Dharma Talk: Contemplating Heart Mind. From Day 5 Of An Online Retreat Aug-Sept 2021

This is a Dharma talk given by Malcolm Huxter on a 10-day online meditation retreat in Aug-Sept 2021. This talk was given on the evening of Day 5, Aug 31, 2021. It precedes and relates to guided meditations given on Day 6 of this retreat, Sept 1, 2021. The talk is about the heart-mind, which is also called Citta in Pali. The talk refers to the functions of the mind including feelings, perceptions, volitions, attention, and contact.

Transcript

So welcome everyone to tonight's Dharma talk and the topic of tonight's Dharma talk is I'm just going to move you guys around a bit first of all move you over there.

The topic of tonight's talk is contemplating heart mind or citta as it's known in Pali.

So sometimes citta is translated as mind but in the West when we think of mind we think of intellectual reasoning and logic but what's called citta in Pali is probably best understood as a combination of intellect and reason as well as intuition and a kind of knowing connection through our hearts.

So I remember when I lived in Thailand and learned to speak a little bit of Thai the term for mind was Jit Jai and Jai literally translates as heart.

So the term heart mind is probably a better way of describing what we're talking about when we talk about citta in Pali and it relates to this even neurologically actually we have neurons in our head rather than just the head we also have neurons in our heart and neurons in our gut as well but so there's there's a kind of a brain neurologically there's a brains in our heart guts and in our head so Jit Jai is probably a sorry heart mind is the best best way to describe the mind or the heart mind.

So sometimes heart mind is considered as consciousness and there's lots we can talk about with consciousness in fact tones have been written about consciousness however in early Buddhism the understanding of consciousness is quite simple.

Consciousness refers to the knowing of experience and often this knowing is reified not not in Buddhism but in in life this knowing is reified as our being our core self or core being but of course in Buddhism consciousness just like all things is impermanent not a lasting thing and no no self can be found in it we cannot ascribe a particular all-abiding knowingness inside there there's it is not self.

I think a lot of people have issues with that because people will talk about the one who knows and that which knows and so on as if it is something deep inside we can kind of get a sense that thoughts are not self and get a sense that emotions are not self but consciousness it really feels like that's me deep inside but according to the teachings of the Buddha there is no self even in consciousness.

So what consciousness knows is in Pali it's called in Pali it's called Nama Rupa this translates as name and form and form refers to solid matter and material things like the four elements you know earth fire water and air so that's sort of solid materiality solid matter and name refers to five functions of the mind and each function can be described as the fingers on our hand.

I learned about this connection with the five fingers on one's hand only recently when I was listening to some Dharma instructions from Analia.

Anyway it is these functions are like these the little finger represents Vedana and we've been talking about Vedana.

Yes last night we had a whole Dharma talk on Vedana and we understand that it's the hedonic feelings of an experience and Vedana pushes us towards or away from experience and it's connected with the little finger and just like the little fingers kind of often disregarded and considered and it's not very important Vedana is often under-recognized or under underestimated in its importance in our hand it's very important we do all sorts of things with our little fingers and so in the mind it's also very important as we learned about yesterday and did some meditation practices on today about focusing on Vedana.

So feelings are just as they are they're conditioned by our experience and are intrinsically part of us part of what we call ourselves.

So the the next finger refers to something in Pali called Sanya.

Sanya refers to perceptions that is we recognize something based on our memory and we need to we need to perceive things to be human and actually being part being a human we need to perceive things and you know it's part of life to perceive and recognize things however often we misperceive things often what happens is that we our perceptions are incorrect because we overlay them with our ideas and concepts and views it's like we misperceive things we misread things depending on what we put onto it so our perceptions will often put an overlay on experience misperceiving misperceiving it and these misperceptions and the overlay is one way we get into trouble.

