Three “Disciplines” – Perception, Action, and Will
- Perception: requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought, that we see things dispassionately for what they are.
- Action: relates to our relationship with other people, we must work for their collective good, treating them justly and fairly.
- Will: counterpart to action. Governs our attitude to things that are not within our control, those that we have done to us by others or nature.
At each moment, you have the option to:
- to accept this event with humility (will)
- to treat this person as he should be treated (action)
- to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in (perception)
Concentrate every minute on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. Freeing yourself from all distractions by doing everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life. Stop being aimless and letting your emotions override what your mind tells you.
People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every though and impulse toward are wasting their time – even when hard at work.
Disturbance only comes from within, from our own perceptions. Everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist.
Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.
It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character, otherwise it cannot harm you inside or out.
Where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine.
What happens to each of us is ordered. Look at things as prescribed, like a doctor would prescribe a treatment. “He was prescribed an illness”
The things you think about determine your quality of mind.
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
Anger is not the answer, show the offender where they went wrong.
When others hurt you, that’s their problem. Their character and actions are not yours. What is done to you is ordained by nature, what you do by your own.
Use your login to awaken others logic. Show them, make them realize. If they listen you’ll have solved the problem without anger.
You can lead an untroubled life providing you can grow, think, and act systematically. Two characteristics you must have:
- Not let others hold you back
- Locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and limit your desires to that.
When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help.
People are drawn toward what they think is good for them. If you know it’s not good for them, then show them that. Prove it to them instead of losing your temper.
Ambition means tying your wellbeing to what other people say or do. Self indulgence means tying it to things that happen to you. Sanity means tying to to your own actions.
It doesn’t hurt you unless you interpret its happening as harmful.
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs, in which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion.
Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful, don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them – that it would upset you to lose them.
Wash yourself clean with simplicity, humility, and indifference to everything but right and wrong.
External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.
Remember that when it withdraws into itself and finds contentment there, the mind is invulnerable.
The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. Not to see this is ignorance. To see it and not seek safety means misery.
You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind – things that exist only there – and clear space for yourself:
- by comprehending the scale of the world
- by contemplating infinite time
- by thinking of the speed with which things change – each part of everything; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbound time that follows.
When you start to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and gut, not the angry whiners.
To expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. To let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant.
mitchatavail 