Day 4. Who's This In The Shower With Me

ZEN MASTER, THE SICK MAN, AND THE TEASPOON

By way of an intriguing story,y Suryacitta shows how we miss real life with its beauty and joy and fixate on the false drama in life which is the stories of the mind. He shares a few techniques to help to see thoughts as merely thoughts and not truths. There is a story, an explanation and some techniques.

Transcript

So hello,

Welcome back.

I'm not going to read a story from the book today.

I came across one recently so I'm just going to tell you it and then I'll say a few words.

Then I think I'll share a perspective on thoughts rather than a meditation today.

So a man goes to see a Zen master,

He's got a few ailments,

He's a little sick and he starts to tell the Zen master about his sickness,

About some of his problems of work and you know relationships,

The weather.

He says I'm not enjoying life.

I've got this aching back and I've got this sore shoulder and he says can you help me?

And the Zen master says well of course I can help you,

Easy.

So the Zen master gets a spoon out of his pocket.

Zen masters often have spoons in their pockets you know.

So he gets out a spoon and he pours some olive oil into the spoon and he gives it to the man.

What I want you to do,

I want you to walk through the forest on the way to the market but I don't want you to spill a drop.

Do not spill any of it.

When you get to the end of the market,

I want you to turn around and come back.

Oh,

A bit of an odd request the man thought but there we go,

I'll do it,

You can help me.

So off he goes carrying the spoon,

Focused on the spoon,

Attentive to the spoon,

Never took his attention off it,

Never took his eyes off it.

Slowly,

Slowly,

Gets to the end of the market,

Turns around and returns.

He meets the Zen master and he just smiles,

I've done it,

I've done it.

Here's your spoon and the oil,

Not a drop spilt.

Now can you help me?

He says yes.

When you're walking through the forest,

Did you see the flowers?

Did you hear the birds singing?

Could you smell the lushness of the grass and the growth?

And when you're in the market,

Did you see the little children playing?

Did you notice the people selling their wares,

The dogs running around and having a good time?

Did you notice any of that?

He says no,

I was focused on the spoon.

He says exactly.

You were focused on your ailments,

You're focused on what's wrong,

You're focused on your so-called problems,

That's why you're not enjoying life.

When I came across that,

I thought that's brilliant,

Lovely way of putting it.

So the Zen master didn't tell him,

That's the end of the story now by the way,

So the Zen master didn't just tell him,

Come on get your act together,

He showed him experientially,

Why he's not enjoying life.

And isn't that similar to us?

The reason we don't enjoy life,

Why is that?

We're focused on something,

What is it?

I'm going to say thoughts.

We're fixated on thought.

Our attention rarely veers away from thought onto the sound of a bird or even the traffic,

The smell of the coffee.

We do hear and smell and see these things,

But back on there,

Back into the world of thought,

Thinking about this,

That and the other,

Creating problems.

Actually the mind creates the problems,

Then tries to solve them.

This fixation on thought is like our primary addiction.

We're all addicted to thinking.

But thinking itself is not the problem.

Thoughts are not a problem.

A thought can't help you.

A thought can't hurt you.

It can't do anything.

It's just a thought.

It's the belief in the thoughts that's problematic.

We believe what the thoughts are saying is true.

The mind is a storyteller.

So we're like the man with the spoon of oil walking through the forest and the marketplace and we don't really experience it.

I'm not saying we never experience it,

But not for very long and not in a way that's open and appreciative back in there,

Back into the virtual world of thought.

And what you've got to remember about thoughts is that when they're believed,

They engineer,

They cultivate emotion.

So then they feel true.

Not only do they appear to be true,

The thought,

But now it feels true.

It's a double whammy.

It's like,

I may have mentioned before,

But it's like,

Just like the cart follows a horse,

The emotion follows the thought.

So if you've got a turbulent mind,

You'll have a turbulent emotional life.

It's just the way it is.

It's just the way it happens.

So put down that spoon.

Notice when you're thinking about problems that don't exist.

Notice when you are immersed in thought,

Because there will be a point where you realise that you're lost in thought.

It's like you wake up out of this dreamlike world.

And I'm only talking here about self-centred,

Egoic-centred thinking.

Practical thinking and functional thinking is fine.

That's what the mind is designed to do.

But see,

It's the self-centred thinking.

It's like,

It's like there's a little movie going on in the mind.

I call it the me movie.

There's a movie going on and we spend 80 to 90 percent of our time watching this movie.

And we call that our life.

That's my life.

That movie is my life.

When your life is happening outside of the movie,

Real life,

Real sounds,

Real people,

Even real problems.