I meant to say at the beginning also that talks about mind and it's also about how the mind can get us into trouble of course there's lots of suffering and also how mindfulness can provide one way to free us up from perpetuating the trouble we might get into with our minds so now I'm talking about perceptions or Sanya the way we get into trouble with Sanya is our misperceptions of experience the overlay of opinions or overlay of concepts or overlay of views that we have on experience we miss seeing things altogether and I know that in contemporary psychology there's been lots of experiments on this and they show how yes we can misperceive things quite easily so that that's this finger we have the little finger Vedana the next finger is I think it's called the ring finger I think it's called the ring finger is Sanya the next finger is related to volition this finger is related to volition and in Pali it's called Chetanar and volitions are our decisions about things our choices they include our intentions and if our intentions are driven by greed ignorance and hatred then they lead down the path of unwholesome and lots of dukkha our intentions can cause a lot of trouble if on the other hand we can intend to practice and nourish the wholesome this can in fact lead us to liberation this can be freeing as we've been discovering through this retreat I've been emphasizing the importance of making a wholesome and wholesome intentions in a direction that's going towards freedom freedom of heart so this middle finger represents volitions and there's something else that's in relationship to volitions I'd like to mention in Pali it's called Sankara which are Sankara usually translates as formations or creations we create things with our mind and Sankara often refers to volitional formations and how our minds form and create things and Sankara can be wholesome or unwholesome so volition and Chetanar and Sankara are very important in the directions we take in life the decisions we make and the actions we take so the next one the next one is called a Pasa in Pali and it means contact and contact is the momentary union of a sense object a sense door and consciousness there's something in it sort of goes like this like we have consciousness consciousness is conscious of Nama Rupa so what happens in a moment of consciousness is something like this and I'll try and say it I'll read it according to what the Buddha said dependent on I and forms there arises consciousness at the eye,

The meeting of the three is contact depending on ear the ear and sounds arises consciousness at the ear the meeting of the three is contact depending on the nose and aromas there are arises consciousness at the nose the meeting of the three there is contact depending on tongue and flavors there is a there is a rising of consciousness at the tongue and the meeting of the three is contact.

Dependent on body,

Tactile sensations etc,

It's consciousness of body.

The meeting of the three is contact.

Dependent on intellect or thought and ideas there arises consciousness at the intellect.

The meeting of the three is contact.

So in in Buddhism we think of six sense spheres,

Sight,

Sound,

Smell,

Touch,

Taste and mind.

The mind is considered as a sense object.

So we have just these six places where consciousness arises and yes it pertains to consciousness of form and consciousness of the namr,

These functions of the mind.

So anyway,

Look I've got more to say about that in a little while.

I'll wait till I get through these these different various functions of the mind so we can go into more detail about what we're talking about when we're talking about mindfulness of mind.

So the next function,

Oh by the way contact is the pointing finger.

It's like it points to things.

It's represented by this pointing finger so it's where experience arises.

Contact is the place where experience takes place and it points to things if that makes sense.

The next function represented by the thumb is in Pali called Manasakara.

I love that word for some reason,

I think it's fantastic.

Mano means mind,

Manasi means locative like making a location and kara means doing or acting or working.

Technically it means mentation and more simply it means the mind directed in a certain way.

In summary it refers to attention.

Attention,

Where we direct our mind is attention.

And we can have wise attention and unwise attention.

Whether attention is wise or unwise depends on how we attend to things.

Unwise attention for example is tending to things in a way where it increases the unwholesome.

Where it fuels and drives the Kalesa.

Remember the Kalesa?

I think I've mentioned what Kalesa was.

Kalesa means distortions.

And I'll give you an example of this.

I could for example open my fridge door.

I know I'm referring to chock a lot but I think it's probably a pretty easy thing to refer to.

I could open my fridge door and see a very nice chocolate cake and I could attend to it.

I could attend to it in a way where I'm thinking hmm how can I get the most of this?

How can I,

Driven by craving,

How can I see and get this cake?

How can I have a bigger piece of this cake than anybody else?

For example.

