Today, let’s talk about the Mind. First a quote from the Buddha:
“Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think.
Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it.
Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.”
The mind is what you use for practice, to meditate. The mind is also the biggest obstacle to practice ‐ if you believe in its reality, its primacy in your life.
The mind is active in all your experience of the world. You sense an object, your nerves carry the signal of that sensing to your brain, and your brain makes an internal image of the object, and it is this internal image that you feel you have experienced. It is this same kind of internal image that you experience as real in your dream.
To add to all of this, your mind also creates its internal image of who you are, your identity, then acts based on this image. It is this mental image of yourself that is called the ego. It is this same mental image, together with its ideas of what makes it happy, that are at the source of what Buddha called, ‘cravings,’ which he said were at the root of human dukkha.
Spiritual practices all over the world address the problems that come from the mind, and give many ways to deal with these. Becoming aware of the processes can bring insight and some sense of freedom.
A deeper kind of freedom, though, can come from one approach, and that is to actually know, to understand at a deep level, that you ARE NOT THE MIND. That you know the mind, and the mind gets all its seeming power from you, but you are not the mind. You are the consciousness that lights up the mind.
So just notice, when thoughts or desires come to mind, that you are not those thoughts, rather you are the knower of all these, and they never really touch you. So you are free, at the deepest level.
Finally, a quote from Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Soto school of Zen
“So our practice is not to eliminate our delusion, but to see or to become aware of the fact that we are deluded. Just become aware of it and let go of it. Do not be pulled by the delusions.”
― Dōgen, The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi
VIDEO: UNDERSTANDING THE MONKEY MIND WITH YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t‐JiQubfMPg&t=81s