We have each been tasked with a huge project called “my life”. Moment by moment we are steering this project, trying to maximize our happiness. Using feedback from feeling in the body, our thinking mind evaluates our experience and creates strategies. The main tool of the mind is language, our constant self-talk.
In a talk titled “Language is the hammer and every problem, a nail” Dharma Teacher Matthew Brensilver investigates this usual process and advocates an alternative approach, using non-judgmental awareness. Jeff used Matthew’s talk to frame our reflections as we investigated the benefits of this shift of focus in living more effectively.
You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/83885/
Some quotes:
In most moments life feels like a problem to be solved
To solve our problems we need language
To dissolve them we need awareness
Non-judgmental awareness is very foreign to some part of our system
We build stories out of positive or negative feeling, not out of neutral feeling
With compulsive pressure to manage the project of our life, language is the tool that we use to orchestrate our life
When we learn the Dharma we treat all phenomena as false alarms
Matthew also gave a talk at IMC titled “Dharmette: Fear and Language” which complements the “hammer” talk:
