Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with Robert Frost’s “two roads diverged in a wood,” Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 45-minute session to examine why genuine change is so rare in human life. He maps two responses to inner tension: the path of illusion — denial, avoidance, neurosis — and the path of disillusionment, a word he deliberately rehabilitates as Buddhism’s core project. Drawing on Carl Jung’s claim that neurosis stems from avoiding legitimate suffering, he argues that habitual daily choices, however trivial they seem, collectively determine who we become. He then connects this to bodhicitta: choosing to orient even small acts toward benefiting others as an entry into the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. The session closes with step-by-step meditation guidance — nine-round breathing, mindful breath-counting with noting, choiceless awareness, and finally resting attention on the mind itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 HMA 1997 05 07.mp3
UUID: 832ba8c4-739e-4f8f-b99b-809419e87fc0
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-05-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~6,339
I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a woods and I I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. You know, this involving ourselves in this process, the continual process of reorientating ourselves, getting back in touch, re evaluating what are our priorities in life. What path would we like our lives to take? Who would you like to be ten years from now or twenty years from now or a lifetime from now?
Know, beginning to make habit of the person that we want to be. The habits that we form are very much a part of what we do every day even in all our mundane activities are seemingly insignificant choices, the minor decisions, the petty actions that we involve ourselves in all the time. We are creating or we are reinventing ourselves. Now whenever one of our many erroneous ideas or or mistaken beliefs or distorted views rubs up against reality. And what that is to say, the way things are in their true nature.
There’s always there occurs dis-ease. And there’s a there occurs a dissonance of mind, some kind of conflict, some kind of inner disharmony with inside of ourselves. Attention. And the mind is a self correcting system. It will seek to relieve that tension, that disharmony within itself.
And in doing so it’s going to take either of two diverse paths. One path leads in the direction of ignoring or evading, denying what’s happening, denying reality, ignoring reality, trying to evade reality, the way things actually are. It involves itself in a shrinking down, you know, which is very much a mark of neurosis. The the the contracting of our scope of our awareness, withdrawing. We don’t know what we don’t want reality to disturb the fantasy world at which which we’re becoming absorbed in.
You know, our minds will attempt to bring a discrepant reality in line with its own misconceptions, with its own fantasy. You know, that is to say, our minds will follow a path of illusion. Our life becomes illusory, is lost in fantasy. But there’s another alternative path that our minds can take in the resolution of this tension and relieving the conflict, this disharmony within our minds. The path of acknowledgment and inquiry, beginning to rather than shrinking down the area of our awareness, beginning to expand the scope of our awareness and beginning to confront and challenge, you know, where where this superimposed illusory image which we’re protect projecting on reality in some way or another.
You know, our minds are going to attempt to reconcile what we begin to recognize as our own misconception and our our unfounded expectations with with the way things are. And rather than calling reality at fault, we begin to look at our own minds and try to see whether the fault is there. Is that the source of this tension? Is that the source of this inner disharmony, this conflict? In other words, our minds will begin to follow a path of disillusionment.
You know, I think the word disillusionment has a usually quite a negative connotation, doesn’t it? I’m disillusioned about this. I’m disillusioned about that. A great deal of Buddha’s path is about becoming disillusioned, isn’t it? Very much so.
In a very healthy manner, in a very practical You know, the you know, we can I think we can begin to recognize that there are these two possibilities in a way of dealing with difficulties and problems, this inner sense of tension and conflict, this dis-ease, this undercurrent of anxiety that we often feel? How are we going to work with it? You know, think it was Carl Jung who said the avoidance of legitimate suffering is the basis of neurosis. And I I think Buddhism would say that’s quite true. There’s a thought of there’s a profound there’s some profundity there.
