Observing the Nature of the Mind

A monk once asked an enlightened Zen Master, ‘What is the essence of the teaching?’
‘Nothing more than observing the nature of the mind,’ he replied.
‘Is that all there is?’
‘That’s all.’

On a subliminal level we intuit a truth there and yet it can be too abstract, too obscure. Reflecting on what my meditation teachers had taught me during my first three years in Thailand I realised that they had spent a great deal of time speaking very precisely about what the path of practice was not. The implication was that only by paying attention to the teachings would the path of practice become known, as indeed the Buddha had taught. He was most reluctant to specify ultimate goals, preferring to first address what it is in our spiritual development that causes us problems, be it fear, anger, hatred, jealousy or lack of self worth.

We habitually identify with our thoughts, memories and fantasies, all of them unquestionably ours because we have made them so but the teachings tell us repeatedly that this identification does not accord with the truth. In Zen they talk about ‘maintaining the host position’. The host does not need to concern himself with all the details of his guest’s lives. He sees them come and go, they check in and check out and in the same way we must learn to view the momentary conditions of the mind with more acceptance, greater dispassion, more detachment.

Not one of our experiences are in any sense ‘ours’. They are only momentarily ‘our’ experiences because we can’t see them in any other way.

There’s nothing lasting in any of our thoughts or feelings, or in any of our ideas or in the reality of our bodies. I remember sitting with some other monks at the bedside of a nun who was dying of cancer. As she came momentarily back into consciousness she greeted us all with a radiant smile.
‘You can’t trust this body,’ she said.

If we go looking to the body and it’s senses for our fulfillment we are setting ourselves up for another source of disappointment.

Equally none of our possessions are fundamentally ‘ours’. Take, for instance, this robe I am wearing. Relatively speaking this robe is mine. It is part of a set of robes that I must be with at dawn according to the monastic rule. I must start each day with my full set of robes. If not, I have committed an offence and must confess to another monk at the appropriate time. So that rule encourages me to stay with this robe, relatively speaking to see it as mine. Someone made it for me and it became my responsibility.

If I am not careful I can see the robe as mine in a very different way. I can see it as a cherished possession.
‘This is my robe! Don’t anyone else wear it or have anything to do with it!’
If I am very attached to it I could get very upset when it gets torn. But sooner or later it will fall apart and get torn up and end up as a cleaning cloth in the monastery. The sense of ‘my robe’ will no longer be there and the sense of ownership which I projected on to a piece of cloth only existed in my head.

We use the things we own but we must not allow ourselves be possessed by them.

We must remember that we are all visitors here, we’re just passing through. It’s an observation worth recollecting when we feel ourselves getting caught up in responsibilities and extraneous thoughts. We are so conditioned to the idea that we have to think before we can do anything that the idea of doing something without the active engagement of the mind seems to be impossible. But not only is it possible to engage in detailed and demanding activities without thinking, if we work on cultivating the quiet mind we can only enhance everything we do.

The idea of experiencing the state of perfection is so contrary to what we conceive to be our potential that we limit ourselves to a mundane and mediocre existence.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Perfection is possible but we have to look for it in the right place, we have to look beyond pain and problems, even beyond happiness. One evening in Thailand, Ajahn Chah was talking to a few of us after the meditation sitting. He said,
‘You know, the Buddha didn’t just encourage us to let go of Dukkha, to let go of suffering,
he also encouraged us to let go of Sukka, of happiness.’
Being such a ‘life-affirmer’, I found this idea quite unsettling until I began to understand that if we just direct our life’s energies towards happiness, something as transitory and unstable as anything else, we are actually settling for less than what is really possible for us.

What is possible for us is what the Buddha described as ‘the unshakeable liberation of the heart’. If we think that’s impossible we have already nailed our own coffin but that too is only ‘thought’.

We are the result of everything that has happened to us prior to this moment. We bring to any given moment the backlog of our personal history. We can lament it or resent it. Or instead of struggling with it, we can look at it with a desire to investigate it through meditation practice rather than to judge.

Meditation practice doesn’t have to be a chore. We don’t have to overcome our thoughts or eradicate them as a superficial reading of some of the scriptures would suggest. Attacking meditation with such views sets the mind up as a potential battleground. Meditation is a moment by moment experience observing the nature of the mind for even our most inspired thoughts have a beginning and an end. If we adopt an investigative rather than judgmental attitude to our meditation practice we create the opportunity to play with these moments as they arise in the mind in a skilful way tempered by wisdom.

We must develop the ability to yield to the conditions of the moment and learn to accept what it is to be human.

Meditation practice is about what is happening right here, right now. There’s nothing in the practice that mindfulness and clear comprehension cannot contain or embrace. Mindfulness allows things to come and go as they arise in the mind. It isn’t about concentrating on holding on to an object, you can’t freeze-dry a thought. It’s much softer but still an active rather than a passive experience.
It’s like standing beside a road and watching the traffic go by. We can be blind to it so that it’s just a movement of vehicles and then someone comes along and says,’ I’m looking for a 1990 Honda. Tell me when it comes.’
When we turn our attention back to the road, instead of seeing a blur of traffic we are aware of the vehicles as individual models of cars passing by. That’s mindfulness.

One of the characteristics of truth, of Dhamma, is that it is here and now, outside of time. What is the past? It’s memory as thought forms – good, bad, indifferent, pleasant, unpleasant, all of them arising and passing away. No thought is lasting.

When do we experience thoughts of the past other than right now? Think of this – we only experience thoughts of the past in the present moment. And as the past is nothing more than a collection of old memories that have nothing to do with right now, couldn’t we learn to let it go?

There is one story that I have told many times but it always has meaning for me. This is how I remember it, supposedly taking place in the Middle East a couple of hundred years ago. The army of a particular sheik had surrounded a village before dark and the sheik had ordered the village elders to be brought to him.
‘You have until dawn tomorrow to bring me a gift that will make me happy when I am sad,’ he said. ‘If you fail, I will destroy your village and everyone in it.’
Just before dawn the elders came back with their gift laid on a pillow to present to the sheik.
‘Please accept this gift, Master,’ they said.
The sheik looked at the small ring in the middle of the pillow.
‘But I have no shortage of rings,’ he said. ‘How can this ring make me happy when I am sad?’
‘Please, Master,’ they said. ‘We beg you to read the inscription engraved on the ring.’
He picked it up and read, ‘And this too shall pass.’

All pain, all fear, all anger, all grief, all pleasure… this too shall pass.

Ajahn Ãnando, New Zealand, 1991