Thinking VI

What are you thinking about? Watch the video.

Thinking V

To understand bondage and liberation, we need to see how we are bound by our thoughts. This is not just the discursive thoughts, but our projections, which are the objects of the discursive thoughts, and the emotions that link the two. This whole system of thoughts is bondage.

When we don’t recognize the nature of these phenomena, we are bound by them. We are taken in by the illusion or mirage, like thirsty people lost in a desert. When we recognize them, we are free from their compulsion. This is self-liberation: this freedom is not brought about by an outside agent, but by our own insight.

Thinking IV

The Lord of Yogis Milarepa sang in “The Six Questions”:

Mind has even more projections than there are dust motes in the sun;
Is there an accomplished yogi here or a yogini
Who sees the appearance of things laid bare in the very bed where it lies?

Thinking III

These concepts—the objects of that endless monologue—are as vague and general as drawings on water. They don’t come from anywhere and they don’t go anywhere. Suddenly it seems like a friend is present. In the next moment, it is a pickup truck or a presidential candidate. As obscure as they are, we are trapped by them like a deer trapped by headlights.

How are these concepts different from the objects seen in dreams?

Thinking II

What is thinking? Most of us tend to identify thinking as discursive activity: an ongoing internal monologue along with its labeling. We identify with the monloguer and consider the object of our discursiveness as “other.” These are the main features of our sense of duality, the split between “this” and “that.” Emotions link the two, and confirm the sense of separation.

But what are the objects of our discursive thoughts? Aren’t they our concepts? Isn’t that also thought?

Thinking I

When you think about something or someone, the object seems to actually be present. Whether it is a past thing or a future thing, something in the room or far away, an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral, it seems to be right there. Usually it seems to be in front. Sometimes it seems to be in some other direction.

When you think about something else, the first thing disappears and the new thing appears. How does that happen?

“Training the Heart”

There is a nice article by the late Ajahn Chah in the current issue of Buddhadharma (Spring 2008) that reminds me of the famous Kadampa slogan, “All dharma agrees at one point.” Whether we call it mahamudra, ordinary mind, buddha nature, dharmadhatu, mind itself, prajnaparamita, empty cognizance, rigpa, or wisdom, that point is the heart-essence of all dharma paths, the guide to the ultimate goal.

Here is how Ajahn Chah describes it:

The Buddha taught that we should cultivate clear knowing for ourselves. Whatever arises, arises in this knowing. When that which knows, knows in accordance with the truth, then the mind and its psychological factors are recognized as not ours…. The mind is free, radiant, and unentangled with any problems or issues. The reason problems arise is because the mind is deluded by conditioned things, deluded by this misperception of self. So the Buddha taught us to observe this mind. In the beginning, what is there? There is truly nothing there. It doesn’t arise with conditioned things, and it doesn’t die with them. When the mind encounters something good, it doesn’t change to become good. When the mind encounters something bad, it doesn’t become bad. That’s how it is when there is clear insight into one’s nature.

There are countless Buddhist teachings, practices of meditation, and methods of training, but unless they lead to this vital point, the fruition will be a long way off. When you get this point, it is called receiving “buddhahood in the palm of your hand.”