Understanding Our Minds: Healing Blocks Of Suffering

Drawing on Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching on the different layers of consciousness, we explore the nature of the 'seeds' that sleep in the depths of our mind. We can each learn to be skillful gardeners of our own and others’ minds, watering the wholesome seeds and skillfully caring for the unwholesome ones. As we deepen in presence and familiarity with our minds, we can also begin to identify and heal larger blocks of suffering that lie under the surface, causing harm to ourselves and others.

Transcript

So I want to share on the theme of our call today,

Which is understanding our minds,

Healing blocks of suffering in the individual and collective consciousness.

So I want to share about a teaching that's been really helpful for me that I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh,

My teacher,

About how our minds work.

And he talks about there being many layers of our mind.

And I had wanted to draw a diagram,

But I didn't get paper.

I've been on a retreat.

So he draws on the board this circle,

And then he draws a line across.

So there's an upper and a lower level.

And so the lower level is the store consciousness,

Is what we might call the basement of a house where we keep all these things.

And the upper level is called mind consciousness.

And that is like the living room.

It's like where the things in the basement,

If you bring them into the living room,

Then they have life.

So they come to life.

So if you keep your record player in the basement,

When you bring it to the living room,

You put on a record and it starts to play music.

So another way of thinking of these two layers is like soil in a garden.

So under the soil are these seeds.

And when a seed is watered,

It sprouts up and it manifests at the level of the mind.

So according to Buddhist psychology,

There are 51 or some traditions say 52 different numbers,

But there are a variety of seeds in the depths of our minds.

And we all have all the same seeds.

We all have wholesome seeds.

We all have unwholesome seeds.

So we have wholesome seeds are like our generosity,

Our seed of forgiveness,

Our seed of mindfulness,

Of compassion,

Of equanimity,

Of insight,

Of concentration,

Our seed of being practicing ethically,

Being honest,

Seed of a sense of humor,

Of being able to let go.

And then unwholesome seeds,

We all have all the same unwholesome seeds of discrimination,

Of violence,

Of judgment,

Of hatred,

Of ignorance,

Of greed,

Of dishonesty,

Of being closed off.

And then there are some seeds that are indeterminate that depend on the situation,

Whether they're wholesome or unwholesome.

One example is sleepiness,

Like that can be wholesome when we really need to rest.

Sometimes sleepiness is there as a way to avoid things,

As a way to shut down.

And in that case,

It's more unwholesome.

So we all have all these seeds.

So I find that teaching just alone very liberating to know that when I get angry,

When I get insecure,

When I get jealous,

That that's not something particularly wrong or bad about me.

But that's part of the human condition that everyone has that seed.

And some seeds in us may be stronger than others because of our ancestors,

The ways we were raised,

In our culture,

In our communities.

Certain seeds got watered without our choosing.

We may have a big seed of fear if people around us had a lot of fear or watered that seed of fear in us,

Told us that we weren't safe or we couldn't do things or made us feel more insecure.

So that seed might be bigger depending on our particular history.

Other seeds might be smaller,

Maybe our seed of confidence or of joy is really big because of how we were encouraged to be and the things in us that people saw and nourished.

And what's so important about our mindfulness practice is,

So what happens,

The dynamic of how these seeds work is they're there asleep under the surface in the store consciousness.

And in the upper level of our mind we're always taking in sense impressions through the sense doors.

So if you think of that upper layer of the mind having like five doorways,

So there's a doorway of the ears,

A doorway of the nose,

A doorway of the mouth,

A doorway of touch,

A doorway of eyes.

Things are coming into our mind all the time and we're also producing thoughts in our mind from within.

And all those things are falling down into the depths of our mind and watering certain seeds.

So the things we see,

We hear,

We touch,

We taste,

We smell,

And the things we think,

Those are the six senses in Buddhism,

All those things are nourishing seeds in the depths of our mind all the time.

So we want to know which seeds are getting watered because we are often unconsciously watering unwholesome seeds.

