a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by jadedog
jadedog  ·  2442 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Source of Emotional Pain-- and How to Stop it

No, not really. I'm not seeing the point of it.

    I am my hands, they are within the ven diagram of me. I'm accountable for their good behavior and health an maintenance. I'm more than my hands but I'm certainly not not my hands. My hands might screw me with their clumsiness or betray my nervousness, sometimes they might even be too weak for the task which I am asking them to perform, but they are my hands. Same damn thing with my brain. I do my best to nudge it toward flexibility, objectivity and just compassion but I sometimes fail. It's still my brain.

You're conflating brain and thoughts. One is tangible, the other is not. It's trivially true to say that you own your body parts. It would be different to say that you own your thoughts. Until thoughtcrime is illegal, you're not responsible for every stray thought that flashes through your mind. People are responsible for their actions, including communicating their thoughts, but they're not responsible solely for their thoughts.

That's like saying that you own a book, so you're responsible for taking care of the book. But that's different from owning every idea and concept within the pages of the book.

You seem to imply these ideas are scams. They are if you paid for them. But these ideas about meditation and witnessing thoughts are as old as Buddhism.

I've never read Eckhart Tolle. I've watched a couple youtube videos he was on. He did give me a slimy feeling, telling people not to worry about money as he sat there making millions from his books. But he sure didn't originate these concepts.