The mind seducing awareness…
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
It seems to me that the mind is continually seducing the awareness into paying attention to it. It says, here is something you could do. Or, here is an interesting thought. Or, here is something that is worrisome. Playing on restlessness, curiosity, a yearning for safety.
But this means that the stream of thoughts that is the mind is continually center stage in awareness. You may find yourself for long moments paying no attention to your surroundings while you are completely focussed on the mind. It’s almost like a blackout if the focus is intense.
That goes against the practice of balancing the senses, and having roughly equal amounts of awareness on the five senses and the awareness-of-mind. This is a good beginning practice for reducing the importance of mind in your life.
Certainly it seems like your mind knows you well, knows what makes you ‘tick’. It has grown in conjunction with your being. Yet its strategies for seducing awareness are relatively simple, it just tickles you with the hint of something, you bite, and voila, a thought.
You could learn to look at new thoughts when they are arriving, before you are examining them and they begin to generate new thoughts. Each new thought is another element in the seduction, jumping up and saying, look at me, look at me…
The awareness is quick, flicking from point to point, but the idea of looking at the gaps between thoughts involves teaching the awareness to slow down, to stay with thoughts when a new thought introduces itself and not immediately jump to engage with it.
Comments
Say what?
Can you give some experience to what exactly you’re referring to?
In what ways can you teach the awareness to slow down?
Everyday application, perhaps. This is very thick in descriptors…but I find myself not understanding what you’re presenting. Is this another way to observe the mind?
Is this a musing or a sharing of a teaching?
This starts off with an observation, includes some musing, but touches on several teachings.
Ok, gotcha. Maybe not my time to receive. I can respect that. 🙏
Awareness is a part of the path of wisdom
Knowledge is a part of the path of wisdom
With growing awareness and accumulated knowledge
With a seeking mind
Humble be thee
With an open heart
The path of Wisdom
Is the highway of Buddha
The bridge of Nirvana
The way of Enlightenment
Your tea is ready.
Peace to all.
I think everyday might offer a different explanation of the above.
Today, one interpretation might be..
Objectivity or equanimity requires neither a suppression nor a myopic focus on any sense gates. Formal Zen meditation is just a specific class on how to nurture such a balance with all the sense gates, with the intent of carrying it on into all aspects of daily life. The practice itself first allows all of our habituated responses to phenomena to stand out, exposing themselves as the ego maintenance program that they are. Here each ego-initiated manipulation of our incoming sense gate data, that was controlling the narrative through its selective dominance at that moment of one sense gate over the others, is denuded of that control when all of the sense gates are offered equal meditative attention.
Within a balancing attention on all of the sense gates, the trickiest mind loses its ego-based dictatorial imperatives to more collegial & cooperative possibilities.
Thus have I heard and so I have found...
Normally this happens when the mind has become charmed by its own thoughts...
It pays to be careful how you are talking to yourself, because.... you are listening.
So...
Imagine or better yet, know, that everyone is already Bodhi, including sleeping Buddhas. In this way, the onus is on us to find the form that awakens us from zzz... (oops nearly drifted off).
Now. What were we hearing? Who said it? Friend or ignoramus?
If we are unfolded by the Bodhi awareness...
Yi Ha! As the cowboy, bull-riding clown zenith might 'mantra'.
https://www.lionsroar.com/journeys-the-real-rodeo/
@lobster 🥲 💞 🤟
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Gil Fronsdale has a teaching along these lines where the analogy is that of sitting on the banks of a river watching boats go by. At some point we become enamored with a boat and find ourselves on board totally caught up in whatever is going on on the boat. The practice of mindfulness is simply hopping off the boat (thought train) when you notice andretaking your seat on the shore.
When you become aware of thoughts, the idea of believing or disbelieving them are all seen as just more thoughts. A play of stories. They have nothing to do with you.
As Ajahn Dtun Thiracitto said -
The truth is silent. That which speaks is not the truth.
One synonym for Nibbana is 'nippapanca' - the absence of proliferation. The cessation of papanca is, therefore, the attainment of Nibbana.
I'll have what she is having.
...And now back to the Sufi corner, where speech is silence and others silence is a chattering mind monkey... allegedly.