Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen reframes suffering: not as an interruption that shouldn’t be happening, but as a fundamental truth about human life. He traces Buddha’s pragmatic approach, cataloguing the many forms suffering takes—separation, unmet seeking, alienation, the fear of death—and argues that honest acknowledgment is the only foundation for genuine change. He then pivots to the path forward: reorienting the mind from self-centered patterns toward the “path of the heart” and awakening, shifting concern to the welfare of all beings. The teaching culminates in practical meditation instruction—the nine-round breathing meditation using subtle energy channels, followed by choiceless awareness practice. For practitioners ready to move beyond surface optimism.
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File: 05 H and M of A.mp3
UUID: bf50007e-f3c6-4410-9ecb-af7c9360bf9c
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996 Jul-Sep (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~6,155
So we begin as we always do in terms of this ongoing process of reorienting ourselves, redirecting ourselves. You know, our mind is dynamic in nature. It’s not a static thing, a fixed entity. It is more of a process, and it’s always in continual motion. It’s always in some sort of movement, either away or towards.
And we’re always — we contend with our mind. That’s the way I like to think of it in my own mind, in my own terms. That it can either tend toward the overall categories or the orientations or the directions of that which is going to help us to solve our problems, help us to reduce our afflictive emotions of hatred and attachment, pride and jealousy and ignorance ultimately. Or it can simply tend in the direction of those ways of being, those ways of thinking and behaving, that are going to reinforce our problems, which are going to support the causes of our present suffering, are going to simply continue our patterns of suffering in one way or another. You know, we have that choice open to us.
You know, Buddha taught only two things. He taught suffering and the way to end suffering. He left the rest to philosophers and theologians. You know, he used that as the pragmatic criterion in delineating his path on the practical basic assumption that nobody wants to suffer, everybody wants to be happy. You know, whether God exists or not, whether the universe has a beginning or not, whether there’s a big bang or not — you know, are all things that we can debate endlessly and probably will be debated in one form or another endlessly.
But the fact that nobody wants to suffer, that everybody wants to be happy, is within our own felt experience, something which we can validate, something which is perhaps beyond debate. It’s almost a given of life, what we mean by life. So we can — you know, if I think there’s a lot of relearning that needs to take place. I mean, it’s not particularly mystical. I mean, it can become very profound, this process, what we’re involved in.
But essentially perhaps we’ve learned a lot of dysfunctional ways of being in the world and how to think and behave. And it’s become a problem for us. And this problem is experienced as felt suffering. And there are other possibilities of ways of thinking, ways of behaving that we can learn which are much more functional, which are much more able to bring us — and make the world about us have the capacity to bring us — in terms of happiness, in terms of fulfillment, in terms of meaning in our lives. What we want most in our lives.
So you know we can — it’s a gradual evolution toward attending toward this direction, this process of learning. You know what has been learned can be unlearned and new learning can take its place. Maybe this is what we’re about. This is maybe what Buddhism has to offer essentially. It’s hard, I think, to even become aware of it, of the necessity of what needs to be unlearned.
And if in fact there is something to be unlearned, we have this sort of righteousness about ourselves as if we knew or had all the answers. It’s just that we haven’t gotten it right yet, but we will eventually. That somehow these same patterns can extend themselves, the same ways of thinking, our present worldview and beliefs can somehow — if we can just arrange them in some sort of proper order, if we can arrange the world about us and the people and the things in some sort of preconceived pattern — somehow, we’re not quite sure what — we’re going to get what we want. It’s going to deliver the goods. We can find happiness.
That basically maybe we don’t have to change at all. Somehow not seeing that within the very texture of our way of thinking, the very nature of our patterns — our mind itself is the flaw, is the cause of our difficulty. And unless that is uprooted, unless that’s changed, the rest is more or less academic in terms of what type of suffering we’re going to experience. It’s going to be some form of suffering. You know, we don’t begin to confront the reality of the human condition, the human dilemma.
I’ve heard all that you’ve had to say on your problem. You asked me what to do about them. It is my view that your real problem is that you’re a member of the human race. Face that one first. And it’s a particular problem to face.
You know, as I — you know, what can we do about suffering? And I think, as I mentioned in this article that was just recently published in the newsletter I was reading today, you know there are two basic attitudes that we can have about our suffering and the nature of our problems. One, that our suffering is sort of an interruption in the flow of life. And things shouldn’t be this way — life should somehow be easy, and it should be a relatively pleasant experience. It’s just that something has temporarily gone wrong and we can set it right.
