..human culture has taught you some odd responses to this endless flowing.
We categorize experiences. We try to stick each perception, every mental
change in this endless flow into one of three mental pigeon holes. It is
good, or it is bad, or it is neutral. Then, according to which box we
stick it in, we perceive with a set of fixed habitual mental responses. If
a particular perception has been labeled 'good', then we try to freeze
time right there. We grab onto that particular thought, we fondle it, we
hold it, we try to keep it from escaping. When that does not work, we go
all-out in an effort to repeat the experience which caused that thought.
Let us call this mental habit 'grasping'.

Over on the other side of the mind lies the box labeled 'bad'. When we
perceive something 'bad', we try to push it away. We try to deny it,
reject it, get rid of it any way we can. We fight against our own
experience. We fun from pieces of ourselves. Let us call this mental
habit 'rejecting'. Between these two reactions lies the neutral box. Here
we place the experiences which are neither good nor bad. They are tepid,
neutral, uninteresting and boring. We pack experience away in the neutral
box so that we can ignore it and thus return our attention to where the
action is, namely our endless round of desire and aversion. This category
of experience gets robbed of its fair share of our attention. Let us call
this mental habit 'ignoring'. The direct result of all this lunacy is a
perpetual treadmill race to nowhere, endlessly pounding after pleasure,
endlessly fleeing from pain, endlessly ignoring 90 percent of our
experience. Than wondering why life tastes so flat. In the final analysis,
it's a system that does not work. No matter how hard you pursue pleasure
and success, there are times when you fail. No matter how fast you flee,
there are times when pain catches up with you. And in between those times,
ife is so boring you could scream.

`, . ` `k a r e i' ? ' D42