The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now, what we are doing now.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how our thoughts often distract us from the present moment.
S. N. Goenka's quote warns against the tendency of the mind to wander into fantasies, memories, and future anxieties, leading us to miss out on our current experiences. It emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and being present, as our cravings and aversions can overshadow reality, causing us to overlook the significance of the 'now'.
In practice
During a meditation session, one can reflect on the nature of thoughts as described in this quote.
Every sensation shares the same characteristic: it arises and passes away, arises and passes away. It is this arising and passing that we have to experience through practice, not just accept as truth because Buddha said so, not just accept because intellectually it seems logical enough to us. We must experience sensation’s nature, understand its flux, and learn not to react to it.
One learns the art of dying by learning the art of living: how to become master of the present moment.
Rather than converting people from one organised religion to another organised religion, we should try to convert people from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation and from cruelty to compassion.
As long as the mind is in conflict-blaming, resisting, condemning-there can be no understanding. If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.
There's a point of poverty at which the spirit isn't with the body all the time. It finds the body really too unbearable. So it's almost as if you were talking to the soul itself. And a soul's not properly responsible.
The whole universe is our home and all residing in it belong to our family... instead of trying to see God in a particular appearance, it is better to see him in everything.
I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.
To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Unless some effective world supergovernment for the purpose of preventing war can be set up ... the prospects for peace and human progress are dark ....If .... it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and inviolable authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men enjoy and share.
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