Happiness

With palms together,

Good Morning All,

To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine-ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn't and has never been, but as it might be. The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an "anticipation machine," and "making future" is the most important thing it does.

From the new book, 'Stumbling on Happiness' By DANIEL GILBERT

courtesy, NY Times Review of Books

Yes, this is one of the functions of the human brain, a great evolutionary step. The ability to imagine has been key to our survival and to our dominance of this planet. It has also lead us down the primrose path of delusion. Don't we all enjoy 'being somewhere else'? Especially when the present isn't as we 'expected' or 'desired'? We day dream, fantasize, and otherwise dream travel: on vacation most of the time.

The practice of Zen is a tool to help us come back to reality. It teaches us to live in the present moment, regardless of the quality of that moment.

Now some may ask why we should want to do that. And those who have been raised on or who are hooked on alternative realities such as television, gaming, film, would have a hard time answering, I suspect, so comfortable and interesting is virtual life.

Yet, in truth, alternative realities and mental imaginings are simple mental constructs, having no more validity than the phosphorescent dots on the old TV screen.

There are uses for such realities, but they are uses only, not habitats.

Time to wake up!

Be well.