And I might think hmm maybe I'll have it later on or maybe I should eat it all right now and if I eat it blah blah blah blah blah I'm attending it to it in a way that's feeding into my craving.

So that is called unwise attention.

We do this with all sorts of things.

We can have wise attention and unwise attention.

Wise attention on the other hand could be something like this.

I could open the fridge door,

I could attend to that cake and I could think oh how could I give this to some of my friends?

Maybe I can mail it to them.

All my friends on the retreat for example,

How can I give them a piece of this cake?

How can I share this?

Or I could see it in a way where I think well there's nice chocolate cake,

Probably likely to give rise to pleasant feelings and I know the pleasant feelings are impermanent therefore I can cultivate dispassion around this chocolate cake therefore I can let it go and it can lead to my awakening from dispassion.

So that's more in line with wise attention.

So attention being like the thumb can be directed to any of these five functions.

We can be aware of we can be aware of Verona,

We can be aware of contact,

We can be aware of perception,

Sorry that's contact,

That's perceptions,

We can be aware of contact contact,

Sorry that's contact,

We can be aware of volitions.

So this function of attention is really important.

The interesting thing about attention is that it can be pointed somewhere else as well.

It can be pointed to consciousness itself which is really interesting.

Something about these five these five functions and having attention caught up with them is really interesting and first of all I'm going to tell you I'm going to explain something about Prapancha.

Prapancha in Pali refers to mental proliferation.

Mental proliferation it's like the imagination gone wild.

Worry and rumination are examples of mental proliferation.

Worry and rumination and obsessive thinking,

Being consumed with craving and thinking a lot,

Just thinking a lot in general is something called Prapancha in Pali.

The imagination gone wild.

These in Pali the term for five is Prapancha.

Isn't that interesting?

So Prapancha refers to these five functions entangled and caught up with one another so that they just go out of control.

They create things.

They go off on a kind of a they mentally proliferate in a direction that's completely at odds with the reality sometimes causing a lot of suffering actually.

So if however we can rather than putting our attention in into these five functions or well four functions four other functions we could point our attention somewhere else like pointing it to consciousness.

This can actually short-circuit the tendency to have Prapancha.

We can work with our mental proliferations by putting consciousness somewhere else putting sorry putting attention into consciousness like doing a u-turn on what we normally sending out into the world or getting caught up in mental functions.

Doing a u-turn on ourselves coming back to consciousness and I'm going to give you an experiment and I'm just going to ask you to pay attention to the sound of the bell for a moment.

So rather than putting your attention into you know these five functions I'm going to invite you to pay attention to sound and notice what happens and I'm hoping that the sound of the bell will have a nice resonance across the internet and not have a terrible sound but we'll see.

Okay let's pay attention to sound I'll do it again Did you notice that that was calming by any chance?

Did anybody notice that was calming?

To listen to the sound of the bell?

Was it calming?

All you have to do is put your thumbs up one person's putting their thumbs up maybe it was aggravating for other people I'm not sure.

Paying attention to the sound of the bell is accessing something that we talk about in mindfulness often and it's often considered as mindfulness and that is called bare attention.

What happens with listening to the sound of the bell where by listening to a sound of the bell we're getting closer to our raw perception of experience rather than our mental proliferations of experience and bare attention is a term used in the practice it refers to paying attention to the raw experience of the senses and many of you will be recognized this as some part of the instructions like with mindfulness based stress reduction.

They often use a meditation where you're just being present with the senses.

