Who Am I and Who Are We?
Recently I heard my daughter, Li Kheng, in conversation with her friend at lunch:
“There is a bright side and a dark side to our personality.”
That statement shifted my thoughts to what I said years ago after completing an adult experiential training class:
“Mastery of Life is our control over the duality of our Mind.”
At this point, I checked in to see if I had a dual personality or even schizophrenia. It sounds harsh to think of myself as being schizophrenic. But honestly, do we have people experiencing us differently and sometimes the difference is so pronounced that they may be talking to two different people?
Oh yes, on checking in with myself, I did notice that in circumstances which are within my perception of “DISLIKE”, I react and out comes anger, frustration, depression and the justification to prove I am right.
This makes me experience hot flashes and heart pounding. This will definitely be the nasty or dark side of me.
In the opposite direction, if the circumstances or events or even comments are within my arena of “LIKE”, I will be most pleasant and qualities like kindness, love and care will surface. When the niceties are big enough, I will also feel hot flashes and heart pounding.
NOTICE, THE PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE IS THE SAME.
If you have ever experienced what I described above, then no doubt we might as well conclude that we have dual personalities controlled by our emotions which are constantly on a roller coaster ride, causing feelings of happiness and sadness.
This being the case, doesn’t it mean that our so-called happiness and sadness are not states within the control of our mind but of our emotions and past experiences, which form our perceptions and govern our frame of mind?
More importantly, would we then say that our state of mind is not within our own control but governed by third parties and external forces?
The stainless and faultless teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha state that we need to be “neutral” in any and all circumstances in order that we may create an environment whereby it is both peaceful and calm for sentient beings in the space and time, to be conscious of the eight worldly concerns and to be guarded so as to not fall into the trap of imprisonment.
Another impactful learning I cherish from the Dharma is that regardless of whoever we are perceived to be, we are naturally of the Buddha nature. It is to find the method as taught in the Dharma to be of the nature that will be good for our state of being and for those in our space.
- Quest for happiness and fear of suffering
- Quest for fame and fear of insignificance
- Quest for praise and fear of blame
- Quest for gain and fear of loss
Does being neutral mean not caring or is it about forgetting the self (and all the emotional baggage and judgments) and to be whatever it takes in order for the circumstances to be better for all?
That would mean letting go of whatever emotional attachments we have and be focused on what is needed and be of help to improve the situation.
That would also mean to be accepting of what may be positive or negative in our perception and be willing to see if changes are necessary on our part so that others will have a better experience of us.
At this point, it seems to be extremely daunting to continue writing as I am no medical expert on neurology nor psychology but I have something that helps:
Eight Verses of Thought Transformation
With the thought of attaining Enlightenment
For the welfare of all beings,
Who are more precious than a wish–fulfilling jewel,
I will constantly practise holding them dear.Whenever I am with others,
I will practise seeing myself as the lowest of all,
And from the very depths of my heart
I will respectfully hold others as supreme.In all actions I will examine my mind
And the moment a disturbing attitude arises,
Endangering myself or others,
I will firmly confront and avert it.Whenever I meet a person of bad nature,
Overwhelmed by negative energy and intense suffering,
I will hold such a rare one dear
As if I’ve found a precious treasure.When others out of jealousy,
Mistreat me with abuse, slander and so on,
I will practise accepting defeat
And offering the victory to them.When someone I have benefited and in whom
I have placed great trust hurts me very badly,
I will practise seeing that person
As my supreme teacher.In short, I will offer directly and indirectly
Every benefit and happiness to all beings, my mothers.
I will practise in secret taking upon myself
All their harmful actions and sufferings.Without these practices being defiled
By the stains of the eight worldly concerns,
By perceiving all phenomena as illusory,
I will practise without grasping to release all beings
From the bondage of the disturbing unsubdued mind and karma.
Not an easy task to master but with a small step each day, we will strike the balance with wisdom to be at peace within and create a peaceful environment wherever we are, and my greatest wish is to create a peaceful and hate free world.
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Our “I” / the self- cherishing minds are so strong & wild that we are control by them. There are only negative impacts rather than positive ones if we let them go wild. At the end, we are the one who are hurt directly and indirectly by ourselves.
The only thing we can do to avoid such event is to free ourselves from our “precious” attachments, be Neutral. Being neutral doesn’t mean that we act like we don’t care, it’s about not to grasp on our emotions, prides and other attachments. The main focus is to get things done and benefit others.
I have bad experience with this crazy extreme dualistic mind of mine. I really scared to deal with it as it often caused damages in my life. I hurt others with or without knowing, I created problems to others and myself without realising it. It doesn’t mean I am innecent. How much damages I caused simply mean how selfish I am. Selfish of no awareness of how others feel. Selfish of malingbused of others feelings, selfish of being defensive although we know that we were wrong. Selfish of losing focus on what I needed to accomplished, etc etc.. well, that’s my life. I created unnecessary negative karma for myself. Why I said that because I never once in my life plan to hurt or damage others yet I did.