You know? Though but what do we do? I mean, we may we may not be even aware of what we do, but becoming aware of that if we were to investigate and examine how we deal with these difficulties in our everyday life. You know, though the the one path of illusion leads us in the direction of endlessly repeating life’s mistakes and thus we perpetuate the same fundamental problems of our life. You know, if if we if we if we are basing our life on some distorted distorted premise or a mistaken assumption or belief or a wrong view, and we don’t correct those mistaken beliefs or distorted premises, premises, then we’re always going to repeat the same mistakes.
We’re we’re relying on faulty information to guide us through life, a faulty map by which we navigate the terrain of our life. You know, there we have to begin to correct the maps by which we’re using to to navigate and find what it is that we want in life. Otherwise, we are going to keep repeating the same mistakes and keep experiencing the same outcomes. And that is very much suffering, that’s one form or another. So, you know, the other path, the other possibility, the path of disillusionment leads us in the direction of learning, some kind of correcting.
We can actually begin to solve some problems that we’re that we’re all experiencing in one way or another. They don’t occur again. We’ve gone beyond that, that level of difficulty, that level of dysfunction in our lives. Even though we might even be able to recognize that there’s some validity to is being said, still the latter path is the one that we is the one less traveled. That is to say the path of of acknowledgment and inquiry, and trying to work with our delusions and work with our neurosis.
It’s less trouble because it’s more difficult. It’s more difficult because of a lack of of of self knowledge Or maybe some, you know, just a habitual avoidance of self confrontation, of self inquiry. Our lives are led to a great extent in distraction. You know, at some point we have to stop speeding, stop distracting ourselves from ourselves, and begin to actually look at where our life is going and look where is the basis of which is bringing about the unsatisfactory quality of our life. And let’s say begin to look at our own minds, you know, the last frontier of the known.
The the less traveled path. You know, it’s more difficult because learning and adapting to to new and novel ways always involves experiencing of being on the experience of being on unfamiliar grounds. You know, we unaccustomed activities, of thinking and doing things differently than you you did before, and therefore is always frightening. Now one of the marks of fear is and here, I mean, the notion of what we might call unfounded fear. You know, there is a difference that we have to make, I think, distinguish between various types of fear.
Some are well founded. There are things within the world which are deserving of our fear. But there is nothing which is deserving of our unfounded fear or of our irrational fear. Whenever we we experience a perceptual mismatch, that is to say when there’s a when when what we when the unexpected, when when when we are confronted something that we didn’t that the unknown, the unfamiliar, when our conjectures about something, our presumptions about something aren’t aren’t met with, aren’t fulfilled, When we confront the unexpected in our life, we become afraid. So we circumscribe our lives to a great extent so that we don’t come across, that we don’t have to deal with, that we don’t meet with the unfamiliar, the that which we’re unaccustomed to, the unknown.
And our life and we keep going around unfamiliar grounds. We keep going around. We only stay with the known. The unknown is never explored. You know, the the fear not only keeps us going in the same directions as we as we habitually work with in the directions of our life.
But it also poses a resistance to change. It keeps us on the same tracks, in the same grooves. So, you know, we keep traveling this the less we keep traveling the more familiar path. The less familiar path, the less traveled path has never traveled. You know, this is more difficult.
More difficult because of our compulsion to repeat, to unthinkingly choose more of the same. You know, that’s what’s very much what we are doing in our life. You know, a resistance to change. They are more difficult because revising and refining the maps by which we live by. Alright.
This inner network of premises and assumptions, our ideals and beliefs by means of which we, you know, we negotiate the train of our life is not easy. It requires effort. It requires work. An effort which most of us are unable to see the need for. But even if were to see the need to begin to revise our inner mental maps, we are often quite sure of how to proceed.
So, you know, the point that perhaps I’m trying to make in this, you know, Buddhism is about change, isn’t it? And where does a change begin? Where does it start? We’re all going to change someday. You know, we’re all we’re all going to bring about that change, become that person that we want to be.
But where do we start? When do we do it? In every day of our everyday lives, we are in some way confronted the dilemma of which of these two paths we’re going to take in our lives. The path of learning or the path of more of the same. You know, the path of learning diverges from the path of ignorance, of ignoring.
