Why Attachment to Happy Thoughts Can Prolong Suffering - 27 April 2016

Can I not buy this one next thought? Is it that difficult? Then what happens? Some very glorious thoughts can come. Oh, is this freedom? No, not even this one. Can I do this forever? Can I just be like this? You buy something which again makes a pretend person out of us. The end of suffering is this simple: you cannot suffer without believing the thought. You can try. You have tried. Just naturally we can be in pain; there can be this sensation of pain experienced in the body, but even this pain we cannot suffer from unless we buy a thought about it. But it is the thought itself which comes with a lot of doubts. But, but, but, but what about this? What about my bills? What about my life? What about my plans? What about my family? The same world stuff. For thousands and thousands of years we've dealt with the same world stuff. I like to say, you know, that when we read Talks with Ramana from the 1930s, it's the same stuff. The questions are just the same. We could have said 2016 and the now could be there and the question could just be the same. What about my responsibilities? What about my life? Where are all of those people now gone? The ones that were asking the questions in 1930s mostly are gone. What about the responsibilities and their bills? Same thing here. Another hundred years, all of us gone. Is it really worth it to buy into our thoughts, to go into this temporal realm of personhood? And over and over every day we say: don't believe a next thought. Damn it, whose is it? Hatred, is it mine? It's on the laptop and it's all... what about up here?

Yes, I was just thinking about the thought, the next thought. What if it's a happy thought?

Yes, yes, that's all this question. This is good. So when you check, you will find that you don't need the happy thought to be happy. Happiness is more natural than that. You see, just now you will find that there is a natural happiness. This is natural peace, natural joy which is inescapable. Is it? So the mind itself might come and say, 'But you need the happy ones to be happy.' You see? But this again, even the so-called happy thought, is false because it is premised on the idea that you exist as a person, and this idea must dissolve. You see? Because as long as we are believing something which is false, it is bound to lead to suffering. And then we are going through this roller coaster of life, right? The ups, so what after? Down. So even we don't need a happy thought. We don't need a happy thought to be happy. Happiness is our natural state.

So what if I've been noticing that I'm happy and then I have thoughts about it? So they're nice thoughts, but then I'm wondering, am I supposed to bat them out of the park like that baseball analogy that somebody posted? You know, and they feel good. The thoughts feel good and they come out of the natural happy place, or just like, oh, I'm happy and oh, then I have thoughts about it.

But if you look at even the happy thoughts, who are they speaking to? You see? So what happens is we are trying to come out of the habit of believing this voice in our head which is pretending to be my voice, you see? And it's like saying that if I am addicted to smoking, then can I smoke a certain type of cigarettes? What are they called? You see, like those vapor cigarettes? Yeah, electric... yeah. So although they might be helpful, seemingly helpful to come out of the addiction, even eventually even these must be let go of, you see? So if you were to give me the choice and say between terrible thoughts and happy thoughts, what should I believe? I'll say obviously believe the happy thoughts. But I have to also say that your happiness is not dependent on happy thoughts and eventually even these have to be let go of because they are not conveying the truth about what you are. And anything which is believed about the false then has the potential for suffering. Take an example of a happy thought. Okay, happy thought is: 'I was at the ocean today and I started to watch the sunset. That was happy. It was nice.' Yes, yes. Now what happens is that the experiencing of the sunset and the ocean was happening irrespective of the thought. And even the joy and the bliss or whatever was coming up was happening spontaneously, you see? But this imaginary friend, it wants to come in and participate in this surge. 'Oh, how nice.' You know, we are looking at these things, you're looking at the ocean, you see? And yet, very quickly as we start to buy into this, maybe the next day it will say, 'Maybe the ocean is not looking as clean as it was yesterday.' You see? And because our habit is to buy thoughts, then we start to buy thoughts like this also. 'The sunset isn't... the air getting more polluted today than it was yesterday?' 'Yesterday it was clear, today it's more cloudy. Maybe it'll rain.' Yeah, it is just like this. The experiencing of the flower is the experiencing of the flower. I don't need a thought to experience it. And yet you will notice that the thought will try to come up with its opinions about the flower which are completely not needed to experience it, you see? The beauty is experienced and the joy which comes with the experiencing of the beauty is also there. So we don't need the participation of our mind to truly experience any situation in life, good or bad. So we just watch like this. You can see any object and how quickly the mind tries to come in with the interpretation and the judgment about it, and you will find that the experiencing of the object is not dependent on what the thought is saying about it.