3.4 The three appearing together are self-control.

This is going to be a fun blog post and not just because The Three Stooges are the greatest comic trio in history. I'm referring to the three stooges of out being: the conciseness, the mind and objects of attachment. These three are intertwined and take a long time for use to sort out. Eventually we do, but we have to do through all kinds of comic high-jinks to get there.

Our consciousness, like it has been said in previous Sutras, is nothing more than pure awareness, without anything else for it to reference, it just exists on it's own. This kind of reminds me of Larry. Does the guy really do anything other than get slapped around a lot?

Next we have the objects of attachment, which lead us in all kinds of different directions. In reality and at their most basic form, this is what has control of our everyday consciousness. Moe seems to be the leader of the group. He tells them where to go, what to do and how to act, but the whole gag is that he doesn't really know he is doing.

Finally, we have the mind. It goes where it is told. It does what we think it wants to do, but in reality, it is following the directions of the sensory objects aka Moe. When we meditate, we have to separate Moe and Curly so that Curly is not getting slapped around by Moe so much.

Getting to the point of this Sutra, we need to get these three facets of our being to work together instead of against each other. The Stooges get themselves out the situations they are in eventually. Our free will, which become stronger as we practice, is the ultimate director of the film staring Moe, Larry and Curly. The director has to yell "cut!" at some point, and the three actors come off the stage and realize they were in a film the whole time. We are participants in a film, metaphorically speaking, and at any time, we can stop the fighting of these three facets of the mind and awaken into greater awareness.