It could be sound it could be even your thoughts just present with them and in that in that case what happens by being attentive to raw experience bare attention you're short-circuiting the tendency to mentally proliferate you're putting your attention into consciousness more than anything else and sometimes sometimes consciousness can be conscious of itself which sounds a bit strange but there are meditation practices around this and it is very calming very peaceful it seems to short-circuit mental proliferations and there is many of you heard me talk about a practitioner called Bahia who was a teacher in northern India and he heard about the Buddha and I'll just cut this very which could be a long story short essentially he wanted to know the pith of the teachings so he caught the Buddha on his arms around and wanted to know that the pith of the teachings you wanted to get the Dharma straight so the Buddha basically said to him I mean he said a few things but part of the thing he said it didn't say a lot mind you the first part of the thing he said was in the hearing there is just the hearing in the seeing there is just the scene in the cognize there is just the cognized I mean he said more than that but to emphasize this point that I'm making about attention and being attentive to consciousness the Buddha was summarizing this is the pith of the practice to be aware of to be aware of raw experience to be aware of consciousness to be to be present with experience as it is without making more of it than what it is to to be just present completely present and in that one is neither here not there or in between and I I'm not going to it talking about that right now so I know that in the teachings there's some part in the suttas where somebody's talking about the breadth of the universe and the width of the universe and how many so many things are in the universe and I think the Buddha said the universe is the sixth sense fears that's it we you know we sit here we're sitting where you were you're sitting some of you're overseas and I'm in northern New South Wales and I'm thinking about you guys standing wherever you are like some in Melbourne some in Adelaide some in Sydney some in Singapore some in Beijing some in America and so on I have this creation of a world I have this creation of a universe like it's so real I've created this world but in fact if I can come back to the raw senses coming back to the raw experience of justice now what I realize is the universe is my my mind is the creation of the universe it's just my mind so I think this is really useful to understand to understand that we can create the world there's a there's a path of understanding called non dualism and there's a school of thought called just mind mind only sorry mind only school of thought and in that school of thought and in this non dualism a non dualistic approach to things it is like we're not dividing the world into subject and object there is just subject there is just the knowing it is all one's mind and I'm not saying that that's all there is but it's perceived like that that is actually more liberating than being caught up in these concepts and beliefs and being caught up in our cycles of suffering and reacting and thinking about me and you and this and that here is just our mind it's so liberating so now I'd like to come to the third establishment of mindfulness which is tracking being seeing along with mind and here is the refrain from you know how all of these establishments have refrains so I'm just going to read out the refrain in the first part of the refrain one knows a mind with lust to be a mind with lust and another way you can understand lust is craving when I hear about lust I think sexual desire but when they're talking about lust here they're talking about you know lust and craving for central pleasures basically one knows a mind with lust to be a mind with lust or one mows a mind without lust to be a mind without lust or one mows and knows a mind with anger and here anger refers to aversion you know that hindrance of ill will that's what we're talking about here with anger so one knows a mind with aversion or one knows a mind without aversion to be a mind without aversion or one knows a mind with delusion to be a mind with delusion or one knows a mind without delusion to be a mind without delusion or one knows a contracted mind to be a contracted mind or one knows a distracted mind to be one knows a is a distracted mind to be a distracted mind.

So essentially what we're talking about here is knowing the various states of mind,

Emotions,

Thought patterns,

That are inclined towards either wholesome or unwholesome.

And it's basically referring to states of mind,

Emotions,

Thoughts,

And mental activities in general.

And it becomes aware and familiar with the mind that is colored to various degrees with one of the root causes of Dukkha,

Which are greed,

Ignorance,

And hatred,

Of course.

And in this domain,

We can become aware of deeply distressing emotions as well.

And we can also become aware of very refined and subtle states of mind,

Which I'll talk about in the next refrain,

The next part of the refrain.

So we can become aware of a mind that's highly concentrated,

A mind that's filled with loving kindness and compassion,

For example,

Or a mind that's liberated.

It is becoming familiar with the state of our mind.

And when we can do that,

When we can see it for what it is,

We can start to be free.

For the most part,

We identify with our states of mind.

For the most part,

We identify with citta.

Like if I was to ask you,

How you going?

How are you feeling?

What's happening for you right now?

I want to ask how you're feeling.

How are you,

I'll ask.

And you will look into your state of mind and you'll say,

Hmm,

I'm pretty sad today,

Or I'm pretty angry today,

Or I'm pretty happy today,

Or I'm feeling really light and relaxed today.

