In the West the idea prevails that doing what we want can lead us to degeneration or ruin, not in vain we live surrounded by orders and judgments that lead us to believe that suppressing our thoughts, feelings and desires is a test of morality. However, the truth is that there are other ways of thinking, and one of them is Zen thinking.
Our culture is fundamentally prohibitive. We start from the idea that education consists of learning to avoid unwanted thoughts, behaviors and feelings, even without understanding why, we are taught from an early age that doing what we want is a sign of madness or immaturity.
- Zen thinking points in a very different direction.
- It has been understood for millennia that prohibitions alone can have the opposite effect.
- That is.
- This repression ends up fostering the desire to do the forbidden.
- Or what is considered negative in the name.
- Of a “good deed” based on authoritarianism.
“Repression from the outside has been supported by repression from within. The individual without freedom internalizes his dominators and commandments in his own mental apparatus. Is the fight against freedom repeated in the human psyche?. – Herbert Marcuse-
Margaret Mead’s anthropological studies show us different types of societies, with very different values and norms, the famous researcher draws our attention to different facts, among them, that in more sexist or matriarchal societies, the percentage of homosexuality is higher. view, that would be a contradiction. From Zen’s point of view, this is a logical consequence of prohibitionism.
Speaking of prohibitionism, another example is the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the United States, which for a long time was considered illegal, so it has generated not only a constant consumption of alcohol, but also the existence of mafias. They thought that when alcoholic beverages were legalized, the number of consumers did not increase. In fact, over time, the number of users of “prohibited drugs” became greater than alcohol.
All this data indicate that repression is not a means of addressing these desires that could be called “disadvantages”. Zen thinking, on the other hand, encourages us to assume these forbidden thoughts, feelings, and desires in order to understand them. believes this is the best way to eliminate them and some experiences support this idea.
Professor Carey Morewedge of Boston University in the United States has conducted a very illustrative study on this subject, gathering 200 people who declared themselves chocolate lovers, these volunteers were divided into two groups. People in the first group should imagine eating 30 chocolates, one by one, the second ones should also imagine eating chocolate, but instead of 30, it would be only 3.
Scientists placed a bowl full of delicious chocolates in front of both groups, it was assumed that the first group would feel a greater desire to eat them, because the thought had been repeated more, after all, the members of this group thought about it. 30 times. On the other hand, the other group imagined the other group eating chocolate only 3 times.
The West tells us that by feeding thought in relation to something, we feed the desire for that thing, well, experience has shown otherwise, those who imagined eating 30 chocolates did not take them in the bowl, while those who only thought of 3 chocolates felt the need to try them in the bowl.
The director of experience indicated that the main conclusion was that when we set out to stop thinking about something the opposite happens: we think about it even more, if we don’t want to think about ghosts, we start seeing ghosts everywhere. , the return of thought focuses our attention on this.
This means that if we think seriously about what we want, that desire is likely to lose strength. Once the idea is developed, the truth is that we can work it in our favor at specific times. and doing that are very different things. So, according to the logic we’ve developed, thinking about how we would attack that person would diminish the desire to attack him.
Is it false or not, when you think, it doesn’t distinguish the real from the imaginary. Is that a mistake? It can help us in many circumstances. When what we want to do is harmful to ourselves or others, nothing better than to desire with thought. Probably, only with this simple mental action, desire will lose its strength.