Terry Riley
When I started with this website , after the Home page i created the (empty) "Mind" and "Body" pages. I had Now Idea what i was going to put on them, but didn't want to get Rid of them...
For a long time these pages just Sat there. Stuff would be parked there and disappear again. This is , because the more i read and learn, the more i start to think there Isn't much of a Difference Between the Two...
What i want to do here is to use this page as a "gateway" to all things Mindely , as in the spiritual world. (The "Body" page will do the same for all things bodily, material stuff, like biology and physics.)
But...
iT's Better to Begin @ the Beginning:
'Beginner's Mind'
One day an important Samurai, a man used to being in control at all times came to visit a famous Zen master.
“I would like you to teach me more about Zen, to help me gain enlightenment and so become a better sword fighter.”
Zen, a philosophy of action, is inextricably linked with the Samurai Way, so the request was not that unusual.
The Zen master smiled and said nothing. Instead he motioned to discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the ceremony was complete, the tea was served. The master poured the tea. He poured and he poured. The tea flowed over the rim and began to spill over the hand of the samurai – who jumped and dropped the cup.
The samurai was angry. “I came to be taught, and all you do is spill the tea over my hands. Can't you see the cup is full?”
The master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest.“You are like this tea cup. You are so full of what you know that there is no room to add anything new. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind, a Beginner's Mind.”
“I would like you to teach me more about Zen, to help me gain enlightenment and so become a better sword fighter.”
Zen, a philosophy of action, is inextricably linked with the Samurai Way, so the request was not that unusual.
The Zen master smiled and said nothing. Instead he motioned to discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the ceremony was complete, the tea was served. The master poured the tea. He poured and he poured. The tea flowed over the rim and began to spill over the hand of the samurai – who jumped and dropped the cup.
The samurai was angry. “I came to be taught, and all you do is spill the tea over my hands. Can't you see the cup is full?”
The master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest.“You are like this tea cup. You are so full of what you know that there is no room to add anything new. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind, a Beginner's Mind.”
'Apparently', we Humans are Not Animals. This is ofcourse in reference to our Mental Abilities. (Physically we Are) The Human Spices is Supposed to have Evolved to a Higher Level, risen Above it All.
Have we Really? or have we Lost something in the process...
Albert Einstein had this to say about our 2 minds;
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
The Human Mind Is Naturally Prone To the Following Egocentric Tendencies
egocentric memory (the natural tendency to "forget" evidence and information which does not support our thinking and to "remember" evidence and information which does)
egocentric myopia (the natural tendency to think in an absolutist way within an overly narrow point of view)
egocentric infallibility (the natural tendency to think that our beliefs are true because we believe them)
egocentric righteousness (the natural tendency to feel superior in the light of our confidence that we are in the possession of THE TRUTH)
egocentric hypocrisy (the natural tendency to ignore flagrant inconsistencies between what we profess to believe and the actual beliefs our behavior imply, or inconsistencies between the standards to which we hold ourselves and those to which we expect others to adhere)
egocentric oversimplification (the natural tendency to ignore real and important complexities in the world in favor of simplistic notions when consideration of those complexities would require us to modify our beliefs or values)
egocentric blindness (the natural tendency not to notice facts or evidence which contradict our favored beliefs or values)
egocentric immediacy (the natural tendency to over-generalize immediate feelings and experiences--so that when one event in our life is highly favorable or unfavorable, all of life seems favorable or unfavorable as well)
egocentric absurdity (the natural tendency to fail to notice thinking which has "absurd" consequences, when noticing them would force us to rethink our position) (source)