So what you're referring to is your state of consciousness,

Your state of mind.

And so we often identify with it.

And the problem with that is that if it's painful,

If it's anger or fear or shame or disappointment or all these difficult emotions,

Then it's painful in and of itself.

And if it's not painful and we identify with it,

It's tukka because it will eventually change.

So being mindful of states of mind,

Noticing their impermanence,

Noticing their not self nature and noticing their tukka nature is actually liberating.

I've done exercises with thoughts about this.

A thought,

For example,

That we are a washed up mess.

We might have that thought that we're no good,

We're a failure,

We're useless.

This is a thought.

If we identify with it,

It's really painful.

If we believe it,

It's really painful.

But if we can see that it's impermanent,

It's just a thought that arises and passes away.

If we can see that that thought doesn't necessarily define us,

Isn't really who and what we are.

And if we can see that thought as,

Well,

I'm talking about the tukka nature of that thought here,

In reference to tukka being this sense of uncertainty about things.

So a sense of uncertainty about the destructive thought,

For example,

Is being able to see that those thoughts are not necessarily facts to be believed.

This,

That phrase that thoughts are not necessarily facts to be believed is what in mindfulness based cognitive therapy is called metacognitive insight.

It's liberating.

And this is really powerful with states of depression,

Because we'll often have thoughts and we'll believe them,

We'll take them personally.

So to be able to see the impermanent nature,

The not self nature and the uncertainty of these types of thoughts is liberating.

So tracking these states of mind promotes understanding and a sense of freedom rather than identification with them.

So we get to know our mind,

We get to know how it arises and what happens.

We get to know it and become familiar with it.

And it takes some sort of honesty and willingness to face up to it.

We have to be motivated to do this because most of us want to turn away from what we don't like about ourselves.

Facing up to these states of mind is quite difficult.

Facing up to our experiences,

Our unpleasant experiences,

Facing up to our say,

Tendencies that are not very attractive,

For example.

We want to avoid them usually.

So it takes a lot of courage.

It takes a firm decision.

It takes a resolve to turn towards our mind and see it for what it is.

And when we do this,

It's important that we don't beat ourselves up when we see the unwholesome.

And there's a simple,

Well,

There's a lot of reasons for this.

Firstly,

We don't need to take it personally.

To take it personally is actually called conceit.

And I'll be talking about conceit on Friday night.

But moreover,

It just doesn't work.

Like to punish yourself when you're being unwholesome,

When you're having a behavior that's not very helpful,

Just stops that behavior perhaps,

But doesn't cultivate any other behaviors.

It's like,

I've seen many of you with pets,

Like dogs and cats and so on.

You know the best way to train something new with a pet is to encourage that pet,

Is to encourage that animal.

For example,

My dog,

If he's barking out there,

If I go and yell and scream at him,

I mean,

He's gonna feel punished and kind of want to avoid me but if I go and praise him for something that he's done well or call him a good boy when he comes to me and he stops barking,

Then he's more likely to learn something from that.

So when we notice the unwholesome,

When we notice things that are not so pleasant to look at,

Things that we sometimes can be ashamed of within ourselves,

It's useful to be honest.

And it's also useful and very helpful and almost essential to kind of give ourselves some encouragement,

To give ourselves some praise that we have the courage to look at that.

Avoid negative criticism,

Avoid the strategy of punishment because it's self-defeating.

It's also important to get to know what it's like to be free from the unwholesome.

I think that when we start to practice and we start to notice all the hindrances and the unwholesome,

We get a little bit overwhelmed and it gets a bit discouraging.

And I remember I pointed out at the beginning,

Please be on the lookout for joy because this is so important.

It's so important,

It gives us fuel in the practice and it's one of the awakening factors.

So it's important to get to know what it's like to be free and to savor and enjoy these,

Free from the unwholesome and savor and enjoy these liberating states of mind.