We're watering seeds of fear,

Seeds of doubt,

Seeds of craving,

Seeds of discrimination,

Seeds of violence.

I have a friend who mentioned that when she'd go shopping she would always look at the magazines at the checkout line,

They always have these magazines,

So she'd just look at the ones,

Regular magazines,

And she would notice after looking through them that she wouldn't feel very good about her body,

About her body image.

So just subtly,

Just looking at pictures of these supermodels and women,

You know,

Fitting into this very unattainable image of what a woman should look like,

That she would not feel good about herself.

So she decided to stop,

She consciously decided to not look at those magazines as she'd go through the checkout line.

And she noticed she felt better about herself.

So that's just a little example of all the different sense impressions,

Which is a kind of food,

Right?

We eat food,

But we also,

Another kind of food are all the things that we consume through our senses throughout the day.

We want to really check out how those things are nourishing the seeds under the soil,

Because the key to our liberation is how we take care of those seeds in the store of our mind.

So if we have a seed of fear under the soil,

And we water it,

It arises into the mind consciousness,

Into the living room,

And it's an actual energy.

It's no longer a potential that's asleep under the soil,

It becomes the energy of fear.

When we feel all the hormones,

All the neurochemicals that get released in our body that cause us to go into fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

You know,

Our life can get shortened by constantly nourishing fear.

It can cause aging to happen faster.

It can depress our immune system.

So all these things happen when fear arises in the mind that change our body chemistry,

And it has a real effect on us.

We start to look at things in a certain way.

We start to see things that might not be there,

Because we're so afraid.

We misperceive.

So when we nourish fear in the mind consciousness,

In the upper level of the mind,

When fear is allowed to be there for five minutes or ten minutes,

The seed of fear in the root,

In the store consciousness,

So that root of fear at the seed level gets five or ten minutes of food,

And it gets a little bit bigger.

So the next day or the next week when something happens,

That seed of fear arises faster,

And it's more intense,

And it lasts longer.

So we experience ourselves becoming more fearful.

The more we consume things that feed the seed of fear,

And the more we allow it to be up in the mind,

The more air time we give it on this radio station,

Then the stronger it gets,

And the more it manifests spontaneously all by itself.

So you can see how it can create a vicious cycle of the more fearful we become,

The more we experience fear,

And the more we experience fear,

The more fearful we get.

And so on and on we become more and more fearful.

So there's another way to do things,

Right?

And we all know,

Right,

Maybe we ourselves have a certain seed that we've allowed to become very strong that's unwholesome,

Maybe we've nourished the seed of anger a lot,

Or nourished the seed of sadness,

Or the seed of self-doubt,

Or the seed of judgment,

Judging others.

We know where that goes,

Right?

We nourish that seed and it comes up and it does not make us happy.

It takes over the living room,

And it colors the whole of our mindscape.

It's like we shut the curtains,

We,

You know,

Everything gets very dreary when that unwholesome emotion has taken over.

So we want to bring in mindfulness,

And we all have the seed of mindfulness.

This is a beautiful thing.

And one of the most beautiful things is one of the conditions for mindfulness arising in the mind is previous moments of mindfulness.

So every time we practice noticing our breath,

Noticing our body,

Noticing what's happening in our emotions,

Taking a pause,

To just feel what's here,

What's happening,

That nourishes the seed of mindfulness.

It gets bigger.

It gets more likely to arise.

It's stronger.

It will last longer when it does arise,

And it will be more intense.

So we can cultivate mindfulness.

We can cultivate all of the wholesome seeds.

We can consume foods through our senses,

Through our sights,

Through our eyes,

Through our ears,

Through our nose,

That nourish the seeds that we want to nourish in us,

Of compassion,

Of clarity,

Of stillness,

Of presence.

We should nourish them every day.

That is what the Buddha taught.

We should nourish the wholesome and avoid nourishing the unwholesome.

We can do that every day.

So when we nourish the wholesome,

When an unwholesome seed arises,

We can do something about it.

We don't need to let that unwholesome seed take over and make us do things that we don't want to do,

Which is often what happens.