The the path of clarity takes us in a direct different direction than the path of confusion. You know, the knowledge of the way things actually are, the truth of things takes us on paths, brings about outcomes which are contrary to fantasy. So ultimately, you know, the choice that we are making is between the path which proceeds in the direction of freedom and well-being and the path which keeps us coming back to the same, more of the same, the same dissatisfactions and frustrations and disappointments in our life. They keep repeating. You know, how much have we learned over the course of our life?
Have things improved all that much? Are things very much different than they were ten years ago or twenty years ago? You know, what what appears to be insignificant choices are are to us and and say in our everyday life and our dealings with the people and making decisions and how we work with situations are oftentimes in a deeper sense choices between which of these two paths we want our life to take. You know, somehow or another, in one way or another, we’re always choosing. We’re we’re always choosing the person that we’re going to become to be, that we’re going to be, that we’re that we’re becoming to be in one way or another, whether and whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, whether it’s actively or passively, whether we choose with ignorance or with wisdom, where we’re always choosing who we are and therefore the quality of our life.
You you open one door and you walk through it and the door that door closes and you’re confronted with two more doors and you make a choice and you choose one door over the other And you choose one path over the other. And and the choosing of one over the other precludes. We we can’t take that that last path. That we’ve gone beyond that now. That choice will never come up again.
And having, you know, this having chosen once, are confronted with more choices to be made. We know we have to choose again and choosing again, are led along in now in in this path’s distinct direction toward its outcomes. And we’d like to to further choices that need to be made unique to that path which precludes the other path and all the possibilities that it might have presented with Yep. It it to us. You know, having chosen again, again, we are led on yet still toward still further choices to be made.
You know, one path leading on to the next, one choice leading on to the next, you know, a maze of paths, a maze a maze of choices which plots out our life, almost the destiny of who we become. So that, you know, the point is in going through all of this this analysis of our choice and where change can occur, is quality of our life, you know, whatever parameters we want to use, the coherence, the livability, the adequacy of our life is not something other than the outcomes of just these many seemingly insignificant choices that we’re making every day of our lives, that we’re constantly making every day of our lives. Our lives are just these choices. Our lives aren’t something other than these choices, not something abstract, other, which is distinct from what we do every day of our life. You know, we we talk about life and the good life and what kind of life we would like to live, but what we do every day is that life.
It’s not something other than that. And a life is very much expression of just the outcomes of just these seemingly insignificant choices that we’re making continually. With our choices, we make our world. We make our self. Our habitual choices are fate.
So so how many of us consciously choose the path of our life, you know, with awareness, with hopefully, perhaps with some kind of wisdom in terms of what governs what we choose? You know, how many of us have chosen have elected to be who we are and doing what we do? Or did we just simply kind of imperceptibly become who we are now and and do what we do now simply by drifting? Something pushes and we give, we we yield. You know, the doing of what we charis characteristically do now.
You know, and what has become what has who we what has become how we are defined. You know, even apparently when we don’t choose, when when by one means or another, by one strategy or another, we are able to avoid having to make up our minds and decide, this is what I want to do. This is not what I want to do. You know? But even when we can avoid, it seems as if we can avoid making such a choice.
We we are choosing nonetheless. We are choosing more of the same in our life. We are choosing the path of least resistance. You know, we are simply choosing more of what has gone before. You know, we can’t escape making choices in our life.
Life continually demands demands it happens. We are never not choosing the path and therefore the outcomes of our life. And it places tremendous responsibility on upon ourselves when one becomes takes responsibility for the outcomes of your life and that you’re actually actively involved in creating the quality of your life and who you are. It’s not an accident. It hasn’t been created by chance.