Knowing mindfulness,

For example,

The first awakening factor,

Knowing mindfulness,

Knowing it becomes a powerful ally and resource in our path to awakening.

And knowing joy and allowing joy to manifest and rise in ourselves is another powerful resource.

So by rejoicing in these powerful qualities,

These wonderful qualities,

These qualities of freedom from the unwholesome,

It gives us the fuel to awakening.

These are the factors of awakening.

So they're bringing us in line with a pathway to full awakening.

I told you about a tale of an American Indian woman,

A young warrior and talking to his grandmother,

An American Indian tale.

I told you this the other day,

But I'm gonna repeat it because I think it has significant meaning when we're talking about mind.

And this old American tale goes,

There's a young warrior who's asking his grandmother,

How come she's become so wise?

And she replies to him,

It's because I have,

It's like I have two wolves.

One wolf is nasty,

Mean and cruel and aggressive.

Now the wolf is kind and compassionate and beautiful.

I feed the wholesome one,

I feed the beautiful one and I don't feed the nasty one.

This is talking about where we direct our attention again and how we direct it.

How we nourish various qualities with our attention.

And William James,

Famous forefather of psychology talked about,

He made this statement,

He said something like this anyway,

What we attend to can become our reality.

What we attend to becomes our reality,

That's what he said.

And this is reflected in your science and neuroplasticity where,

And there's a saying that I've heard from Dan Siegel,

I'm doing one of his courses at the moment.

He says,

Where attention goes,

Energy flows and neural pathways grow.

Another way of understanding this is neurons are fired together,

Wired together.

And yet another understanding is use it or lose it.

So that's another phrase,

Sorry.

What we're talking about here is the capacity to cultivate wholesome states of mind.

The capacity to nourish wholesome states of mind with our attention,

But also with our actions.

The capacity for us to not nourish or denourish unwholesome states of mind,

Unwholesome behaviors.

The more we do something,

The more it's possible that it'd be done again.

So it's very useful to understand that.

And this relates to how we can be mindful of our habitual states of mind,

Be discerning about them and cultivate the ones that are wholesome and release and let go of the ones that are unwholesome.

So as you know,

I'm a clinical psychologist and I work with a lot of people who have suffered traumas.

And they suffer with destructive thoughts.

There's something I talk to them about.

Excuse me a minute,

I'll just wait to that.

It's either a plane or a helicopter.

I'm not sure.

So I say there's a couple of ways we can deal with painful and destructive thoughts,

Such as the intrusive thoughts that happen with when we're suffering from post-traumatic stress,

For example,

The horrendous flashbacks we might have and so on.

These thoughts that invade our consciousness and we just don't want them.

There's many different ways of dealing with difficult thoughts,

But I've summarized them into two pathways.

One is the pathway of serenity.

The other is the pathway of insight.

So with the serenity pathway,

What we do is we nourish a wholesome pattern of thought by giving attention to it,

Feeding into it,

Where attention goes,

Energy flows,

And neural pathways grow.

By placing your attention on something wholesome,

Something wonderful,

Something good,

It helps grow that neural pathway,

But it also helps to grow that chain of thought,

That trail of thought.

And I say,

Just don't feed into the unwholesome.

Just don't buy into it.

You know,

You're getting terrible memories arising.

Just see them as memories.

They're just visions.

They're nothing more than that.

Just don't feed into them.

So we're feeding into the wholesome and not feeding into the destructive.

And this isn't ignoring it.

It's just not buying into the destructive.

And with the insight way,

What we do is we turn towards those painful thoughts,

But we turn towards them in a particular way.

We turn towards them in a mindful way,

Where we're seeing them for what they are.

We're seeing that they are impermanent.

We're seeing that they are empty of substance.

We're seeing that they're not necessarily facts that we believe.

We're seeing them for what they are and seeing through them so they no longer entrap us.

We no longer engage with them.

So we're engaging with them,

But in a mindful way.