So when an unwholesome seed arises,

Like fear,

It's like this seed has come up and it's now manifesting above the ground,

Above the soil.

So then we call up mindfulness.

As soon as we notice that this has entered the living room,

We need adult supervision in there.

So we bring up mindfulness,

And mindfulness doesn't fight our fear.

It doesn't push away our fear.

It doesn't judge our fear.

It doesn't say,

Why are you feeling that way?

That's not who I want to be.

That's not who I am.

Mindfulness doesn't do that.

Mindfulness has no preference what it's going to be mindful of.

It's happy to be mindful of our joy.

It's happy to be mindful of our equanimity.

It's happy to be mindful of our fear,

Of our self-hatred,

Of our jealousy.

It doesn't care.

It wants to just be with whatever is.

So mindfulness comes and it embraces our fear.

And it says,

Oh,

I see you,

Fear.

First of all,

It recognizes fear is here.

And then it says,

Oh,

It's okay.

You can be here.

It doesn't push fear away,

Just like we did in the meditation.

And mindfulness says,

I'm here for you.

I'm offering you my presence.

I'm being here for you.

And we breathe with it.

And we try not to get into the storyline of it,

The thinking about it.

Why am I fearful?

I shouldn't be fearful.

Or what happened?

How can I stop this coming about?

No,

We just experience the fear and be with it.

We feel it in our body.

We notice it.

We breathe with it.

We allow mindfulness to give it space and to inquire into how does it feel?

What is it like at the body level?

And can I be with it?

Can I just allow it?

And mindfulness has the capacity to hold it.

Sometimes our mindfulness isn't strong enough.

If the block of suffering that arises is so big,

It may not,

We might not have a strong enough mindfulness.

So then we need to find a teacher,

Find a community,

Find a friend,

Find a therapist,

A group of people that have mindfulness.

And we can draw on their mindfulness to strengthen ours so we can be there with this painful emotion,

With the seed that's arisen.

I have done that.

I have asked people to help me hold a really difficult emotion.

So mindfulness holds it and as it holds it,

Because all these parts of ourselves,

They're so used to being pushed away because that's our first inclination,

Is to avoid anything painful.

So our tendency is to either vent and express and explode into whatever this emotion is so we completely identify with it.

It runs away with us or we suppress it.

Those are the two usual paths we take.

But mindfulness is a third middle path of being with it,

Not letting it take us over and also not suppressing it.

So that's exactly what the parts in us that are in pain want and need.

Just like a child that's crying or that's upset,

They don't really want to be left alone.

They don't want to be judged or yelled at for being upset.

All they really want is to be held,

To be spoken to with kindness,

To be accepted for how they are.

They don't want to be fixed.

They don't want to be told they're wrong,

Shut in the closet.

They just want to be held.

If you think about yourself as a child or you know other children,

What happens when they're held,

When they're soothed by someone who cares?

Maybe they calm down if they're not being yelled at or told to stuff it.

They start to settle down because the nervous system of whoever is holding them or soothing them starts to calm the nervous system of the child.

So that's exactly what happens when mindfulness comes to embrace fear or any painful emotion.

It starts to let that part of our self know it's okay that it's there because it's a part of us.

So it starts to calm,

It starts to settle and then it starts to reveal itself to us.

So at that point when the emotion is beginning to settle then we can begin to inquire and look deeply to understand it.

And then often all by itself we don't even need to do much.

Suddenly it's just this awareness is there of like,

Oh I see this fear comes from the situation I experienced a long time ago,

Not just what I'm experiencing in the present moment or this is my mother's fear or my father's fear or my community's fear or we may understand something about it that we hadn't understood before that helps us to be a little more free.

And so then that seed of fear it comes back,

It comes back into the form of a seed.

So the emotion that was alive is now weaker,

Weaker,

Weaker and it comes back to the form of a seed.

And every time we do that process of bathing our painful emotions with mindfulness the seed in the storehouse becomes smaller.

That's the beautiful thing.

