Make Friends With Your Mind

"The Great Way is not difficult for those without addiction to preferences..." -Sengcan. This includes a reading from the text "Trust in Mind" by Sengcan along with commentary and guided meditation practice.

Transcript

Hello,

I'm Daniel.

I was thinking about things that inspire me and there is this old text that inspires me a lot and I wanted to give some teachings from this old text and there's one issue I had with it though and this text is called Xin Xin Ming and that's usually often,

Usually often translated as faith in mind like this but sometimes it's also translated as trust in mind like this sometimes confidence in mind.

I wish I had a version that said confidence in mind on the cover but what is it?

It is about sort of believing in yourself,

Having faith in your mind.

So we teach that our mind is basically good,

That we have enlightenment at the center of our being already so it's not something far away we're working toward but rather we're just trying to get to the center of our being.

It's the opposite of ideas that human beings are bad,

Right?

It's the opposite of that.

We have basic goodness.

We're basically good.

We have this at our core.

We just have to turn our minds to see it.

We just have to put down our baggage to see it.

Wisdom is our nature and that's a hard thing to wrap our heads around sometimes and that's why we talk about cultivating faith in mind that is believing in yourself and that word faith people struggle with that of course and that's why I think that's why words like trust get used instead because we attach certain connotations to the word faith that maybe aren't present here.

This is about believing in yourself and believing that your true nature is good.

So that's what we're talking about with this text and I wanted to talk about this text because I really love it and it's got little it's it's it's it's poetic it's like poetry so it's got lines like this and it's kind of short and that makes it very easy for me to talk about and my sort of my specialty specialty is sort of taking these difficult things this one's not difficult but taking these maybe old-timey things and sort of relating them and making them useful and helpful to us.

I think of that as my specialty maybe I don't have a specialty but so I thought well if I'm teaching this text if I'm teaching things like this text what do I call it what do I call it because I don't want to call it faith in mind or really all of these terms that we could use don't do anything for me but then I thought well what about make friends with your mind not trust your mind make friends with your mind trust your mind sounds kind of weird faith in mind sounds very strange because we think of faith as something else but trust in mind even sounds kind of weird because you know if we do our sitting practice we see oh my mind is a crazy person my mind is a crazy person it goes all sorts of places I don't want it to go and I can't really control it at all so I don't trust my mind I don't trust my mind if I trusted my mind I'd let it do what it wants which is not be present right so I thought of make friends with your mind so like if you have a friend that has a serious addiction problem you don't just trust them you want to help them and you think of different ways to help them right you might schedule an intervention you might even put them in a facility maybe if they really need it but you might throw away their drugs of course but that's making friends with them that's not trusting them that's not having confidence in them because confidence is not what they need I mean they need you to really look out for them in the same way we think of our meditation practice sometimes as something we're doing like this like I'm bringing the hammer down on my mind I'm cutting away my thoughts I'm attacking my mind we think of our mind as an enemy sometimes because it's so hard for us to meditate sometimes and that's also not maybe not the right way to think of it because in the same way if you have a friend with a terrible addiction well you're not just hitting them with a hammer right you're thinking of different ways to help them deal with the situation you're not attacking you're not holding them down like this you're not beating them down you're trying to figure out how to help them you're making friends with them and in that way we're making friends with our minds making friends with our minds so I really like that and so we're gonna meditate for a little bit and then I'm gonna give a talk about making friends with our mind so I'm pretty excited for that so I want you to sit up as straight as you can and find a position where your feet aren't gonna fall asleep I like to do an eyes-open practice so I'm gonna be fixing my attention on the wall behind my computer here but you if you like an eyes closed practice I think that's okay find a position where your feet aren't gonna fall asleep I have a plan for your hands I like to do I'm going to do I like to recommend two different things and one is the relaxation which is just hands on your knees and the other one is the bowl which is one hand on top of the other thumbs gently touching some people place a lot of attention on saying your right hand should be on top and some people say your left hand should be on top I think it doesn't matter but you take that and you rest it in your lap the point is we have a plan for what our hands are gonna do because if we don't have a plan then every scratch every itch is gonna be really easy to scratch every we're gonna have lots of points of distraction and that being said if during this sit you feel like you really have to adjust yourself for scratch I usually suggest just do it and get it over with as quick as you can and get back to your position because if we're just thinking about how we've got a scratch well that's not helpful go ahead and take three deep breaths I'm gonna ring the bell three times to begin our meditation and we'll meditate just for a little while and then I'll come back and give the talk And then they're gonna come back in talk.

Now,

What I want you to do for this meditation is simply bring your attention into your experience.

Bring your attention into your experience.

So what does that mean?

That means try to notice everything that's happening,

But at the same time don't attach to anything that's happening.

This is maybe hard to do at first,

But I notice the chair beneath my body.

I notice birds singing.

I notice the way my hands feel touching each other.

I notice a sound somewhere in the house,

But I'm not sort of sitting here thinking,

I wonder what that sound is.

I wonder if that sound's going to stop.

I just notice the sound.

Oh,

I'm noticing a sound.

And then come back to this moment.

And even with thoughts,

I'm thinking about what I'm doing later,

But then I just label that.

I just think,

Oh,

I'm thinking about what I'm doing later.

I just come back to this moment.

Just naming what we're doing takes away the power of our crazy minds.

Just about being here and in silence.

And what we find if we do this for a while,

We tend to find that after a while,

There's a little bit less going on in there.

We're a little bit more present.

Slowly.

Because I'm just.

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Reviews

I must say, I loved this talk. It’s unusual for me to read one that’s not been read it read it already. I loved the format of talk - meditation - talk/storytelling. I will definitely listen to this again when I have time to meditate along with it. I was doing cleaning chores… Lol not exactly meditating… i’m not unfamiliar with the Buddhist philosophy of nonattachment, but I really enjoyed your take on it, and your story telling. Thank you! Namaste 🙏🏼