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Watering the good seeds: Transforming anger through mindfulness
Consciousness consists of two levels: mind consciousness, comparable to a living room, and store consciousness. Mind consciousness is visited by mental formations, things made up of thousands of elements that reside first in the form of seeds (bīja) in the depths of consciousness. There are fifty-one mental formations, both positive and negative. When the seed of anger is watered, it manifests as a zone of energy; the practice is then to invite the energy of mindfulness to embrace this anger with tenderness, like a mother holding her baby, in a non-violent and non-dualistic way.
Mindfulness (smṛti), the Chinese character for which represents the mind returning to the present moment, allows us to wake up from the dream to touch ultimate reality and practice resurrection. Without it, we live like dead people, unable to get in touch with the wonders of life, such as the blue sky discovered by Meursault in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. Because mental formations are organic in nature, we can transform garbage like hatred into compost to nourish the flowers of understanding, through the selective watering of positive seeds.
The five elements of the human person are:
- Form
- Feelings
- Perceptions
- Mental Formations
-
Consciousness
Meditation uses śamatha to stop and concentrate, and vipaśyanā to look deeply. This allows us to identify the immediate and distant causes of suffering, such as depression, by understanding the food that has allowed this seed to grow.