We can affect these seeds in the store of our mind.

So in a fearful situation with that smaller seed we're less likely to become fearful and if the seed of fear is activated and arises it will be less intense and it will last less long.

It won't be there as long.

So you can see how we can cultivate a lot more happiness,

A lot more well-being by how we take care of these mind states when they arise and how we avoid watering them.

We don't let them arise to begin with if we can and sometimes we can't.

So when they do arise if we take care of them right away they come back and they're transformed.

It doesn't mean it goes away just one time you do that and then you don't have the seed of fear anymore.

It's a long time it takes to transform the seed of fear but slowly every time you do that it gets smaller,

Smaller,

Smaller and less and less likely to disturb our mind in unwholesome ways.

So I also want to mention that there are sometimes blocks of suffering in our consciousness that have accumulated over time especially if we practice suppressing.

So maybe something has happened that was difficult for us in our childhood or maybe something happened in the people who took care of us in their lives and that got transmitted to us even though it didn't happen to us but we have that same block in our consciousness and this is more than just a little seed of suffering it's like a big clump of suffering.

Part of the reason why many of us keep the upper level of our minds constantly full of stimulation is because a part of us knows unconsciously or subconsciously that there is this block of suffering under down in the basement.

And so we're always doing things we stay busy we always have to read a newspaper when we have free time or we look at our phones or we're listening to music or we watch TV or we listen to the news or we need to talk to people or we have to go shopping or we have to eat something or we have to do do do do do do so that there's no quiet still space in our mind because when there is that block of suffering rises because it's needing attention it's needing our care.

So if it doesn't arise during the day guess what it'll come up in our dreams and we'll have a nightmare or we'll have some memory something arises in our dreams because this block of suffering is down there.

It's a presence it's alive it's needing to be seen and recognized but what often happens is we will avoid it so we'll fill up our mind with everything we can to not feel it and sometimes that manifests in addictive pattern so we might have you know turn to drinking in order to not feel that we might turn to drugs we might turn to a sexual addiction or shopping addiction or become addicted to our work or extreme sports or something so that we get so focused on something sensational and external that we don't have to feel that block of suffering that's always under there asking to be seen.

If we keep doing that the thing the thing about that avoiding pattern is often the things we turn to say it's sadness that's this big block of suffering maybe some kind of even depression we might turn to things that make us sad like listening to sad music or reading things that are really sad or maybe we have some fear in there that block of suffering is some unresolved trauma something we're deeply afraid of we might turn to like reading really like scary books horror books horror movies that water the seed of fear.

