I am cleaning my house to Jamiroquai's song Love Foolosophy hence the play on words of "philosophy", and thoughts are arising as they often do between my ears. The current one has me thinking about the differences in perspective I have on life, which appear to be based upon the mental state I have at the time, and how those thought patterns affect my living space and quality of life.

I watched Monkey Magic at every opportunity I could when I was younger, and still get a lot of joy from the show 30+ years later. One quote that sticks in my mind to this day is:

'With our thoughts we make the world' which is part of a quote from Guatama Buddha aka Siddartha Guatama, the founder of Buddhism. The full quote is:

[i]We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.[/i]

When my thoughts are chaotic, focusing on what I perceive as negative, so is my life. There appears to be a dualism between thought and action, and that either can precipitate changes which I perceive as positive. For example, I might be in a shit mood, but if I do something that orders my life in the way I would like it to be, my mental state improves.

I am curious to hear other people's opinions on this matter :)

While it's true that what we think makes the world around us, what others do also makes the world around us too. We are affected by butterfly wings, metaphorically and literally... Of course how we respond makes all the difference. Then again if one is a woman in a country where women have no rights and can be stoned to death because one's husband is tired of you and decides to accuse you of infidelity, choosing to think the world is different probably isn't going to help. But yeah, if one is living in a higher level of Maslow, this is definitely a way to go... You can totally decide to ignore how your children, spouse, boss or closest friends treat you and live on a higher plane of existence.

Yeah, I might be coming from a place of bitterness and anger right now. Life sucks and then you die. So yeah, no matter how much I try to look at the sunset and decide to not care about the cumulative hurts inflicted, the loss of people I care about, at a certain point the pile gets hard to see over. I could certainly view the pile as the sunset - yeah, maybe that will work...

Life philosophies are a challenging topic to undertake. We humans are quite arrogant and often have a clear direction in mind until something/someone changes things. How we respond to this change reveals our character. I try to view my life as a trajectory and life's "butterfly effect" as simply a variance in my trajectory.

However, the reality is when change does occur in my life I often resent it and want to put things back to the way they were because I know best!! The disillusionment brought on by unfulfilled goals and changes in plans tempts me to be bitter and cynical. I have to constantly remind myself each day is a gift and a journey. Enjoy it.



The old man in me then tells me to stop talking like a hippie...;p

Well, thoughts do affect the way we see everything, simply because they have an effect on our mind state and the mind acts as a filter, when you filter milk through a coffee cone you get coffee coloured milk, but if the filter has strawberry powder it'll take a pink coloured tone, yet milk is milk.
The thing is, sometimes it's not that the people willingly or actively put themselves in a negative state, it's just that they get intoxicated by others, since it can be contagious. That's why one should learn to dominate the mind and not let the mind dominate yourself, that is learn to direct what and how your mind "thinks", kind of a domestication. In such a state you can put yourself in such a place that negative people won't have an influence in you.
What you think, molds what you say, what you say drives what you do, what you do repeatedly creates habit and habit molds character. That's why what you do can and will have an effect on your mind state too. But it's a process, it's not something that gets done overnight.

There's a tale that has something to do with that. A samurai that's wondering about the concepts of hell and heaven, goes to see a monk. When he arrives, greets and tells the monk that there's something troubling him, the monk looks at him and the samurai continues and asks what is heaven and what is hell. The monk gives him a disdained look and says that he doesn't have time for such things and continues what he's doing.
The samurai seeing this gets into a rage, gets his sword out and points it to the monk, shouting at him that he could make him pay for such insolence. The monk then turns, points at him and says, "That is hell". The samurai hearing this, gets to understand what the monk is meaning, puts his sword aside, kneels down and bows in front of the monk, while asking him to forgive him. The monk still looking at him, says, "And that, that is heaven".

Anyway, too much nonsense hehe? : P

Thanks for your replies :) The part I bolded in your reply is the realisations I am coming to through life experience. Everything written so far by everyone makes sense to me, regardless of the perspective :)

I will join in on this conversation more thoroughly once I get my work for the day done. My father's recent comment to me of "Tenzin Gyatso (current Dalai Lama) writes “Change only takes place through action. Not through prayer or meditation, but through action.”" is helping me to change that which I do not like in my life.

At this point in time, it is living a chaotic lifestyle. Whilst I enjoy chaos well and truly in many forms (nice to see the Butterfly effect mentioned already, I prefer a little order in certain aspects of life where I have control over it, and my living space is one.

Learning to adapt to living with 2 people I haven't lived with before has been challenging for the past 9 months, and also a wonderful experience in many ways. Now that my broken hand is healing well(my wrist not so well) I am prioritising the direction of my energy to create the life that I want, rather than just talking about it (irony writing this thread? Nah threads like this are a great reminder when I'm not feeling so positive).

I have expended much energy complaining and being negative about the way in which this household is run with little to no avail. Rather than continue to do that, and cause further issues, I'm doing what I see needs doing. Back to it!

You seem to let your spirit go in the direction of Buddhism.

I would recommend reading Ikkyu. I found it a very insightful book about a very unusual Zen monk. Unfortunately it seems hard to get at the moment. There is an online version of the first book(s) somewhere IIRC.

I don't know if you know it already - shamans have an in a way similar view of life. For the shaman life is a dream. And it is possible to learn to influence/control your dreams - including the "life dream". It may not be easy and takes a lot of dedication but it is possible.

I've delved both into Zen and shamanism for quite some years and I find them in some ways very similar and in other ways radically different.