So, you know, the the the really significant choice for us is whether to to freely and consciously choose the path of our life. Maybe this sounds difficult. Maybe it sounds idealistic or abstract. Maybe it’s just something that we’ve never thought about to begin to actively choose the person who you want to be and how you want to experience your worth. And if we don’t begin to actively make choices, then the default pattern, You know?
We will choose the well worn path. We will true we will choose the familiar, the path of least resistance. And therefore, we will sanctify life’s mistakes and condemn ourselves to their endless repetition. You know, the this senseless circular motion of our minds and lives. So I I choosing which goes nowhere but to more of the same.
The cycles of our lives, reoccurring difficulties and problems. The only the only things with change are the are the props and the people and the the costumes and the scenery of our lives. But the plot remains pretty much fixed, pretty much the same. And then after all is said and done, perhaps the real tragedy of our lives is just this, not to freely and consciously choose who it is that we want to be, what it is that we want for ourselves. And then we I think Buddhism is saying, if it’s saying anything, is that we have that within our power, that we need not remain victims.
And who do you want to be? What kind of person can you imagine it? Can you begin to form those images within your mind and begin to translate those images in your mind to some kind of reality for yourself? You know, not not have or own or control or possess or affect. But who who do you want to be as a human as a person?
You know, the the if we if we look, I think, deeply into life, our greatest reward for all that we do, you know, all the planning, all the worrying, all the struggle, the blood, sweat, and tears that we expend. The greatest reward for all of that is not what we receive for it, but who we become by it, you know, who we are as a person for having done what we’ve done. The the, you know, the tragedy of our lives is in denying and foregoing our chance to freely and consciously choose who we are by choosing what we do. You know, we we are we are the direction, we are the destination, we are the summation of all the paths that we’ve that we’ve taken. We are the summation of all the choices that we’ve made.
Everybody wants to lock himself up after having undergone a few transformation in adolescence and perhaps for a few years after that. Everybody chooses some state of being, usually without even realizing that he chooses it and says more or less explicitly that is the way I am or happen to be. Or I have always said that or I am the kind who or one takes refuge in heredity and environment. Or if one has read some of the psychoanalysts, one blames one’s parents’ mistakes. It’s all their fault.
Choose to be changed is not only a call for continual growth. It is an implicit denunciation of all these myths. You know, to to say, I am such and such a kind of person is to perhaps the state of fact, but it’s not the state of destiny. And and to go on and say, and that’s the way I’ve always been, and that’s the way I’m always going to be. I might as well accept that.
Is to is to abdicate our freedom to change, that we can begin again no matter what we may have done up to even a moment before, to even just a moment ago, you know, to to extrapolate on who we once were as a means to avoid taking responsibility for ourselves in the future, you know, is to make ourselves prisoners over forces of which we have little or no control. You know, this is the way I was, and therefore this is the way I always will be. You know, the future is open ended. It exists only as a matter of probabilities. The actualizing of our present possibilities, of our present potentials.
And we are a person that are responsible for whatever eventually becomes actualized, whatever we, in fact, do become. That is only our responsibility. And the the the the greatest gift that we have as as human beings, you know, as as what you know, that which makes us most unique amongst all the, you know, the infinite numbers of life forms in this universe is our capacity for free and conscious choice. You know, the the potential to to to transcend our chain like past, the repetitive past in each of our histories. And we don’t have to allow it to limit ourselves.
We don’t we aren’t prisoners prisoners of who we once were, of who we’ve been. You know, all our myths, we can transcend our heredity. We can transcend our environment. You know, the ability to to to freely create a new future for ourselves is like the unparalleled window of opportunity which our humanity presents as ourselves. You know, that’s why it’s one of the basic meditations within the Buddhist path.
So we don’t take this opportunity for granted and thereby waste, you know, what when in fact we do have, the choice that we do have, the ability, the potential that we all have. You know, we we are the nexus, like the meeting point between determinism and freedom. We are free to begin again if we so choose. If we don’t choose, then our life is determined. The past will simply repeat itself infinitely into the future again and again and again.