Often the things we use to avoid the suffering end up watering that same block of suffering we don't intend that to happen but that's often what does happen so if we have a seed of shame and we become addicted to a substance we drink to avoid it and then after when we have that hangover and we're no longer drunk we feel more ashamed and that just nourishes the shame and then we want to drink more and we feel more ashamed and so at a certain point that block of suffering gets so big because of how we're nourishing it unintentionally that it bursts through into mind consciousness and we find ourselves in a really deep difficulty with a breakdown with a burnout with you know needing needing to be hospitalized or you know completely shutting down like we just can't function because that block of suffering has taken over so that's very dangerous when take note Han draws this diagram he draws a thick line between mind and store consciousness when we try to avoid the block of suffering and we keep our mind consciousness always occupied he draws a thick line between mind and story it's like we create an embargo and we won't let anything in store consciousness arise so not only do we not have access we cannot feel the pain down there we're numbing ourselves but we also can't feel our joy and this is something neurosciences found also that when you try to numb one you can't just numb one part of your brain if you numb one part you numb it all so you you get numb to everything so it becomes a very dangerous situation of poor circulation in our psyche we start to cut off parts of ourselves so then inevitably there's going to be a deep imbalance that's going to manifest in some kind of physical illness some kind of mental illness some interpersonal breakdown happens where you just end up you know destroying a relationship suddenly because that thing sprouts out into your mind and you say things you do things that you regret and could change your life or their life forever but that doesn't have to be that way we can restore the circulation in our psyche by doing that exact process I mentioned we can slowly first of all we need to stop consuming things in the surface on the in the living room we need to stop having the living room be 100% full all the time day in and day out we need to create space so coming into places of meditative stillness silence being in nature turning down the technology turning off having some technological sabbaticals not running away but beginning to turn towards these parts of ourselves that need our care resourcing ourselves first through learning mindfulness learning body practices that help us be in our body yoga qigong tai chi different things running being in nature singing dancing moving resting eating eating with awareness so all these things help us just clear out all of that a lot of its garbage a lot of it's you know you don't need I don't feel I need to hear the same news story six times in a day right but that's a lot of us consume same story over and over and over and over again why right it's sometimes it's to avoid these things so we clear out that and we begin to slowly allow the block of suffering to emerge and hold it with mindfulness and care for it and take good care of it and restore that circulation every time a piece of it can come up and be bathed in mindfulness it goes back down it's smaller and so it's like we're digesting that part of our lives that hasn't been able to be digested and slowly it reduces it reduces it reduces and it's no longer this part of ourselves that is hidden that we're ashamed of that we can't tell anyone about or that we can't even look at our look at clearly ourselves we begin to integrate it we begin to see well this is a part of who I am it's okay I can I can forgive I can honor that this has been my journey and it's it can teach us a lot those blocks of suffering actually become the lotuses of our enlightenment they're not something that we want to throw away they're actually the very things that help us to awaken and to develop our compassion our joy our love our equanimity so that we can you know honor other people when they're in that deep difficulty we can we can see them as being on a journey that they can also transform they can also learn to love and and and honor themselves and care for themselves and care for others so no part of ourselves should ever be thought of as needing to be thrown away there's no garbage there's only compost right so this beautiful phrase no mud no lotus the lotus only grows in mud the lotus is the symbol of awakening our stuff mud is our suffering so the the lotus the awakening comes out of the suffering so we don't want to throw it away we don't want to push it away so I'm gonna pause there I wanted to also talk about collective suffering and how we can heal collective blocks of suffering maybe we'll get to that in the Q&A but I'll pause here and invite you to

Reviews

Such a wonderfully informative talk. It answered a few important questions for me, like how not to water those seeds I want to stay dormant, and what to do if they have already been watered. Many thanks.

Absolutely powerful lecture in a a very soft voice. Packed with many great insights. Will listen again and again

Thank you for this enlightening talk.
The message came in clear and resonated with me. I feel like I get it and have more understanding on to walk upon this life path. 🙏

Thank you Kaira, for reminding me about the seeds and explaining about them so understandably, which makes it more easy to practice in daily life.

So insightful. If only we all practiced mindfulness. This talk was perfect listening for me lying awake worrying about two people in my life in fact 4 and 5 if I include myself. Such wisdom clearly explained. Big thanks to you. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Very instructional and easy to relate to. Thank you for your insight.

Thoroughly enjoyed this meditation! Appreciate the insight

Refreshing clarity in describing complex psychological processes. Very very much enjoyed and appreciated. Thank you.

Exactly what I needed to hear today. I’m setting off on a mindful journey to explore some buried trauma and am pretty intimidated by the prospect of it all. Thank you for your words.😌

Wow that was so incredible and insightful, absolutely loved it 💗

Your voice is so soothing and comforting. Great content also, look forward to hearing more 🙏🏻🤍

So helpful, I took notes so I could continue to reflect and try some of your suggestions

Such a dense teaching

What a beautiful and humble breakdown. Absolutely cherish this piece and will share with many.

Such a compassionate teaching ... on how I can be with suffering with such tenderness

Beautiful thank you!

That made so much sense. Thank you!! I want to learn more on this subject. Any good books you recommend?

Thanks for cleaning my living room!

Really enjoyed this. Thank you. Has provided a great visual tool 💖

I am finding your talk very useful! I am struggling to release fearful thoughts, and in the journey of releasing old patterns and practicing mindfulness. I am grateful for this. Thank you!