Author: asitisnow

The mind is constantly nosy, always extending itself out. To be more precise, the defilement of desiring is causing the nosiness. Observe what happens when you pass by a conversation – the tendency of prying into what others are talking. The more you pull away from it the more you tend to hear than before. Hence the practice of watching the mind – MYOM – Mind your Own Mind Business is pretty important if you wish to have peace of mind.

It seems like we have no interest in our own businesses except of others. Just imagine giving yourself the task of watching the mind the next time it goes to any senses. The tendency of it is always out there instead of in here. As if the whole world is our business. It is of no wonder that we are so seriously affected by what the world is and make it our own. Sigh. This mind is indeed a life long journey to “tame” if ever there is such a thing!

Well, one of the main reasons why we are unable to get the technique right and keep failing in observing the mind is because the beginning purpose of it is already incorrect. The idea of watching the mind, to many, even myself, is to “handle” the mind – as if it is some kind of sumo wrestling – a war of some kind. There is a tendency of intending to “kill” it rather than learning from it. Meditation is about learning, so that you start to get a good feel of how it works, hence having the wisdom of creating causes for the effect to take place.

In fact the tendency of “handling the mind” comes from our attitude towards our own experience. Ask yourself how do you feel when you realize there are so much anger, upset, judgment, jealousy, and many of other negative emotions that plague the mind daily? I am sure you have these rotten feeling of fixing it, hoping that you can be more loving and understanding instead of having those yucky experiences bombarding the mind each day.

So long as we have the wrong attitude towards all this negativity, our immediate tendency is about wiping them up, hence handling the mind becomes our obsession instead of first learning to understand how all these stuff comes into being.

So the only way to start afresh, as a new year resolution, if you are one who is keen to do inner housekeeping, is to have the attitude of what is there to learn from this mind. Look at the mind as nature rather than me. Identification always makes one become that and hence entangle at its mercy. So before you start looking at the mind, give yourself a reminder that you are not trying to control or manage the mind but rather learn a little more about it. Give each experience a voice instead of pushing it away and I am sure you will enjoy meditating than before. Apply more interest and awareness towards your daily moments – it helps to make your day more meaningful.

Happiness
is but a lie

Upset
is but a mistake

Time
is but an illusion

Form
is but a mirage

Birth
is not the beginning

Death
is not an end

I
is but an error

Everything…
will be understood.

Have you tried uncorking a fruit juice bottle without using a corkscrew? At that point of trying, the mind, if it has past experience before, would have already predicted two experiences that will come up in sequence – the difficulty in pulling out the cork and the experience of relief the moment the cork finally releases itself out of the bottle neck. Both are two opposing experiences, the former in stress, the later a relief.

Observe that the nature of the cork has the ability of holding on to the bottle, else it would not have serve its purpose as a cork. And for you to release it you have to first experience the held on experience of the cork. It can be quite a pain to experience that until the release comes through. The pain is caused by the held on or else you would not have experience what pain is.

This metaphor explains the nature of how the mind works. I am using the word nature to denote how things work without having a personality experience in it. Each time when you experience pain over something, be it mental or physical, instead of detesting the pain, consider the new information that it is the holding on to something that you are not aware of that is causing you the experience of pain.

Without seeing the cause of the holding on, facing the pain can be quite a stress as you will just think of resolving the pain rather than to see what causes the pain. In truth the pain is non-existential as it only arises from holding on. To try fixing the pain is to make the pain stronger as to detest is to hold on to what you don’t like hence making the pain grow. If you have understood this you would not have bark at the wrong tree and instead look for the cause of it.

It is by understanding the cause of the pain that releases the pain, not through fixing it any other way. But before that can happen, you have to experience the pain first then only the cause of the pain. For that matter, all ignorance is suffering as you have to endure the error until understanding comes in, in undoing its process.

Practically the process will be such – imagine an upset arises in your mind due to a certain trigger. Give no heed to the trigger as the upset is what you are experiencing now. You will find yourself detesting this unpleasant feeling of upset which is quite natural. Do you see it as a natural reaction of the mind doing that, without you needing to detest further? Learn to see this as nature unfolding – nature working its way, in the mind. This is right attitude over the existing attitude that is beyond your control. In a way this is acceptance, but this can only happen when you have the right view that nature is taking place in the mind. Once you have this acceptance coming your way, you are already not detesting what is being experienced, in this case, the upset. Observe what happens to upset when you are able to successfully incept the true understanding of seeing it as nature. You will be in for a surprise! You will see the importance of right view working its way in releasing the upset.