Greetings Insight Timer community.
This is a talk.
I want to be clear about that.
This is an insightful talk on learning to begin to recognize and work with your reactive mind.
There will be practices to follow and I do suggest listening to this talk prior.
So I thought that we could just begin to explore and slow down and see what's happening,
What's going on here with the reactive mind,
The mind of reactivity.
What is its nature?
If we pay attention,
The reactive mind is really like a puppet on a string.
It gets pulled in one direction one minute and then in the next minute it's pulled in the other.
When the mind that's caught in reactivity likes what is happening or what it perceives might happen,
It gets pulled towards experience,
Pulled into wanting.
It wants to keep something or an object.
It wants to keep what it senses as good.
And this can deteriorate into a type of clinging or grasping.
At its worst,
This can be obsession or addiction.
And when the untrained reactive mind senses something or an experience that it doesn't like,
It pushes away from the experience.
It gets pushed into aversion or what I like to call the let's get out of here mind.
And we can see that the reactive mind is like a fish that's caught on a hook and it's being taken out to sea.
So why does this happen?
What's going on here?
Well,
This is really the result of a mind that isn't trained.
Our minds are always being shaped,
Whether it be willingly or unwillingly.
And mindfulness practice really is a type of mind training.
It can help us learn not to be so reactive.
The second foundation of mindfulness in the ancient teachings is considered feeling tone.
The word in Pali is Vedana.
Now,
This is different from emotions,
What we think of as feelings in Western psychology.
Feeling tone is just a regard.
It's the instantaneous hit that we feel whenever we encounter an object.
Now,
How do we encounter objects?
We encounter objects through our sense doorways,
Right?
Through our sense gates.
The eyes see sights,
The ears hear sounds,
The nose smells scents.
This is how we experience life.
And as soon as we encounter an object,
There is a hedonic tone that arises in us in that encounter.
And that tone,
That hedonic feeling tone is either pleasant,
Unpleasant,
Or neither pleasant or unpleasant.
And some people might call it positive,
Negative,
Or neutral regard.
Now,
This feeling tone or regard is the instantaneous hit that comes up.
It's before words come.
But we don't stop there,
Right?
The mind that is caught in reactivity doesn't stop there.
The untrained mind experiences the hit and goes into the reactivity.
It goes into clinging or aversion or not noticing dullness,
Boredom,
Or delusion.
In some traditions,
These are known to be the three root poisons of the mind.
Greed,
Which is extreme clinging.
Hatred,
Or extreme aversion.
And delusion,
Which is extreme lack of awareness of the nature of things.
So the reactive mind state is the result of habituation.
It's not our fault.
This is what happens to us when the mind just gets caught in dislikes or likes.
It pushes away or pulls towards.
And mindfulness practice asks us to tune in.
It asks us to wake up to that,
To learn to explore these regards,
Unpleasant,
Pleasant,
And neither pleasant or unpleasant.
Now I want to be clear.
This is not about accepting abuse.
Learning to be with and explore unpleasant regard isn't about accepting abusive behavior.
I really want to be clear about that.
But there are,
However,
Many situations in our life that we cannot change.
That we have to learn how to be with.
Or that we could learn a more skillful response to instead of our habitualized reactivity.
When we are experiencing loss,
For example,
Or when we're experiencing a difficult situation in life,
It's important for us to learn to be with that which is painful.
In fact,
There's an old equation that goes something like this.
Pain times resistance or aversion equals suffering.
Pain times aversion equals suffering.
And this is why it is so important for us to begin to learn to tune into feeling tone,
These regards,
Because we learn to notice where we are creating suffering in our life.
There are so many situations that we cannot avoid and that are painful.
But how we meet them matters.
And we learn not to conflate the feeling tone or even an emotion with our behavior or our speech,
Which can so often be coming from reactivity.
Many of you know that I encourage you to take your practice off of the cushion.
Those of you who follow me on Insight Timer or elsewhere know that this is one of my central themes,
To tune into our life,
To bring your practice off of the cushion,
And drop moments of mindful awareness into your daily life.
And one way to do that is to begin to sense into and ask yourself,
How am I meeting this moment right here?
Is there a version arising?
Can I just be with whatever is here without creating a version?
And noticing how,
If a version is present,
How much more difficult the situation you're in becomes.
So I rest my reflections here.
I encourage you to contemplate and tune into the next practice,
Which will begin to explore these feeling tones.
Namaste.
