How often we come across something beautiful like maybe a warm cup of coffee with some beautiful friend or a good song with romantic words or an evening sun with a cool drink in hand… Our senses don’t have memories but whenever we do something or experience something we have a unconscious tendency to compare with some past experience to measure the feeling and mark it as better or worse or similar.
Our senses really don’t have memories but its us who ‘tag’ every sense with some experience and try to remember them or store them - and that causes this comparison or conflict. If we like something - maybe a song or a book or a food we take it as a good feeling - we become so habituated that we do the tagging unconsciously. the brain stores the sense (in effect it should not have) with that particular image for future reference.
So a song arouses a feeling of melancholy or a nostalgia simply because it was tagged with some other events. A coffee tastes bad or good not from the taste it delivers but from the silent review by the mind which compares it with some past event based on the same tagging. That’s the reason why instead of enjoying a beautiful sunset we have a feeling of sadness or something missing.
It is very difficult to see something with a clean mind free of prejudice or perceived notions. So even when you are with someone in any circumstance - the brain on the background compares it with something in the past and gives it a different shade. A child will enjoy anyone’s company as his or her mind is free of any notions and will appreciate every experience - a child is always happy.
The past is always within us and takes strong hold of the present and also the future which again creates all the conflict in us. Humanity as of now is a product of the past - past knowledge, past experience and the like. And past will only create conflict and misery and suffering and keep us blind to true awareness.
