Wisdom So we are standing in front of the wash basin. The tap gets turned on and the soap bar is picked up. We scrub our hands vigourously and rinse with water. We dry our hands on the towel. Maybe we will do it a few more times just so that it feels right.

What happens if we try to restrain ourselves from doing this ritual? If we refuse to turn on the water, what goes through our minds? We know that our hands are dirty and contaminated. They need to be washed. They must be washed. Where do these thoughts come from? Did somebody tell you that you had to do this? Not usually, I can't remember the last time somebody told me to go wash my hands.

Did we make a conscious, informed decision to wash our hands? Not for me. In fact, if I stop to think about it, the rational side of me tells me that my hands are totally clean and do not need to be washed at all.

What's left then? I don't know about anybody else, but for me, the urge to wash comes from deep down in my gut somewhere. I just know that my hands are dirty. Where this knowledge or feeling comes from, I have no idea. What I do know is that I have it, and it can be very intense. Wouldn't it be great if we could supplant these wrong thoughts with correct thoughts that were more in line with reality?

Over the years, I have known the futility of trying to use cold reason with my OCD. I tried desisting from my rituals on the basis that they were illogical. However, logic is a blunt weapon against the armour of OCD. At the most, we can batter the monster back into its hiding place, but it will come back later with a vengeance when we have dropped our guard again.

Logic belongs in the domain of cintamaya-panna. But this is not where the OCD monster makes its den. To find this beast's lair, we must go down deeper than the surface level. We must go all the way down to where bhavanamaya-panna operates. OCD is like a submarine and we are on the surface in a gunboat. Firing our cannons will be useless, we must use the depth charges to take it out.

It is clear to me that to stand a good chance against OCD, we need to point our attention towards what is under the conscious mind. I don't know what subterranean monsters lie in wait, but I don't care, I won't let some upstart bully pull me down any more. Fortunately for us, we are not alone. Even though the Buddha is no longer here with us, his teachings are.

The three Pali words which I spoke about yesterday have the same root word, panna, which means wisdom. The highest wisdom is knowledge of the ways things really are. It is totally against the defiled view of reality which OCD paints for us. Within the Buddhist teachings, we have clear and precise instructions on how we can pass true knowledge of the way things actually are, or panna, to that part of our minds which is normally hidden below the surface.

  ¶ 8:41 PM