically, civilizationally, and genetically trapped in a fallacy of understanding.

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This insight encourages us to explore the full capacity of the mind, which we have yet to utilize fully. Practices such as Sathipattana (Mindful Meditation) involve the mind observing itself and the bodily behaviours it controls. This self-observation empowers us to explore matters beyond the constraints of time and space inherent in this physical world.

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When the mind observes its actions and the physical behaviours it creates, the concepts of “mind” or “body” dissolve into a phenomenon of fleeting thoughts, feelings, and constructions. Can we then name this as mind or body? It is only a collection of feelings, signs, mental constructions, and all other emotions and matter.

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This understanding calls for momentary consciousness of our actions in the present moment rather than focusing on past or future events or memories. The mind scrutinizes these thoughts and mental constructions, recognizing that they arise in the present moment but are not inherent to past or future times. This realization points to the absence of a phenomenon called “time” in the living world.

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When the mind grasps that time is not a separate entity but a construct of present-moment thoughts, it also realizes that space is similarly non-existent. Once fully understood, it becomes clear that there is no eternal truth or science in the mind’s functions, only a natural mechanism of feelings, emotions, and perceptions shaped by sociocultural conceptions. These have evolved through human and other living beings’ biological and cultural evolution, leading to the trapped perception of existence and identity.

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Therefore, a realized mind does not believe in the absolute existence of the mind or body but sees them as coincidental or cooperative actions and reactions shaped by evolutionary practices of bodily organs. Understanding this connection between the human organs and the brain’s functions allows one to use the mind’s full capacity to lead a fulfilling life until the body’s biological end, commonly known as death. However, the realized mind does not see this as an end but as a natural cessation of bodily functions.

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The realized individual understands life as a series of momentary origins and endings, fully engaging with the phenomena of mind and matter without attachment. This perspective allows them to experience the beauty and romance of existence without being trapped by the conceptual politics of the mind. Until the end of their physical body, they continue to nourish it with worldly matters without being trapped by mental constructs.

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Painting By Peter Nottrott, from https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Enjoyment-M-1/720911/4784381/view