Video Discussion: To See New Things, Empty Your Mind

First video discussion post in a long time. I watched the movie 2012 for the first time in a long time. Even though it was very short, this scene really spoke to me. A bit of background of what led to this scene. A family and group of people are fleeing to ships that will protect them from the end of the world. Elsewhere two monks are talking about what is happening. One monk helps to ease the other ones troubled mind by pouring tea into a cup and allowing it to overflow. Here’s the scene

A Full Mind

So I believe a lot of people are wired like the young monk. People are full of opinions and speculations about themselves, other people, and life itself. Yet people want to learn more and seek wisdom from others.

However, if we are too full of opinions and speculate about every little thing, then our minds are not able to take in new things. Even now, we still live in a fast paced society where we want answers to our questions right away. Our minds can go fast and even go into overdrive. When this happens, we have trouble learning new things or are unable to learn something new and sometimes are not able to see the things right on front of us. Even the simple things seem very complex.

An Open Mind

As the older monk said, to see the light of wisdom, you must first empty your cup. In other words, to accept new knowledge and wisdom from others, we need to slow our minds down. We need to put aside our thoughts, speculations, and opinions and have an open mind. An open mind will allow you to comprehend and learn new things.

This is easier said than done I know. For some people, they have trouble slowly their thoughts down because they’re going from one thing to the next. We also have a tendency to take in the littlest new thing and quickly fit it into our established thought patterns.

However by doing this we assume we don’t need to learn anything else and we close our minds. Some new things take time to learn and we don’t always get the full picture up front. We learn one new thing and then we learn the next part of it at a later time and date.

Wrap Up

The overall moral is we should always be open to new things. We should be patient and not rush the process. Some things are easier to learn than others. Some things take longer to learn and that’s just life which is ok. It’s good to have our own opinions and speculations, we just have to keep them in check every now and then which can be challenging.

Take care, stay safe, and remember your not alone and you have worth in this world.