Problems that actually exist,

Not ones made up.

So start to notice during the day.

Notice when you're complaining.

There's a good one.

Notice when you're complaining.

And the moment you notice that you're on the complaining ride,

Get off.

Just stop.

Don't go into,

Oh,

There I go again.

I'll never get this right.

Don't go into that.

Just stop.

Get off that ride.

And maybe choose something else.

Maybe self-criticism.

Notice when you're being self-critical.

When you notice you're on that self-critical ride,

Get off.

Just get off it.

Come back.

Come back home to the body or whatever you're doing.

It might be chopping carrots or washing the car.

Whatever.

Just come back to what you're doing.

Now,

It's a habit that we keep going in there.

It's a case of mistaken identity because we believe that little me movie is about me.

It's me.

That's my life.

So we get an identity from thought.

It's a case of mistaken identity because what the mind is doing,

It creates a,

How do I say,

It creates a mind made image of you,

Of the self.

And we take that to be who we are.

That's why we suffer.

Because in the world of mind,

In that virtual reality,

Anything can happen.

There are no laws.

There are no rules.

So let me just share one or two perspectives with you on thoughts.

If all those thoughts that you have,

The self-centered thoughts,

If they turned to a language you don't understand,

If they turn to Chinese or Japanese or Spanish or German,

Whatever,

A language you completely don't understand,

What would happen?

What would that mean?

They'd just be sounds.

They'd just be noises.

But because you weren't paying them any attention,

You weren't getting lost,

You weren't giving them meaning,

They would start to dwindle away.

Because it's the attention,

When the attention gets lost in the thoughts,

That's what's feeding them.

The self-centered thinking.

So another thing we can do,

I mean,

Maybe when we're anxious,

When there's anxious thoughts around,

Slow it down.

Slow the thought down.

Repeat the thought back to yourself.

Let's say it's something like,

Oh,

I'll never get another job.

So we slow it down.

I gap,

Gap,

Gap.

Will,

Gap,

Gap,

Gap.

So we become aware of the pauses in between the thoughts.

Actually try it.

Never,

Pause,

Get.

Do you see what we're doing?

We're just trying to break it,

Break this habit apart,

Poke holes in it,

Weaken it in some way.

Because that's what we need to do.

And I've shared other techniques,

And there'll be some in days to come,

And some meditations.

But do follow them.

Do put them into practice.

They will make a difference.

If you do them for a time,

You start to,

You start to break apart this momentum of thought,

This momentum of self-centered thinking.

See what you make of this.

A thought is never the actual thing itself.

What do I mean?

Let's do one final exercise.

I want you to close your eyes.

And I want you to imagine in front of you is a table with a beautiful yellow melon on it,

Bright yellow.

You pick the melon up.

You feel it.

Something really satisfying about picking up a melon.

Tap it.

You can feel the,

Or you can hear the,

This kind of hollowness.

Put it back down onto the table.

And now a knife appears.

It wasn't there previously.

Pick up the knife.

I want you to cut through the melon and feel the resistance when it meets the melon.

It falls apart and you see the yellow shining glistening insides.

You pick half of the melon up.

You can smell it.

Oh,

Delicious.

Wonderful.

Now you start to taste it.

You start to lick it and bite into it.

Oh,

This is delicious.

The juice is running down your hands and your wrists,

Down your chin,

Onto your shirt or blouse.

Oh,

Delicious.

Beautiful.

Open your eyes.

Where's the melon?

Do you want to say it's gone?

It was never there.

It was imagined.

Are you going to wipe the juice off your chin?

It was never there.

That's the power of mind.

That's the power of the imagination.

When used wisely,

It's wonderful.

But when used negatively,

When it's left to its own devices,

It tends to be negative.

So that's where a lot of our suffering comes from.

It comes from the imagination.

Okay.

Notice when you are in that imagined world,

You need to start seeing it.

Those words and images popping up.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

See you tomorrow.

Reviews

There was so much helpful wisdom in this short reflection. Thank you for sharing and presenting it so wonderfully. 🙏

I love having a collection of all your talks and stories recorded so I can return to them again and again. This is one of my favorites. 🌞🙏🦋🌞🙏🦋🌞🙏🦋🌞🙏🦋🌞

I really enjoyed those. It's funny how I can sometimes have a whole argument over a thing I didn't do with a person I've never met.

So many ‘juicy’ tidbits in there along with the melon! Wonderful…🙏

That melon was delicious! 😋 Holding things much lighter.
Deepest gratitude Sury 🙏🏼