You know, nothing guarantees our freedom. If we deny it often enough, it it is as if it weren’t there. And when we go to look for it, we’ll not know where it went. You know, it it’s always been and always will be our habitual avoidance of the difficult path and the legitimate suffering that difficult path and the legitimate suffering that traveling such a path inevitably entails. For life struggles never having to born any real fruit, never having come to any decisive conclusions, and never having come to an end.
Never how much have we learned over the course of our life? You know, whether you’re twenty or thirty or forty or fifty. Now has it gotten has the quality of your life improved all that much? Have you really solved some of your more basic fundamental problems of your life? Have you found what you’re looking for, what you’re yearning for, what you’ve been searching for, you know, our entire life?
Or is it simply much more of the same? Just the scenery and the people and the costumes have changed, but the stories remain very much the same. It really hasn’t changed at all. You know, even though we we have nothing really to show for all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over the course of our life, and we have no real reward for all that we’ve done, all that we’ve suffered. You know, sadly, we keep choosing more of the same unknowingly, unthinking, but still choosing more of the same.
You know, it will the point is that it it will be our consistent choice of the difficult path, you know, the unfamiliar, the un that way in which we’re unaccustomed, the unknown perhaps, the one the path less traveled, and the path conceived of by Buddhism as an awakening of our hearts to all sentient beings and our minds to the ultimate nature of reality. That is a a path of awakening, which in ages and ages hence, which in years, even years hence, will have made all the difference. You know, we have brought we have brought ourselves that much closer to real fundamental and lasting solutions to some of the problems of what it means to be the ordinary human beings that we are. You know, the human dilemma, living in a world with very much ordinary human beings just like ourselves. You know, it’s a suffering world which depends upon each of us to to bring it peace.
So, you know, it’s very much in our hands. This I think is fundamental to Buddhism. We have choices to be made. Hopefully, we can begin to choose with wisdom and compassion, have compassion for ourselves and what it is that we choose and therefore who we become. So the inner focus the inner focus of this process is to choose to be a Buddha.
This becomes a priority in our life, the inner focus of our life. And we we you know, choosing to implement the truth in our lives, let us say the Dharma. You know, even in the seemingly insignificant choices that occurred to us throughout, you know, our day, you know, all the various minor occurrences. You know, choosing we always have a choice, don’t we? We can choose in some way or another.
It’s always there. We can achieve, you whether we choose the course of attachment or whether we choose generosity, whether we choose the course of, you know, anger and hostility and aggression or whether it’s a matter of love and compassion and caring. Choice is there in many of the ways that we relate with others, whether it’s as we choose humility or pride, whether we choose jealousy or rejoicing, whether we choose ignorance or wisdom, you know, whether we choose our neurosis or whether we choose to go beyond it in one way or another. It’s always there even in insignificant, unseen ways. The choice is continually there, opening up other choices, opening up a path, opening up almost a destiny, the way we lead our life.
And so, you know, this is why we come together like we do. So we can begin to learn how to make wiser choices and we can become aware that there are, in fact, choices and begin to to take control over the process and therefore how, you know, the outcomes of our life. We rely you know, we’re trying to tell ourselves a Buddhist story to change the story of our life. And we rely upon those, our our Sangha, our spiritual community to help become coauthors of the Buddhist story, to help us in the in the in the to validate and assist us in the performance of our Buddhist story such that it becomes our story, a living reality for ourselves. And this process occurs you know, we’re trying to to raise the level of our motivation.
You know, this is very much what we’re talking about in terms of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. You know, we’re talking about the cultivation of an awakened heart. And it’s it’s a it’s a radically different story to try to tell ourselves, I must admit. It’s difficult. It’s it’s foreign.
