Short Statement of my Theories
(The underlined links lead to detailed elaborations of the theories or intellections presented in this website)
- Mindfulness meditation is an intensive exercise of our brain’s inhibitory mechanisms. How do we specifically train our inhibitory mechanisms? Since we cannot witness what is not happening, how do we keep fit such mechanisms whose work—stopping or slowing down actions—is invisible? This is exactly what the practice of mindfulness meditation does.
- Essential Self and Redundant Ego. Essential self is the reduced or downsized self when the harmful formations have been silenced; what is left of our inflated self when we suppress the redundant portion. Redundant ego is the share of self, programmed in our brain by harmful mental formations, that is discretionary and, therefore, it can be disconnected or turned off. Each person’s redundant ego is the seat of his or her suffering.
- Inner harmony is the absence of suffering. We should not run after ‘Inner Harmony’. Inner harmony is the spontaneous outcome of removing from our mind the learned mental formations or conditionings that we develop from uncontrolled cravings, aversions and biased views. Anxiety-and-stress—what the Buddha called ‘suffering’—is the set of negative feelings generated by cravings for what we lack, aversions to what imaginarily or actually surrounds us, or affiliation to metaphysical or irrational beliefs.