When I stopped and looked into myself, checked every thoughts I have, negative and positive without reacting to it, I realised that i also habits that I have behind every emotional feelings. Oh dear, my mind is complicated, someone very sneaky and evil. But doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. I want to be a better person. I don’t want to continue to hurt others. I got very interested and wanted to know how I and others reacted to every situations and conditions. I learned to watch my monster mind.
I am very lucky and fortunate to have teachings and guidance from Rinpoche for the last 10 years. I’m very grateful for Rinpoche’s patient and love. Remembering all dualistic view of mine is the lessons from my Guru. I need to handle it with awareness and an open heart.
As long we label ourselve is “I “and having duality mind projecting thing what we see and how we feel with emotion. We will feel suffering how we think it is. In reality, I existance make us can’t see clearly the natural of thing existance. By hang on on “I”. Our self cherishing better bigger and try to protector it not get hurt. Which creating more suffering for ourselve. People having mental problem due to it. Is important we study buddhism and get knowledge to identify “I ” existance and not attach to mush in our body. One day when we died, nothing is matter except of mind.
Yes, all of us do have both side of characters, I would say, it is our masked self and true self. Masked self is when we wear our mask and go meet people, this is often people regard as fake character, and another one is our true self which is the real us, that always being controlled by our 3 poisons, hatred, desire and ignorant, normally our true self only appear when there is us alone, or only to our very close family members, because we know how damaging our true character is and hence, everytime when we leave the house, when we go out to meet people, we often wear the mask and leave home.
But in Dharma, we always being pushed to face our real self, our mask always got ripped off and exposed our real self to the public, so that we do not live in denial, this is where Buddha’s teaching come in, after we studied the Dharma, we have to applied in our daily practice and thru time, to transform our mind from bad to good, from selfishness to kindness, from miserliness to generous, etc. Mind transformation is the most difficult chapter to practice, that is why in our spiritual path, our mind transformation is the best and highest offering to our guru.
“Tall” means nothing unless something is also “short.” The dualistic mind is always contradictory. It sets up an internal dialogue that has forever disturbed our peace. It’s always confused us and this lead us into suffering. But this can be improved by training of our mind taught by Buddha. If we do not improve it, one of them is we always suffer from discrimination created by us by label people as she/he is good or bad. Again we suffer. I think that in today’s world, that is lots of the mental illness is actually from the dualistic mind. Hence is good to have Dharma practice to train our mind.
Due to the fixed view on duality, we are subject to our mood swings seeing things develop to the way we like or dislike. Our mind depicts everything in this world to only happen to the way we want and not happen to an outcome we don’t like. This is due to our mind having the feeling of duality which for me stems from the I, myself. We are so self absorbed and thinks what matters most are we ourselves. That is why i think people go into depression is also due to the fact they are too attached to themselves, including fear of getting hurt (defensive), fear of shame and many more. If we can eradicate duality and view things as universal and gives no attachment into ourselves but to others only ie focus out, then we will not be having mood swings and depressions anymore.
As we are all still in samsara and still suffering, we haven’t gain the realizations to be not extreme in our thinking. We always have the likes and dislikes, love and also hatred on somebody. It is not easy to practice the middle way and not to be extreme in both sides as we have many lifetimes of habituations. But if we have the will to transform our mind, the best way is to practice the 8 verses of thoughts transformation as mentioned in the article by Datuk May. It may be difficult at first but as time goes by nothing seems impossible if we have strong determination.
I would agreed all of us have this dual personality or duality. Many of us are so much attached or cling with our comfort zone which could lead us to our strong habituation. We will be very selective to do things we favor and don’t but in the end we gain nothing as our mind don’t change and transform.
Personally, I found it important for me to realize of my weakness, my excuses, my habituation which has formed my personality.
I’m greatly appreciated Datuk May for sharing this article, thank you very much.
I can’t agree more with Datuk May about this. To me, sometimes I find that is not only duality of our mind, it’s multiple. Human’s mind is the most difficult and complicated organ and even living organism in the world. If we want to break it down to conscious mind and sub conscious mind, together with the black and white mind, then we will have black conscious and sub conscious mind, and white conscious and sub conscious mind. This is already difficult. But we’re not focus on this. That’s why Buddha’s teaching, is to control our mind. Without controlling our mind, our mind can go really wild without limitation. Recently, I learn meditation, actually meditation also can help us to control our monkey mind. I also understand that, is not one or two days to transform our mind, it’s develop, by learning and practicing Dharma. That’s why we cannot stop practicing, learning and doing dharma work. So that it will continuously develop our mind towards transformation. Thank you Datuk May for sharing this article, it’s a wake up call to all of us. ?