And therefore we involve ourselves in simply bringing it back to some sort of preconceived norm about what we should be experiencing. And the other basic attitude that we can have is that our suffering is a kind of truth about ourselves and the way that we’re living our life. You know, we have to — the poet has to listen to their wounds. And it is the wounds which tell us the truth about who we are. They’re a kind of intelligence and we have to listen — there’s some kind of disharmony.
There’s something wrong in the very processes of our life. This wrongness is experienced as suffering in some form or another. In a way, the former — the manner of the suffering is almost incidental. It is the very fact, the truth of suffering, which is universal, which is an expression of the nature of the human condition. But the problem is — how many of us question our happiness?
It’s suffering which makes us think. If one is unhappy, one wants to know why. We don’t ask why we’re happy. It’s unhappiness which makes us think, causes us to reflect upon the condition, the nature of our situation. It’s moments of unhappiness which may momentarily deflect us from our habitual ways of thinking, our attitudes, our usual focus to different ways of thinking, to viewing things in different ways, to other issues that we perhaps seldom concern ourselves with.
You know, it’s suffering. You know, nobody wants to think about suffering, but it seems as if it is a legitimate necessity. You know, unless we’re willing to face the fact of the actual felt experience of our life — not what we might like to believe is the quality of our life or what they tell us on the TV commercials which we should be experiencing in the course of our life. But if we actually look at our life in some dispassionate and honest way about ourselves and become aware of how pervasive suffering is in one form or another throughout our lives. And maybe such an awareness can help us to stop and think, and make us question, can lead us to some kind of change — the mind will begin to reorientate, begin to make adjustments, adapt itself to other ways, other possibilities.
The deeper and more sustained this awareness, the more profound and far-reaching our changes will be. This is the first truth that the Buddha taught — the fact of suffering. It is what makes us stop, makes us think, makes us go beyond, helps us go beneath the superficial attitudes that we usually deal with life with. But, you know, this isn’t to perversely suggest that we aren’t to concern ourselves with happiness or to appreciate happiness in our life when we experience it. It is just that happiness is not the problem — suffering is.
Suffering and our constant denial, our rejection and struggle against its recognition as the basic truth about our lives. And there’s nothing that is uniquely wrong with any of us, that we might feel that in our isolation and the loneliness of our being that somehow I’m the only one who’s got it wrong. Everybody else seems to be doing all right for themselves. It is just that if a solution to our suffering — if the problem of suffering is ever going to be found — we have to begin to at least acknowledge its existence. And we’re not basket cases.
And it doesn’t have to be a heavy-handed acknowledgment. But acknowledgment is still the same. It’s necessary that we face that first — that ordinary human beings suffer. Starving children of Biafra scrounge for roots, fight each other for rats. Vietnamese children with melted flesh wander homeless, orphaned across a lunar desert.
Many of us have never known this kind of misery, have never felt a lash or a club, never been shot at, persecuted, bombed, starved, and we suffer too. Wealth and intelligence and good fortune are no protection. Having good parents helps but guarantees nothing. Misery comes equally to the high-born and the low, comes with the gold spoon, to princes and princesses and ladies-in-waiting, to groom and gamekeeper, to the mighty and the humble. It is part of being human.
We differ from one another only more or less. A few tranquil ones with little conflict suffer less. At the extreme, stretched by despair to some dreadful breaking point, one goes berserk. In between are the rest of us, not miserable enough to go mad or jump off a bridge, yet never able — if we are honest — to say that we have come to terms with life or are at peace with ourselves, that we are happy. And perhaps the exact form our suffering takes somewhere slightly short of tranquility and not quite — you know, maybe not quite the bridge — is in any given instant unique for each of us.
But its mere fact is not. Without exception, suffering applies to us all. And for all of us, whosoever, there is the suffering of being separated from that which we desire not to be separated from. There’s the suffering of coming in contact with that which we desire not to come in contact with. There’s the suffering of not finding the happiness that we’re constantly seeking.
There’s the suffering of having to constantly maintain our self-image, reestablish our credentials, guard our territory, reaffirm our existence. This conception of ourselves as isolated entities makes us feel unbearably alone, makes us feel lost, imprisoned. You know, this involves us in this perpetual struggle to find union — find union with ourselves, find union with others about us, find union with the world about us, our environment. There’s the feelings of inauthenticity, the alienation, guilt, shame, feelings of wishlessness about us, the burden of self-consciousness, the loss of innocence. There’s the suffering of the fear of meaninglessness, the dread of death, the underlying drive of trying to rebuild some kind of facade about who we conceive of ourselves to be.
