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.
Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not.
Imagine all the people Sharing all the world.
My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.
There's a long tradition of black folks pleading with white people. It's a tradition that emerges from political necessity, so I get it; I'm just not very interested in it.
At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.
While the Nation has forbidden monopoly by one set of laws it has been creating them by another. Patent laws, valuable as they may be in some respects, often father monopoly.
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