Stop and think about the dangers of our moods. They can induce us to do all kinds of unskillful things. If we get really depressed, we get apathetic. When we get really happy and manic, we get complacent.

"Most of us spend our lives feeding off our moods, looking for happy moods because those are the fun ones to feed on. But once you’ve put the mind in a position of feeding off its moods, you find that it’s got a lot of other things to feed on as well, such as depression or sorrow. Once you create that kind of mouth and stomach for the mind, hoping to feed off the good moods, it’s open to take in the sad moods as well.

This happens in your daily life and in your meditation, too. The reason we keep doing this is because we feel that moods at least create the spice of life. If the mind didn’t have moods, we’d feel like we were robots. The idea of a mind without moods sounds like oatmeal nothing added to it, i.e. pretty miserable, pretty dull.

But stop and think about the dangers of our moods. They can induce us to do all kinds of unskillful things. If we get really depressed, we get apathetic. Nothing seems to matter — you lose any sense of concern for the results of your actions. When you get really happy and manic, you get complacent — and again you lose any concern for the results of your actions. You end up doing and saying things that can cause harm very easily. Then you’re stuck with the results.

And it keeps going on through a cycle: There’s the action, there’s the result of the action, and then there’s the mood or the defilement that results from the result. Then you act under the power of that mood or that defilement, which creates more unfortunate actions, more unfortunate results.

You have to realize that the mind is not just a consumer. It’s a producer as well. If you’re going to produce skillful actions, you’ve got to get the mind in a position where it’s not a slave to its moods. From this perspective, the idea of a mind free from its moods sounds like freedom, not dullness: the freedom of a mind that doesn’t have to be under the sway of its very undependable moods all the time.

In the Thai tradition, they talk about a mind without moods as a mind at normalcy. This may sound strange to begin with, because for most of us our normal state of mind is to be under the sway of our moods."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "At Normalcy"

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