Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. This guided meditation with Thubten Chodron invites practitioners to shift their awareness from the objects of perception to the perceiving mind itself. After settling attention through breath awareness, you’re guided to directly examine two fundamental qualities of mind: clarity, meaning formlessness and the capacity to reflect objects, and awareness, the capacity to engage and know those objects. The meditation instructs you to observe the nature of thoughts themselves—where they come from, where they go—rather than getting caught in their content. Chodron emphasizes this practice as an antidote to habitual preoccupation with external objects, centering the meditator in the formless, luminous aware nature of consciousness that is always present.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 GM.mp3
UUID: 2f92d881-d1dd-476b-b9ad-bcd0cc42a756
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~543
We just spent a few meditations looking at our mind and specifically how our emotions and our attitudes create our experience. And in the next few meditations, we’re gonna continue looking at the mind but from a slightly different perspective. So now we’re going to look at the nature of the mind. What really is our mind or our consciousness? So when we say the word mind, we don’t mean the brain.
The brain is something physical. Our mind is formless. So our mind has two qualities. The first one is that it’s clear. And this means that it is without form.
It’s not made of atoms and molecules. It’s not material in nature. And clear also means that it’s able to reflect objects, that objects can arise in our mind. And the second quality of mind is that it’s aware. So not only can it reflect objects, but it can engage with those objects.
We can perceive them. We can think about them. So now we’re going to look a little bit at the nature of our own mind, its clarity and awareness. So for a minute or two, just focus on your breath, breathing normally and naturally so that your attention settles. The distractions go away.
And now become aware of your own mind. Become aware of the clear and aware nature of your mind. So you’re not aware of the objects that you’re perceiving or the content of the thoughts you’re thinking, but be aware of the consciousness that is perceiving, the mind that is thinking. In other words, become aware of the subject, not the object of your perception. Become aware of what it is that’s perceiving and experiencing.
So what is your mind? Does it have color? Does it have shape? Is it somewhere? So even though we said that our mind is clear and aware, sometimes we have the feeling that it’s some physical object somewhere.
Check up if that feeling is accurate or not. Does consciousness have form? Does it have color? Does it have shape? Can you find it somewhere, or is it completely formless, just clear and aware?
So look at your own experience. So really try and get a sense of just this clear aware nature of your mind. If you feel some sensation in your body, instead of focusing on the sensation, focus on what is perceiving that sensation. Or if a thought goes through your mind instead of focusing on the thing you’re thinking about, focus on what it is that’s thinking. If thoughts arise, distractions arise, then just observe.
What are the thoughts? What is a thought? If a thought comes through your mind, observe where did it come from. And when it disappears from your awareness, ask yourself where did it go to. So just become aware of the nature of thought, not the content, but what is a thought?
Where is it? Where did it come from? Where does it go to? So this meditation is very helpful to do to help us get centered because usually we’re very preoccupied with external objects. We forget about the perceiving consciousness.
This meditation makes us aware of the clear and aware nature of our mind that’s there all the time.