Who we are is often dependent on the situation, we like it or we dislike, we want or we reject. The most powerful motivator for taking decisions is “ME”! Yet, this is not what we are thaught that brings us happiness. When we read the Eight Verses of Mind Transformation, we are confronted with letting go of these attachments to feel good, to being praised, to receive gifts, to look good, but to let the other win and to put the other person first with the correct motivation.
This is what brings us happiness, friendship and confidence long term versus having face and looking good on the outside. Anyway, we will not be able to fool others as our actions and results are talking louder than words.
Yes, ours mind are always has these two options within ( Like or Dislike ), let’s talk about a relationship between humans, if we Like the person too much and one day that person left us, we’ll feel sad, because of? We lose the ” Things ” that we Like so much.
Let’s put it another way, if we Dislike that person, its’ cause ours hatred out from our mind, the results are same. Recently Rinpoche posted few quotes on FB. I highlighted the quote ( Love and Hate )
We have in us the black and the white, the good and the bad, love and hate etc. Ultimately there is no “I” nor “we” as realised by great masters. We cling on to the “I” so strongly because we perceive it as our body. Hence we are at where we are because we still struggle with the “I” while great meditators have reached the Awakened state of mind. I have a very long road to travel but travel I must.
Who am I and Who are we?
Be it a positve or negative moment we will have reaction that nurtured through our ego to protect our ‘I’. Our duality preception is impermanent and does not create any long term benefit to us as situation will keep changing and just like the weather. We can’t expect all the time clear weather and sometime storm may come and how should we deal with it?
For me personlly treat every moment that arises moderately and to control from falling into the trap of the ‘I’. I know it’s not easy but we can see how our mind work and the more we nurture our ego the more we going to suffer. Being neutral on all situation will make us easy to face anything that arises be it good or bad and our mind will be calm and steady to make a clear decision and able to understand matter easily and accurate as it’s not influence or affected by our self cherishing mind.
Thanks a lot Datuk May for sharing this article to make us realise and understand our mind better.
Dear Datuk May, thank you for a wonderful sharing.
Yes. I believe most of us have the duality of mind as we tend to react in different ways especially when one is praised.
Compared to before knowing Dharma, I was a hot tempered person disregarding others but now it’s slightly lesser through the years. It’s wonderful that one get to change (although slowly) from practicing and realize that the change makes one a much better person especially when contemplating on the eight verses of mind transformation.
I think myself has dual personality which i always hide from family and friends. My mind really emotional when deal with family members and vice versa when deal with friends.
I am very bad tempered to family members before I know Guru. After learning from Guru’s teachings and now I am less emotional .
I always remember on 8 Verses of Thought Transformation and this really help me a lot. Besides that , 8 worldly concerns must be abstained in order to attain real happiness in our life.
Thanks Datuk May and Rinpoche sharing this precious teachings.
Jason
It’s so true that our emotion will sometimes be affected by the situation we are in. The Buddha teaching states that we need to be “neutral” in all circumstances in order to create an environment for us to be peaceful and calm. Actually everything is fundamentality neutral and the meaning is determined by our own decision and definition. Whether we like or dislike someone or something, whether we are happy or sad in any situation, it all depends on our past experiences, hence determine our emotion at that moment. Often we see the outside world through the colored lens of perception. We can continue to experience all the human feeling, be it happiness, joy, sad or disappointment in any circumstances, what we can do is to change the perception of it, to find peace eventually. We can only make decision that is true to ourselves and benefit others when we’re in peace and not reacting emotionally to the circumstances we are in.
It is so true, all of us are walking schizos in varying degrees. When our pain points or soft spots are triggered, there will be a fountain of emotions that follow suit. We are programmed this way from lifetimes of habituation. Thank you, Datuk May, for this sharing that aptly reminded me of how our emotions arise from our perception and expectation which are anchored by the relative truth. Because it is not the ultimate truth, it does not have a value that is substantial or long term. Since that is the case, it will be a waste of energy to demonstrate the emotions, worse still, if by doing so it hurts another person. Hence, we must exercise mindfulness and monitor those trigger carefully to reduce unnecessary or extreme demonstration of emotions. Focusing on the situation and the solution is a good antidote.
I think if we hold on too strongly to dualistic concepts, we can be in trouble. Buddha always advocated the middle way, in all that we encounter, not to be too extreme. Buddhas reside in equanimity all the time, to those who want to harm them or those who want to help them.
The mural I have seen before is on one hand, Buddha is being anointed with oils, and on the other someone is cutting out his flesh, the Buddha has equal compassion for both. Just like Buddha had the same compassion for his son Rahula as he did Devadatta his cousin who always tried to subvert the the Buddha.
Thank you Datuk May for sharing this article. We really have to give it a second thought or contemplate on ourselves whether we have such dual personality in us, the good and dark side of us. Of cause we must work hard to rid the dark side of us as it will cause suffering to us. The Eight Verses of Thoughts Transformation is a prayer that we can start with as it will remind us daily to be better to every othetlr sentient being.
With folded palms,
Vivian