There’s the suffering of hatred, of attachment, of jealousy, pride, of being confused. There’s the suffering of desperately wanting to be loved and the fear of losing that love once we find it. There’s the suffering of a closed heart. There’s the suffering of the dull daily eating away, an ache in our heart from life — the ebbing of life spirit — you know, through apathy, through emptiness, through emptiness in our life. He paused.
The silence around us was frightening. The wind hissed softly, and then I heard the distant barking of a lone dog. Listen to that barking, Don Juan went on. That is the way my beloved Earth is helping me now to bring this last point here. That barking is the saddest thing one can hear.
We were quiet for a moment. The barking of that lone dog was so sad and the stillness around us so intense that I experienced a numbing anguish. It made me think of my own life, my sadness, my not knowing where to go, what to do. That dog’s barking is the nocturnal voice of a man, Don Juan said. It comes from a house in the valley towards the south.
A man is shouting through his dogs since they are companion slaves for life. Don Juan’s words had caught a most disturbing line in me. I felt as if he was speaking directly to me. That barking and the loneliness it creates speaks of the feelings of men, he went on. Men for whom an entire life was like a Sunday afternoon, an afternoon which was not altogether miserable, but rather hot and dull and uncomfortable.
They sweated and fussed a great deal. They didn’t know where to go or what to do. That afternoon left them only with the memory of petty annoyances and tedium. And then suddenly it was over. It was already night.
You know, there’s the suffering of an unlived life and of a life lived in a kind of quiet desperation. And then finally, there’s the suffering of death. You know, what we can be doing in this analysis and beginning to look at the reality of our felt experience is begin to orientate ourselves — you know, begin to avail ourselves of our own basic sanity contained within our own mind. That, you know — the web — what is the source, this problematic existence — you know, beginning to trace the deeper nature of our problems. Not — he’s not my problem.
She’s not my problem, my being fat, my not having enough money, my not being as beautiful as I ought to be — is not my problem. There’s something much deeper within our mind, which is the problem. And if we begin to associate this problematic way of being in the world, this suffering existence in which we’re bound up, with these deeper causes — the causes that are most basically self-centered and self-grasping — then we begin to orientate away from those mental patterns, those ways of thinking, and all the afflictive emotions, subsequent ways of thinking, the types of beliefs which are founded on those ways of thinking, those basic sources of problems in our life. Our mind begins to tend away and tend toward the solutions, tend toward compassion, tend toward love, tend toward kindness and concern and caring. It tends toward wisdom, understanding, awareness, mindfulness.
The mind begins to reorientate toward what basically is going to solve this way of being in the world. You know, none of — all of the suffering that I just enumerated, just listed — you know, we could each add to this endlessly. But it’s all just an expression of the truth of suffering in one form or another. None of this is unique to any of us. It applies to all of us whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we accept it as part of the human condition or not, and call it what you will.
Suffering is a difficult truth about our lives. It’s a difficult truth to deny about our lives. You know, it’s an integral part of each of our lives. And we’re a family who is suffering — not any different, only in the manner and more or less. But the truth is very much the same.
It’s what it means to be an ordinary human being. But what is different — and indeed what makes a difference in regards to our suffering — is what we do about our suffering and how we understand our suffering and how we respond to the truth of suffering in our lives. In regard to this, there have always been differences amongst us. There have been, you know, rare and unique individuals throughout history because of what they did do about the truth of suffering in their lives. I just say — how they understood the fact — they did understand the truth of suffering and how they responded to that truth.
They came to terms with the truth of suffering in their lives, the causes of suffering in their lives. They transcended the causes of suffering, the sources of our problems. They found some peace. They became happy and healthy, loving human beings. human understanding and suffering are reflexively related.
A certain level of awareness is a precondition for suffering as well as its management. And awareness is enhanced as well as diminished by suffering. Because of these reflexive relationships, oblivion and the enhancement of understanding are two natural options for coping with suffering. Of these two, amelioration of suffering through understanding is the superior option. Temporary or partial oblivion is not without merit, but permanent or complete oblivion is indistinguishable from death.