So we're seeing through them and seeing the reality of them rather than believing them as something that's not real.

So thoughts do not last.

Facts are not necessarily,

Thoughts are impermanent.

Thoughts are not self and thoughts are unreliable.

We can have choice with those.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't think at all.

Obviously what happens in life is we cultivate discernment about what's worthy of feeding into and what's not worthy of feeding into.

And I think discernment grows over time.

It's a quality of wisdom.

So in the vittika santana sutta,

Which refers to the removal of distracting thoughts,

The Buddha recommended five methods to work with unwholesome states of mind.

And I'm just going to outline these five methods.

And I'll put a little bit of clinical psychology commentary onto it.

One way is that we can replace unwholesome thoughts.

Like for example,

If we're having thoughts of aversion and wanting to hurt someone,

We can replace that with metta.

And what we could also do is just simply challenge those thoughts.

And this is in line with something that's called cognitive therapy in contemporary psychology.

With cognitive therapy,

It's about challenging or part of cognitive therapy,

Not all of it.

It's part of it is challenging an inaccurate thought,

Like an erroneous thought,

A misbelief,

A belief that's kind of destructive.

It's challenging that rationally and seeing,

And having a positive alternative,

A more realistic alternative to that destructive thought.

So this works well at CBT and cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy have worked very well for decades in contemporary psychology.

And here we're hearing that this is a similar thing that happens with the Buddha 2,

600 years ago.

A second way is to reflect on the dangers of thinking particular thoughts.

That's another one.

And in that way,

We sort of look at a particular chain of thought,

We're stepping back from it a bit.

And we're being mindful to restrain from feeding into that particular destructive thought.

Another way he said was just to forget it.

In other words,

Not give it energy and placing attention elsewhere.

This is similar to what I'm talking about with the serendi approach for dealing with thoughts.

You just don't feed into it.

You don't feed into the destructive,

You put your attention somewhere else.

Another approach was stilling the mind.

And this is again a serendi approach where you focus so much on something,

Like with flow,

For example,

That that becomes your reality and everything else falls away.

You simply get absorbed in what you're focusing on.

Your mind becomes very,

Very still.

Thoughts just,

Well,

If there's any thoughts,

Well,

Thoughts just don't arise,

Actually.

Your mind is still and quiet and peaceful.

And the last one he talked about was,

And I'll describe it as it's described,

Clenching and crushing the mind with mind.

And this might seem a little bit strange for us.

And I think maybe in those days,

They really did that.

They just would say,

No,

I'm not going to think that thought.

In my view,

It's like just saying no.

You might having this unwholesome thought arising or causing great distress,

You come to a point where you say,

Look,

I'm just not going to feed into you.

I'm just not going to bother with you.

No,

I've got other things to do.

Thank you very much.

It's kind of like dealing with a tantruming toddler or a resistant and persistent adolescent.

You know,

They're at you all the time.

They want something,

You want something,

You want something.

And you just say,

No,

Not now,

No.

So paying attention at the present moment with awareness to the states of our minds.

It's like we're driving a vehicle and Ana Analia has made this kind of reflection.

When we're driving a vehicle,

We can see what's happening in front of us.

And also if we have a big rear vision mirror,

We can see what's happened behind us.

So when we're practising mindfulness of mind or heart mind,

What we're doing is we're being attentive to the states,

We're being attentive to the present and aware of the states of mind that has delivered us to this moment.

And we can see those states of mind with our rear vision mirror.

We're kind of looking back and being aware of,

Oh,

Right now I'm here.

How did I get to this place?

And you can look in your mirror and you can say,

Wow,

I thought in this particular way.

And also you can see the future,

You can see the direction of where you're going by being aware of the present.

Being aware of the present state of mind,

You can be aware of how things may be in the future.

Actually,

There was a,

I don't know who he was,

He may have been a Brahmin.

He came to the Buddha and he said,

Tell me the future Buddha,

Tell me the future,

I wanna know the future.

