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Cleans the Lens of Your Mind: The Miseries Disappear in the Thin Air

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interviewGiven that the defiled mind is characterised as the mind which is tainted by the ignorance which misconceives things and the world to exist as objectively real along with the subtle stains of this misperception, this ignorance and its subtle stains which defile our mind need to be purified. For eliminating the ignorance, one has to revolutionize the way our minds perceive the world. The enlightened beings exhorted that just as the person is seen as void in the objective reality amongst the five aggregates of body and mind, the aggregates as well are objectively void as they are also seen as not different from their own constituents. This thus points to the absence of objectivity across the board of existence. Dream-like nature of all phenomena is established. After delving into the experience of the emptiness of objectivity of the first aggregate which is the form, one furthers towards reflecting the same on the remaining aggregates – feeling, discrimination, compositional factors and consciousness. Reflecting on the emptiness of feeling which is of three kinds – pleasure, pain and neutral – is extremely important. All sufferings are derived through negative karmas which in turn are given rise to by disturbing emotions such as attachment, anger and ignorance. Of the three destructive emotions, ignorance lays the ground for the other two – attachment and aversion. Seeing things as independently there from the object side orchestrates the mind to latch on to the object when it is seen as attractive which is attachment. It triggers aversion when the object is seen as objectively undesirable. Aversion or anger comes in the facade of service to feed attachment and to destroy what is felt as threat to feeding pleasure to attachment. Feelings in the form of pleasure or pain, feed the attachment and aversion which in turn incessantly keeps karma rolling. The world endlessly operates in chaos with disruption of peace because of the people’s total surrender and slavery to the feeling of pleasure and paranoia to the feeling of fear and pain. In the process of the operation of the world, instead of subsiding fear and pain, more complications arise thus demeaning peace and happiness in the world. Only through eliminating the ignorance by seeing these feelings as not existing the way they appear to us as objectively real, we can successfully undo the complications. By seeing the feeling of pain or pleasure as dream-like devoid of objective reality, the corresponding response in the form of attachment and aversion will cease. Therefore to see the ultimate reality of the feelings is very important. Fearlessness will dawn in us at times where otherwise fear and anxiety would have surged when meeting with unpleasant feelings.