And a stone feels no pain. That’s for sure. It doesn’t have the problem of the truth of suffering. But that is because it feels nothing at all, because it is not alive. We, on the other hand, we are alive.
We’re alive because we are aware. But we’re only aware to the degree that the goal of survival makes that awareness necessary in our lives — to that degree and no more. You know, really no great wonder that because of this we often feel as if we were somewhat like a stone. You know, some kind of feeling inside of not quite being alive sometimes, of being existentially dead, of you know, some kind of apathy or some kind of indifference of mind, some kind of a blankness of heart, some kind of a dreariness of life, a blandness about our life — as if almost where we’ve just gone. This is from Winnie the Pooh.
The old grey donkey Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself why, and sometimes he thought wherefore, and sometimes he thought in as much as what. And sometimes he didn’t know what he was thinking about. So when Winnie the Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad to be able to stop thinking for a little in order to say, ‘How do you do?’ in a gloomy manner to him. ‘And how are you?’ said Winnie the Pooh.
Eeyore shook his head from side to side. ‘Not very how,’ he said. ‘I don’t seem to have felt at all how for a long time.’ In a way, you know, though we might hold out hope that maybe death is the end of it all, that with death will come some sort of annihilation — maybe after all this is not a real option. Maybe what would happen if we were stuck with our awareness endlessly forever?
That we can never — you know, as long as we have awareness, we are never going to be able to achieve complete oblivion of our pain. That we are somewhere along a spectrum, just short of being a stone and not quite being awake. And as long as we remain somewhere on this spectrum of awareness, we’re going to continue to suffer in some form or another. That’s the reality of our situation, and death simply does not offer a way out. It’s not the end of it all — we’re stuck with this awareness.
So within the condition of this awareness, we’re going to continue to suffer the human condition, which is the truth of suffering. You know, after the tears, the complaining, the blaming of some gene or germ or some chemical, some individuals in society, or just maybe plain bad luck. You know, after the self-pity, the self-denial, all the self-deception, after we’ve tried every form of way of numbing ourselves that we can, after all the means have been tried, you know — after the shame and the anger and the confusion, our sense of powerlessness, our sense of despair, our fear — just for the moment, have sufficiently subsided. And after the real felt experience of pain, of hurt, of grief no longer consumes our total attention. After all is said and done, after all is felt, and before — you know, before this next onrushing wave of the truth of suffering washes over — before its reactions carry us away once again — in a kind of a brief lull, an interval when awareness is possible, when understanding is possible.
You know, we’re going to have to orientate. We’re going to have to make some kind of decision. Take a particular option about what we’re going to do about that suffering. You know, to become aware, to take control, to become the author of our life, to make a choice when the opportunity presents itself. To decide just what we’re going to do about it.
And not about this particular instance of suffering, but about the truth of suffering — of which this particular instance is but a momentary expression. That this moment of suffering is like a passing wave on an ocean of suffering. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to orientate? What choices are we going to begin to make? How are we going to understand and respond to this truth of suffering?
Which options are we going to take? The way that Buddhism — or the teachings of Buddhism — might ask us to respond is by continually choosing the path of the heart, the path of awakening. Yes. To continually reorientate ourselves — like bringing the mind back to magnetic north — toward the inner focus of our life being Buddha. And that there’s another possibility, there’s another option of complete awareness, awakening, and trying to choose the methods to practice the means to actualize that Buddha in our life in some consistent fashion.
Within the social context, you know, of the spiritual community, those who are assisting us, who are helping us to make our choices and to implement the means in our life. And continually making the choice in terms of our motivation, the intention behind all of this. You know, why am I doing all of this? You know, I don’t want to suffer and I’m suffering, but likewise and equally so, everyone else doesn’t want to suffer and they too are suffering. And, you know, beginning to go beyond our narrow limited vision and begin to open ourselves up to other possibilities, another way of being in the world with others.
That I’m going to orientate myself toward the solutions not only to my own problem, but together with that — you know, in bringing about the dual welfare of both myself and others — develop the abilities and the skills, the wisdom and the compassion necessary to be of real benefit to others. And this becomes the solution to our problem. And this is the direction that we continually orientate our minds toward. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha by means of the Dharma within the social context of the spiritual community. And then again and again trying to widen our circle of concern to an ever-increasing number of others.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Community, I go for refuge until awakening through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma.
May I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, mind, and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others. I hope I say it’s helpful.