And the Buddha said,

I mean,

He didn't say it in this matter of words,

But he said something along the lines of,

If you wanna know the future,

If you wanna know the past,

Look at your state of mind right now.

Cause you've created that state of mind from past activities.

If you wanna know the future,

Look at your state of mind right now.

Cause then you know how you're creating the future.

So to know the past and the future,

Know the present.

So I'll just read you the next refrain.

This is the final refrain.

One knows a mind that has become great to be a mind that has become great.

Or one knows a mind that has not become great to be a mind that has not become great.

What this is referring to is the four divine abodes,

The four boundless qualities.

They're considered as great boundless qualities.

So when you're contemplating your mind,

You know that they become one of these boundless qualities or they haven't become one of these boundless qualities.

Or one knows a surpassable mind to be a surpassable mind.

And or one knows an unsurpassable mind to be an unsurpassable mind.

In other words,

Whether one's attained the various absorptions,

The various jhanas.

One knows one's attained a jhana or not.

Or one knows a concentrated mind to be a concentrated mind.

Or one knows a not concentrated mind to be a not concentrated mind.

I can go into great details about that,

But I think you're becoming familiar with what it's like to have a concentrated mind to some degree.

But what they're talking about here is probably the concentration of the jhanas,

You know,

The very concentrated states,

The states of strong samadhi.

Or one knows a liberated mind to be a liberated mind.

Or one knows a not liberated mind to be a not liberated mind.

So it goes through this whole range of possible states,

Mental states that we can have from the gross through to the subtle through to the liberated.

So it's pretty comprehensive way of looking at your mind.

And I'm just going to relate something about an acronym that I use in my practice actually.

My psychology practice.

It's a lovely acronym.

And it's for working with painful emotions.

And I can send you this,

A copy of this acronym in my email,

Through my email.

But the acronym is called RAIN.

And many of you,

Some of you are nodding your heads.

You probably know this acronym.

R stands for recognizing a particular painful emotion.

So that's the first thing we do.

A stands for accepting it.

In other words,

Being willing to experience it.

I stands for investigating it.

So we investigate it,

We inquire into it.

We get to know it,

We become familiar with it.

We get to know it clearly.

And N stands for non identifying with it.

In other words,

We don't feed into it.

We don't make it bigger than it is.

We don't make it into a mountain.

We don't make a mountain out of a mole hole,

So to speak.

We don't let it proliferate and become our identity.

And there's another way of understanding the N in that RAIN acronym.

And I heard this N component from Tara Brack in a talk,

A lovely talk that I heard from her.

And she refers to N as nurture.

So recognize,

Accept,

Investigate,

And then nurture.

And I think this nurturing is similar to what we talked about last night and we practiced this morning about the mindful self-compassion approach to painful emotions,

Which is naming and feeling.

And then softening,

Soothing,

And allowing.

So this nurturing is like softening,

Soothing,

And allowing,

And nourishing,

And nurturing a wholesome quality.

So,

Vedana and consciousness,

Which are aspects of heart-mind,

Just arise without any intentional component.

The other aspects of heart-mind,

However,

Have,

And especially the volition,

Has a strong intentional component.

And it is our intentions that make our actions wholesome or unwholesome.

If we wish to live an ethical life,

We need to be aware of our mind.

With awareness,

We cultivate discernment about the ethical nature of our behaviors.

And it's like we're driving a vehicle.

We know where we've come from and we know where we're going.

And we can choose to go in wholesome directions.

We are aware of where we're going,

And we also are aware,

We also are aware and know where we have come to arrive at where we're at.

We are mindful of moving forward in a life with wisdom.

So,

Thank you for your attention.

I trust this Dharma talk will assist you on driving down your freeway to awakening with a good rear vision mirror and a very clear screen ahead,

And very centered here now at the driving wheel,

Knowing your states of mind,

Knowing how to drive through issues and along the pathway.

So,

Thank you.

Reviews

Wonderful, thank you