The Wisdom of Uncorking

Have you tried uncorking a fruit juice bottle without using a corkscrew? At that point of trying, the mind, if it has past experience before, would have already predicted two experiences that will come up in sequence – the difficulty in pulling out the cork and the experience of relief the moment the cork finally releases itself out of the bottle neck. Both are two opposing experiences, the former in stress, the later a relief.

Observe that the nature of the cork has the ability of holding on to the bottle, else it would not have serve its purpose as a cork. And for you to release it you have to first experience the held on experience of the cork. It can be quite a pain to experience that until the release comes through. The pain is caused by the held on or else you would not have experience what pain is.

This metaphor explains the nature of how the mind works. I am using the word nature to denote how things work without having a personality experience in it. Each time when you experience pain over something, be it mental or physical, instead of detesting the pain, consider the new information that it is the holding on to something that you are not aware of that is causing you the experience of pain.

Without seeing the cause of the holding on, facing the pain can be quite a stress as you will just think of resolving the pain rather than to see what causes the pain. In truth the pain is non-existential as it only arises from holding on. To try fixing the pain is to make the pain stronger as to detest is to hold on to what you don’t like hence making the pain grow. If you have understood this you would not have bark at the wrong tree and instead look for the cause of it.

It is by understanding the cause of the pain that releases the pain, not through fixing it any other way. But before that can happen, you have to experience the pain first then only the cause of the pain. For that matter, all ignorance is suffering as you have to endure the error until understanding comes in, in undoing its process.

Practically the process will be such – imagine an upset arises in your mind due to a certain trigger. Give no heed to the trigger as the upset is what you are experiencing now. You will find yourself detesting this unpleasant feeling of upset which is quite natural. Do you see it as a natural reaction of the mind doing that, without you needing to detest further? Learn to see this as nature unfolding – nature working its way, in the mind. This is right attitude over the existing attitude that is beyond your control. In a way this is acceptance, but this can only happen when you have the right view that nature is taking place in the mind. Once you have this acceptance coming your way, you are already not detesting what is being experienced, in this case, the upset. Observe what happens to upset when you are able to successfully incept the true understanding of seeing it as nature. You will be in for a surprise! You will see the importance of right view working its way in releasing the upset.

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