Selective Thinking
Harmonious Perspective
What can save us from this plight is the Harmonious Perspective (samma ditthi). This special perspective is to be become conscious of the unconscious mental processes that go on as impersonal mental processes dependent on conditions. This is to understand the problem and its solution, without assuming the notion of “self”. This resolves the cognitive dissonance between emotion and reason, and brings about a cognitive consonance, by means of a Harmonious Sense of Values (saddha), which begins to guide our lives, and transform our character by means of a Harmonious Goal Reorientation (samma sankappa), by directing our minds towards the Harmonious Goal of Life, which is NIRVANA, the Imperturbable Serenity of Mind.
The Harmonious Sense of Values is to understand the distinction between good and bad, in terms of happiness and unhappiness. It is to understand that good is what brings happiness to oneself and others, while bad is what brings unhappiness to oneself and others. This resolves the conflict between the desire to be happy and the desire to be good, the conflict that causes vacillation of mind or cognitive dissonance (vicikicca). The desire to be happy is the desire to be carried away by emotions and express the emotions. The desire to be good is to be guided by the thinking part of the mind, and desire to suppress the emotions.
The conflict is because happiness is seen as expression of desire, and goodness is seen as suppression of desires, therefore to be good is to be unhappy, and to be happy is to be not good. This way of thinking leads to the question, “Should I be happy and bad, or should I be good and unhappy?” This is vacillation cognitive dissonance (vicikicca). This conflict is between emotion and reason, the emotions pulling in one direction, and reason pulling in another direction. It is emotion in conflict with reason.
This conflict is resolved, however, by the two desires finding union and satisfaction in tranquility of mind (samadhi) and relaxation of the body (passaddhi), because this tranquility makes one happy as well as good. This is the medial path shown by the Buddha between the pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of discipline. This was why the Buddha said, “There is no happiness apart from the Dhamma” (sukhaŋ ca na vina dhammaŋ).
This explains why the Buddha introduced his teaching as the way to end unhappiness, rather than the way to end evil. The way to end evil might look like trying to suppress our emotions to be good, and the suppression of emotions looks like unhappiness. This is why religiosity and ascetism is commonly seen as “self torture”. If, instead of talking about self discipline that people seem to deride, we begin to talk about happiness that is derived, not from expression of emotions, but from relaxation of the body and tranquility of the mind. Then being good becomes the same thing as being happy. Now happiness is seen as relaxation of body and tranquility of mind. This kind of happiness is a return to the original equilibrium that was lost.
If we examine a baby in a happy mood, we observe that the body is relaxed and the mind is calm. The moment the baby begins to cry, the body is tensed and the mind is disturbed. This shows that the original state is the calm state, and not the disturbed state. As we grow up and begin to go through life, we are disturbed by many favorable as well as unfavorable circumstances. This disturbance is a reaction of the organism to environmental stimulation where we lose our original equilibrium quite unconsciously. We do not even know how to return to the original state then. Often we even begin to enjoy this disturbance. We do not realize the extent to which begin to suffer as a result. Today the modern psychologists call this stress. It was this suffering that the Buddha called dukkha and showed the way out of it, by returning to the original equilibrium, NIBBANA.