You know, I really — working with these ideas, there is some kind of reorienting process. I feel that the old patterns aren’t as forceful as they once were. They don’t quite overwhelm us as they once did. Our old beliefs which weren’t working for ourselves no longer consume our way of being in the world, that way of thinking about things. That our mind is beginning to — as if drift, beginning to orientate, beginning to assume other possibilities, beginning to let go of what hasn’t been working.
You know, we don’t let go of the red hot coal — we’re going to continually be burnt — to become aware it’s burning us. And maybe we can’t let go of it altogether, but we can begin to at least tilt our hand and slowly maybe some of the ashes can begin to fall away. Our minds tend in another direction. Our values change. Our beliefs are altered in some fashion.
We begin to see the world out of new ideas — different ways of being are evolved. And this gradual evolution that we call the spiritual journey, traveling the path. I have great confidence in the process. So we’re going to meditate. Would you like to stand for a moment and we’ll stretch?
So I thought I’d introduce another type, a technique which can act as a very useful, very effective preliminary to meditation. It’s part of — you might include it in your overall meditation practice. It’s quite often used, especially in the Tibetan meditative tradition. It’s called the nine-round breathing meditation. It can act as a preliminary.
It can help you to center yourself, clarify your mind, to freshen up, bring some intensity to your meditation. You know, last week we began to talk about what is called the subtle body. There’s a system of channels and pathways in which the wind energies move along throughout the body. And we don’t have to particularly visualize them, but they’ve been introduced. The notion that there are three central channels.
There’s a central channel and a right and left channel which run alongside. So just approximately — you know, we don’t have to know exactly — but we’re going to use this in this meditative technique. Imagine that the central channel runs from mid-brow just inside the skull up toward the crown of the head and then down just inside the spine and moves down. And for this particular purpose, we don’t have to visualize it any further than the level of the navel. So you can imagine that it’s not a solid substance.
It’s more made out of light. It’s something very ethereal, very delicate. And it’s approximately maybe the size of your little finger or even smaller. But depending upon — you know, it’s not necessary that it be even visualized — just imagine that such a tube is there, a channel is there. And then running alongside are the right and left channels having their upper opening at the upper part of the nostrils inside the nose — and left nostril — and running along just along the side of the central channel.
Down. And they move down about three fingers beneath the navel and then they curve back upwards into the central channel. I don’t have — we’re going to get a whiteboard. I can draw this. Anyway, just use your imagination for now.
So central channel, mid-brow down just inside the spinal cord, more toward the back than toward the front, coming down to the level of navel; two side channels, openings inside the nostrils, running alongside the central channel, down about three fingers — moving to about three fingers below the navel, then curving back up and entering into the central channel. And we’re simply going to imagine that those are there. And you don’t even have to visualize them, but imagine that we’re going to breathe in this pure, brilliant white light. And you can think of this light in any way which you find meaningful — something which works for you. You can, you know, imagine it to be the blessings of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and all your teachers.
You can imagine it being all the purified cosmic energy of the universe, all that is wonderful and beautiful about the world, being breathed in in the form of a brilliant white light, and it enters into your right nostril, moves down the right channel. Just imagine this brilliant white light is moving down the right channel. And then it curves over. And this time we’re going to connect the right and left channels together. And it’s going to begin to exit.
It’s going to exit in the form of thick black smoke. And this is — you know — there is the movement of the energies, as was mentioned last week, which acts as a vehicle for consciousness. Consciousness rides on these energies. And it is said that each of the channels is associated with one of the three basic afflictive emotions. The left channel is mostly associated with desire.
So imagine that all of your desire — attachment, you know, and all the various — you know, whatever is associated with desire and attachment — you know, miserliness and jealousy. All of those emotions which stem from that basic quality of desirous attachment — are being released and are being breathed out in the form of thick black smoke which comes up your left channel and out your left nostril and goes far off into the distance, imaginably far away, and just fades softly into the distance, never to be seen again. And so breathing in. Again, breathing in this brilliant white light, blessings, brilliance of whatever is wonderful in this world, coming in down, and again breathing out all the desires, attachment, associated emotions, and whatever blockages and negativities are associated with desirous attachment. And then we’re going to breathe in.
So in the process, we’re actually going to block the left nostril first. So you can use your index finger — whichever is most comfortable — blocking your left nostril. Breathing in, this brilliant white light comes down. And then once it’s down at — it’s joining in with the left channel — blocking your right nostril, and then breathing out this heavy black smoke which is the aspect of desirous attachment and all the obstacles associated with that desirous attachment going far out into the distance.
