(Buddhist teaching as medicine for all human suffering)
Spirit Rock Meditation Center near San Francisco. Those who enter our light-filled meditation hall are not running away from life, but seeking a wise path through it.
To Ajahn Chah, anxiety, trauma, financial problems, physical difficulties, struggles with meditation, ethical dilemmas, and community conflict were all forms of suffering to be treated with the medicine of Buddhist teaching. He
See the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings.
It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum.”
everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Each of these practices helps us to recognize and let go of unhealthy patterns that create suffering and develop healthy patterns in their place.
What is important about the Buddhist psychological approach is the emphasis on training and practice, as well as understanding. Instead of going into therapy to discuss your problems and be listened to once a week, there is a regimen of daily and ongoing trainings and disciplines to help you learn and practice healthy ways of being. These practices return us to our innate wisdom and compassion, and they direct us toward freedom.
(Training over talk; mood contagion and the power of mindful presence)
Western psychology has documented this phenomenon of “mood contagion” or limbic resonance. If a person filled with panic or hatred walks into a room, we feel it immediately, and unless we are very mindful, that person’s negative state will begin to overtake our own.
it serves us well under most ordinary circumstances. It becomes invaluable in extremity.
Zen master Shunryu Suzuki remarked to a disciple, “You are perfect just the way you are. And…there is still room for improvement!”
Finally, as you become more naturally able to see the secret goodness, expand your practice. Add more days. Try practicing on days that are more stressful. Gradually include strangers and difficult people, until your heart learns to silently
(Compassion as the natural response to seeing clearly)
Buddhism teaches that we suffer not because we have sinned but because we are blind. Compassion is the natural response to this blindness; it arises whenever we see our human situation clearly. Buddhist texts describe compassion as the quivering of the heart in the face of pain, as the capacity to see our struggles with “kindly eyes.” We need compassion, not anger, to help us be tender with our difficulties and not close off to them in fear. This is how healing takes place.
Every meal we eat is intertwined with the sweat of farmers, migrant workers, and long-haul truckers. It depends on the global climate and
At times it felt like an insatiable hunger, and at times it left me feeling very young.
“Ultimately it is on our vulnerability that we depend.”
My father’s brain was almost entirely destroyed by his disease. For many years, I have asked myself, ‘Who spoke? Who are we really?’ I have never found the slightest help from any medical knowledge. Much of life cannot be explained, it can only be witnessed.”
(Consciousness as the unchanging receiver behind all experience)
master Thich Nhat Hanh describes it this way: “The mind is like a television set with hundreds of channels. Which channel will you turn on?” Usually we are so focused on the dramatic story being told that we don’t notice that there is always consciousness that receives it.
In Buddhist psychology indifference is called the “near enemy” of true openness and equanimity, a misguided imitation. To rest in consciousness, I had to unlearn this defensive detachment and learn to feel everything.
When we rest in consciousness we become unafraid of the changing conditions of life.
To understand them we can simply notice the two distinct dimensions to our life: the ever-changing flow of experiences, and that which knows the experiences.
Being everything, he could never die. All his fears vanished. He realized that death was an illusion. A well-being and joy beyond description opened in him. And then a spontaneous compassion arose for the astonishing folly of humans, believing we are separate, clinging to nations and making war.
It is as if we were in a movie theater, completely lost in whatever film—romance, adventure, comedy, or tragedy—is currently starring ourselves. Then we are told to look behind us, to find the source. Turning our heads, we recognize for the first time that the entire drama arises from a series of changing images projected by a beam of light onto the screen. The light, clear and shining, is colored by the various forms on the film, yet its essential nature is pure and unchanging.
In an argument we stop, laugh, let go, and become silent. Each of these moments offers a taste of freedom.
Consciousness is colored by the states that visit it. —Buddha
He’d have us sit up all night long for endless teachings, without any break, and check in on us cheerfully at four in the morning. When we got annoyed, he’d ask, “Are you angry? Whose fault is that?”
(States of mind shape experience more than outer circumstances)
In popular Western culture we are taught that the way to achieve happiness is to change our external environment to fit our wishes.
teaching that states of consciousness are far more crucial than outer circumstances.
More than anything else, the way we experience life is created by the particular states of mind with which we meet it. If
Pure awareness becomes colored by our thoughts, emotions, and expectations.
4 Recognize the mental states that fill consciousness. Shift from unhealthy states to healthy ones.
For Westerners, this is one of the more challenging aspects of Buddhist psychology. There are hundreds of lists and tables of states and relations.
(Buddhist taxonomy of mental qualities and the primacy of mindfulness)
There are the Two Truths, the Three Characteristics, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Five Hindrances, the Six Perfections, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Eightfold Path. There are lists of 52, 89, and 121 states of consciousness. In later schools of Buddhism the lists get bigger, with 80,000 verses of wisdom and 84,000 skillful means.
microscopic. A few minutes contained thousands of moments of sound and ear consciousness, sight and eye consciousness, taste and tongue consciousness, all blended together like the spots of color in an impressionist painting or the dots of light on a television screen to create my experience of lunch.
One common list has 52 qualities, while other lists have up to 121. Apparently, between the monasteries, the monks could never fully decide.
With every sense impression and the consciousness that receives it, there arise qualities of mind such as worry, pride, and excitement. They arise between the senses and consciousness, and add their color to experience. These mental qualities and what they bring to each experience are critical for our happiness.
You already examine material things every day—every morning you check out the food in your refrigerator. Why not check out the state of your own mind? Investigating your own mind is much more important!”
As we practice mindfulness with pleasant and unpleasant experiences, we discover the power of the mindfulness to allow a healthy response to whatever arises. Mindfulness is the king or queen of all the healthy states. It sees what experiences are present and creates the conditions for our natural integrity, love, generosity, and simplicity to arise.
Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be. Mitch, who came to
Love says, ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says, ‘I am nothing.’ Between these two my life flows.”