Enlightenment and electronic learning

Probably sometime from year 2010, I developed a hobby of learning the basics of electronic following my previous learning subjects of Buddhism, flute, writing in English. I found these learning subjects interesting and enjoyable and most importantly, they suit my health condition.

There is a popular perception of life. They say life is an ongoing process of learning, learning to make life easier, more pleasure and less or free of suffering. And after I have learned some basics about Buddhism, the utmost happy goal that surpasses any happy category of things you can name of is the mastery of our mind. I believe this is a truth because I have learned from reading, broadcasting, or chats that the very successful leaders in their fields of career publicly spoke about their feeling of lack of happiness. Without doubt, money is not the cause of happiness. But what is?

Apparently, materialism is not the answer. So I searched the psychological side of our identity for the answer. We were taught "helping others is the cause of happiness" during our schooling period. That is right, it indeed makes one happy when you help someone to solve a problem, do a task or share something good with them. But the feeling of being happy won't stay long. So we keep on searching and contemplating on this question, what is the cause of happiness.

Then, I jump to a conclusion, now that happiness or adversity are psychological reflections of our mind, so the search for the answer should be turning from outside to inside.

The question has been with me all the time. I believe the purpose of our lives is nothing but seeking for the suitable practice in order to attain a long lasting or even an eternal happiness. Although our lives when seen from the surface are seeking for different objects, by theory, that seeking for something is believed by the individual seeker to bring them a happy outcome. However, this process of seeking and pursuing is not guaranteed to be successful every time.

In a dawn meditation sometime ago, an idea emerged from the depth of my conciousness. It seemed to be possible to work for me. It is relating to my self-taught electronic basics.

From the past three years involvement of repairing broken household electronic devices free for friends who are willing to let me try. I had gained some knowledge about the nature of the components as well as the circuit board. Some of the cases could not find anything wrong but just no response to the power applied. My curiousity drove me to study how the incoming current moved; how each of the components worked; did some trial and error, gradually I figured out the problematic part, got it replaced by a new one from eBay and got its function back.

This process took long time because of the necessity in experimenting, components searching, waiting for the ordered parts, but this is how I learn and get to know the behaviors of the circuit board. Once in a meditation I had, the thoughts were runing everywhere as it used to be. I felt annoyed, frustrated and also felt shameful because of being unable to master the meditation skill. However, I sit through till the end-time of my one hour session was up.

I was struggling with the restless mind that time, when the annoyance and frustration were escalating higher and higher, and I was almost intending to skip the rest of the session, a new thought stumbled in. my mind screen displayed how I worked in the garage during the dawn time. The few cases I had done and most satisfied were replayed, suddenly that reviewing seemed to be telling me the analogy between the similarity of the circuit board and the biological brain. They are powered by different types of energy, but they are working in the same way. The circuit relys on the movement of each of the components to play their role to get their functions demonstrated. If somewhere in the circuit a chip or a small capcitor goes a bit out of order, the device will show its abnormality. This is absolutely the same as our brain. For an instance, I am a Parkinson's Disease patient. My symptoms such as involuntary tremor, slow momement, stiffness, emacinating and etc are indicating some part of my brain are having problem. This associating thoughts I experienced that day was indeed a kind of  enlightenment to me.

Since my literally enlightenment experience mentioned above, I always embrace a hope of locating a mechanism in my brain with me into the hour long meditation. Folks. I know you are yelling "don't sit with any attachnent, chap", but this reflects my eagerness in attaining a great leap in my quest of a controllable and duplicatable enlightenment experience through meditation practice.

--the end