..续本文上一页eelings, or our mind, or other things. But maybe you have not understood what mind is, what mental formations are. "Mental formations" is a technical term. The Sanskrit word is Samskara.
Formation is the term that points to everything that is there, everything that manifests itself according to the law of causes and effects. For example, this sheet of paper is a formation, because many elements have come together to make this exist: the sunshine, the trees, the clouds, the factory, the workers in the factory, and many more elements have come together to produce this sheet of paper, so this sheet of paper is a formation. That flower is a formation. If you look deeply into the flower you see the sunshine. Without sunshine there would be no flower. There is a cloud in it, there are the minerals in the earth, the compost, the gardener, many elements have come together to make the flower manifest. So the flower is a formation, but that is a physical formation. Our anger is a formation, but it is a mental formation. Our fear, our depression, are mental formations. Many elements have come together to make that formation possible. In my tradition of Buddhism we learned that there are fifty-one categories of mental formations—your fear, your despair, your love, your compassion, your mindfulness. Mindfulness is one of the fifty-one categories of mental formations. So you have the mental formation of mindfulness. That is good news, because if you know how to practice every day, then mindfulness can be generated as an energy, to do the work of recognizing, embracing, transforming and healing. Mindfulness is considered to be the Buddha nature in us, and if you know how to cultivate it, the energy of understanding and loving and forgiveness will be born from this kind of practice.
Mental formations may be negative or positive. When you bring mindfulness to the area of mental formations, you recognize them as such. If it is a positive mental formation, and you recognize it as a positive mental formation, your capacity to release, your capacity to be compassionate, your capacity of understanding, your capacity of being joyful, all these are positive mental formations that exist in you. They may be weaker or stronger, but they do exist in you. Sometimes you believe that they don”t exist, but that is not right. They may not be strong, they may be covered by many layers of suffering, but they do exist. Your capacity of being enlightened, of being loving, of being forgiving, they are always there in your consciousness, in the form of seeds, semences.
Our consciousness may be described as having two layers, or two parts. The upper part is mind consciousness, le mental; and underneath there is the store consciousness, which may be translated as le trefonds. Store consciousness is like the basement of your house, and mind consciousness is like the living room. In the store consciousness all the fifty-one mental formations are preserved in the form of seeds, bija in Sanskrit. They are always there. You may believe that you are not capable of loving, you are afraid of love. You believe that you don”t have the capacity of loving, but that is not true. It is always there. You have not been practicing loving, you have not been practicing watering the seed of love, and it seems difficult to love. But if you know how to practice watering the seed of love in you every day, the seed will grow, and you need only to touch it lightly, and it will become a zone of energy called love, manifested in the upper level of your consciousness.
The seed of love, the seed of fear, the seed of forgiveness, the seed of hatred, every time it is touched, will manifest itself in this upper level in the form of energy. If you are mindful, you can recognize it, and now you c…
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