This week's article is on what is sometimes called the 3 poisons in Buddhism - anger, greed, and ignorance:
Anger, Greed, Ignorance - The Three Poisons These three can be understood in more abstract turns as pushing away, grasping, and checking out. Most of our thoughts fall into one of these three categories - either we are thinking how much we don't want something (pushing away), thinking how much we do (grasping), or checking out (daydreaming, fantasizing etc.) These are all normal activities of our mind. If you look at your mind, it's hard to find a thought or emotion that doesn't in some way fall into one of these 3 categories.
The value of these teachings is understanding this dynamic of our mind - how it works. Then we can begin to work with it. Perhaps we find we have many pushing away thoughts and are frequently angry or triggered to anger. Then we can begin to look at why that is - what underlying emotions lead to this. Perhaps we find we are checking out a lot - escaping in our minds, or into external activities like video games, tv, or even drugs or alcohol, to a level that is destructive to our lives. Or perhaps it is more subtle in our case.
Whatever we find, once we begin to recognize these patterns within our mind, we can begin to change them, and begin to loosen their hold on us. They block our natural happiness, and as we free ourselves of them, our natural peace arises. It's not always easy though! In this world, we are constantly confronted with things that trigger one or more of these tendencies.
And the key is not to punish ourselves, to meet ourselves with lovingkindness, day by day, and do our best.