The mass is drifting off into an infinite space and dispersing, disappearing. Having done that, okay, we’re going to do that three times. Blocking, beginning with the left nostril, breathing in. Blocking the right nostril, breathing out. In, out, in, out.
So three of those cycles. Then blocking the right nostril, breathe in again this brilliant pure white light, this energy, this blessing. Now it comes down your left channel and then crosses over. And associated with the right channel is hatred, anger, aversion, negativities, and all the various associated obstacles and hindrances which manifest in the right channel. Breathing those out again in the form of thick black smoke in that aspect.
So having blocked your right nostril, breathing in, breathing out through the left — the thick black smoke comes up through the right channel and out the right nostril. And then it goes off into the distance — three times. Okay? Now putting your hands in some comfortable position, breathing into both nostrils — you know, drawing in all the blessings and wisdom, everything that you can imagine is good in the world, in the universe. It’s transformed into an aspect of this brilliant, intense white energy being drawn in, breathed in through both nostrils, through both right and left channels coming down.
Okay? Then these join up into the central channel. The central channel is associated with the emotion of ignorance and dullness and bewilderment, confusion, and all the associated obstacles. And when it reaches the central channel, again breathing out through both nostrils — it’s coming up through the central channel, this thick black smoke. And though you’re breathing out through your nostrils, imagine it’s coming out through the opening between your eyebrows.
This thick black smoke going off into the far distance. Again three times. So that makes — that’s why it’s called, strangely enough, the nine-round breathing meditation. We breathe in three times to the right: right, left, right, left, right, left.
And we breathe in again three times to the left: left, right, left, right, left, right, and then three times through both. Okay? Is that pretty clear? And then I thought we would want to practice a little bit of choiceless awareness that we’ve done before — where, having practiced with mindfulness of breathing, then allow the mind to become attracted to any object that it naturally tends to orbit. But we maintain an awareness, and the most helpful way to do this technique to assist us in this is noting.
So allowing the mind just to become involved in any object that it wants but staying alert about what the mind is involved in. Noting whether it’s thinking, an external object, hearing, smelling, an internal object — maybe your knees hurt — pain — maybe you’re feeling tired, tired, tired. Maybe that’s what it is — but from moment to moment, your mind is like a bird in a tree flicking from one branch to another. And don’t assume that you know what your mind is in. You know, really be — try to be alert to what it is and note what it is involved in.
Then having done that — I hope I’m not pressing this too far — we want — we’re going to focus upon the mental consciousness itself. Okay? So mental consciousness — by that I mean what will arise: your mental states, such as your feelings. It could be pleasant feelings. I feel good.
I feel happy. I feel sad. It could be emotions. I feel angry. I feel some kind of faith.
I feel loving. It could be emotions. It could also be simply pictures. You know? These images which arise in the mind. Or it could be thought — thinking.
You know, these sentences, these words — these mental words which keep running through our mind. Whatever the object is, just note — thinking. Whether it’s a feeling, whether it’s an emotion, whether it’s a picture, or whether it’s a word-thought. It’s only thinking. So we want to focus upon the mental consciousness itself.
So the mind will wander, just like it does from the breath. We bring it back to the mental consciousness. It’s very helpful to use the technique of noting, the simple noting technique of ‘thinking.’ We want to keep it as simple as possible.
You know, in all of this, don’t try to figure out how to meditate. Don’t stand apart from your meditation trying to figure out how to do it best. Be the meditation. Be the practice — thinking. But don’t allow this noting to become some kind of repetitive mindless repetition that you’re saying in your mind for no reason at all.
Thinking, thinking, thinking. But have it act as a living description of the process that’s occurring in your mind, that you’re actually describing. Hey. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.
Thinking. Thinking. Whether it’s a feeling, emotion, whether it’s a picture, or some kind of word-thought running through your mind — thinking. Your mind will be distracted, just as it does in the course of mindfulness of breathing, to sounds or some external object.
It could be distracted to the breath. That’s not the object of focus at this particular instant. It’s the mind itself — you know, being able to focus upon the internal mental consciousness itself. Thinking. Thinking.
Okay. Think we can do all that? Okay. So take a comfortable, firm position. And especially — we haven’t talked about our object of cultivating love and compassion.
There’s somebody we’ve almost worked down to the bottom of