2. skillful thinking
the second fold of buddha’s 8 fold path, skillful thinking flows from skillful understanding. some kind of thinking are unwholesome like fear, fantansy and some kind of thinkings are wholesome like compassion and loving-kindness. these wholesome thoughts also works as antidotes for unwholesome and all this could be experientially understood with cause and effect.
letting go
if the desire (attachment / clinging ) is the root cause of suffering, letting go or generosity is it’s opposite. but very easily generosity can be polluted by ego and make it a pride trip. but I would still argue even if you acknowledge your motive is not pure being generous is wonderful act. the best way to be generous should be
giving while knowing that we already have in our heart everything we need to be happy
another aspect of letting go of unwholesome thoughts is ,it creates the space for wholesome thoughts like four immeasurable.
fear
as we practice letting go. we often stumble upon fear.
fear arises because of insecure, emotional or greedy attachment to ideas, concepts, feelings or physical object. or it can also be caused by coming into the contact with something that we do not understand or whose outcome is uncertain.
the problem is thinking that experience as an atomic thing and then saying i like it or I don’t like it. while in reality experience is a set of afflictions stitch together like greed, anger, fear, sadness, aversion. and the correct way to handle them is to sort them first. then it becomes manageable. and we can stop caught up in conjuring stories that mind dish up and start reason with ourself.
try and see how mind play games with itself. using thoughts to create fear and fear to creates more thought. and once you have managed to sit with strong fear completely you will no longer see it in the same way. you can see it is just a natural state that comes and go and has no substance and can’t hurt you. and you loose fear of fear. you gain sense of freedom. and it is the same strategy to handle any affliction.
loving kindness -
loving kindness or metta is a natural capacity and grows itself in a peaceful state of mind. loving kindness is not as we understand by love ( sort of emotional thing ).
if your love changes from time to time, place to place, and situation to situation in this fashion. then what you call love is not the skillful thought of loving kindness, it might me erotic lust, desire to felt loved, or some other form of love greed in disguise.
the main obstacle of loving kindness is anger. anger seriously disrupt relationship. don’t you generally avoid angry people just like that people avoid you when you are angry. and the best antidote for anger is patience.
if you have expressed the anger, spending few minutes apologizing to someone you offended produce marvelous joy and relief. giving a gift to person you think is angry with you also helps a lot.
the result of loving kindness is you sleep in comfort wake up in comfort and dream sweet dream.
compassion -
compassion is melting of heart at the thought of another persons suffering. it is a spontaneous wholesome thought coupled with a wish to alleviate another’s pain.
compassion and loving kindness is mutually supportive. compassion roots with self. actually division between self and others is more blurred in our mind than we realize. it is like serving food from the same bowl whatever we serve to others is the same that we serve to ourself. in other words we can only give what we have.
self compassion is specially necessary to practice mindfulness. because as soon as we start watching monkey mind we try to control it. but mind doesn’t follow anybody command. it is critical to understand that there is a deference between watching the mind and controlling it.
it is quite important to get out of the viscous cycle of unwholesome thoughts as soon as possible. always try to think of downside of an unwholesome thoughts. is my fear and insecurity driving me ?, do I really want to go deeper into the debt ?. can this wait ? next perhaps we can develop of wholesome sense of shame that such thoughts dominates my mind and how embarrassed I would be if others knew. that is how even buddha practiced before enlightenment. these thoughts are portal to look inside and correct your fault.
when you tasted the bigger and wholesome joy. twisted desire in itself dissolve. like once you cultivated generosity, sense pleasure will diminish itself.