It’s All in the Mind Redux
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
So I said to @Jason rather casually “it is all in the mind” about depression and mental health, but that doesn’t really make it any easier to cope with, it’s only a general pointer. You can say 95% of our lives are in our mind, apart from a little eating, passing wind, moving the body and working. Mental health is really about managing our minds so that they stay vital, responsive, and robust.
Ultimately you want the mind to be the servant, not the master in the house of being. Part of that is teaching it to be relaxed, the more tension and stress there is the more the whole combined body and mind start acting up. Things that can work against you when working with the mind as a servant are desires, hidden convictions, deep conflicts and habit energies. There are probably a few more…
The Buddha is a good point to begin to work with the mind, but really it is your unique mind and your formed beliefs, you have to do the work. It is the labour of a lifetime to become aware, to root out what is unbeneficial, and to guide the mind in the right kind of patterns. This process is an expression of your being, but a lot can be done by cultivating healthy habits.
Things that have helped me with this are watching as little news as I can, reading or listening to Dhamma talks, getting plenty of sleep, interacting with spiritual friends, making love a focus in my life, and eating less. Maybe there are other ways to do this too, other sets of healthy habits.
I dunno… maybe this is one of those posts where I’m stating the totally obvious…
Comments
Rather than "it's all in your mind" (of course it is, where else would it be?) I always tell myself "it's not real, you can ignore it." Anxiety, skewed perceptions and priorities are all due to some kind of chemical imbalance, or inability of my brain to process correctly rather than to anything "real". Anxiety isn't about anything that's actually going on in my life, so it can be ignored. My way of dealing is to just hang on till it passes and don't make any decisions, as skewed priorities and perceptions mean any decisions will be greatly regretted later on. Doesn't make things easy, but it is easier than thinking there is something I need to "do" about it.
Yes, in a way all of what is in the mind is not real. This is the whole point of Maya, of living in illusion and in the structures of thought that the mind has accepted as real and important. It is good to learn to take a step back from that, from the whole mind and all its thoughts, and to start residing in Being.
I don’t know if anyone will be interested in my experiences, but there is the mind, there is the body, and there is the body-energy which hovers around the body. Following the Being, that which perceives, is the road that leads within. Especially paying attention to that which perceives the mind. Ultimately what you find there are more impulses, things which appear to reflect the ‘I’.
I wanted to come back to this. Ajahn Chah once said “the only book worth reading is the heart”, and it’s important to realise the mind and the heart interact. An emotion is often a result of a thought or series of thoughts, and so what you think determines a large part of your emotional life.
So managing what you desire and why you desire it, your worries and why you worry about it, are key drivers of what you think and feel, and this can get quite intense and capable of dragging you along. But by examining these things you can remove a lot of this intensity, you can learn to respond to it with laughter. If you understand why these thoughts come up, you’ll find they arise a lot less frequently, it’s like untangling a series of ropes.
This can lead to a light-hearted and calmer approach to thoughts and to life in general, and makes it a lot easier to make some distance between the mind and Being. The mind is just a tool for survival, it is not something to be identified with as you. Just relax and be, and focus your attention away from the mind, once you have reached the point where the mind is calm and not constantly asking for attention.
You speak of heart and mind as if they are two different things. Heart and mind are often thought of as the same, and the terms are interchangeable.
My understanding is that emotions are triggered by thoughts. I’ve experienced this happening on more than one occasion in mindfulness meditation. The heart when thinking of the inner world is that part of your being that is the source of emotion, which gets triggered by thought. The mind is the bundle of your thoughts.