It’s unfamiliar to ourselves at present. So we have to develop some kind of faith, know, empower other possibilities, other ways that we could be in the world. You know, at least begin to open ourselves up to at least begin to open ourselves up to the possibility that much of the way that we’ve been relating with others with our world has been dysfunctional, hasn’t worked for ourselves. And maybe we can’t maybe we can’t take universal responsibility, but maybe we can begin to care in an altruistic way for even one other person as as a beginning of the more difficult path, you know, rather than taking, you know, the default path of self centeredness. So, you know, trying, you know, why we’re doing, why we come together, why we talk and discuss, why we meditate.
If I can just intended for to help one other person than myself, then we’re we’re making a choice, aren’t we? A choice which is going to open up other paths, other possibilities to ourselves. And it may be the direction that you may want for your of who you want to become. You know, that happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that we that we talk about. You know, this is a choice.
We can make this choice now. You know, that why why are you listening? Why am I talking? You have a choice of the intention behind it, the motivation. You know, it is only you, you know, with your key determining to change the the reason behind the why, the purpose.
It is something we can only do for ourselves. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, which we try to actualize, implement by choosing the Dharma. You know, it’s it’s metaphor manifestations. They’re all about us, you know, choosing to see it and implement it. And within the social context of a spiritual community and choosing to do it for one other person, to do to listen, to meditate, to discuss, whatever, even if we’re only one other person, there’s a way of beginning to interrupt, of not allowing the default pattern to continue to play.
And, you know, not you know, at least we can begin to spiral. Maybe the circle is still very much there, but there’s some movement in the direction that we would have ourselves to go. We’re not going around in the same complete circles at least there’s some kind of change. 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 a 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 a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge into awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, mind, and presenting 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 to the great awakening. Mindfulness of breathing, which is a fundamental meditation amongst the various types of meditations that we can do. And making use of the two techniques of counting and noting the breaths.
Counting the breaths is simply a technique in the development to facilitate the development of mindfulness. This factor of memory and recollection that which holds our mind to the breath or whatever the object of our meditation is. And the technique of counting, noting the breaths, noting whatever it is the distraction. Ideally, when we’re breathing in, we’re knowing that we’re breathing in. Noting.
A quiet gentle noting in your mind in. You know, noting shouldn’t be too loud even though we’re talking about a mental noting such that it actually becomes a distraction. It’s kind of a, you know, almost a whisper, a mental whisper, you might say. In, knowing that you’re breathing out, being aware of that fact, and being alert to that fact, noting out. And then when the mind if your mind is like mine, when it becomes distracted, when it wanders, the moment you become aware that it’s it’s been distracted whether to an external object, a sound, a smell, or an internal object, whether it’s, you know, maybe pain or your knees or thoughts, feelings, boredom, anxiety.
Simply noting whatever it is, thinking, feeling, hearing, and coming back to the breath again and again, you know, bringing the mind, continuing back to the breath in a very gentle and patient manner. You know, the way that the way that we deal with ourself, the methods that we use to get what we want has to be has to reflect our goal. And it has to be some kind of harmony between the type of causes that we that we make use of and the results that we’re trying to achieve. You know, we can’t be heavy handed with ourselves. We can’t keep perpetuating the story of self oppression, doing violence to ourselves.
The meditation is a way that we’re supposed to is a means to solve our problems, not perpetuate them. So we have to interrupt a lot of our dysfunctional ways of relating with ourselves. So we need we need some kind of discipline You know, almost anything in life worth achieving requires that. But it has to be a discipline discipline, a type of gentle discipline, a patient, you know, a kind discipline to ourselves. This is the way that we show compassion for ourselves.
The way that we can begin to make choices. We can begin to form habits of the type of person that we want to be. You know, that even the word meditation in Tibetan is related to gom, which is related to the word habit. How do you want to be? And it has to be some kind of concordance, some kind of agreement between how we be with ourselves and how we conceive of ourselves and who we conceive of ourselves, and who we become.
So I thought we we’re going to we’ll begin with, again, development of cultivating compassion and love and choosing someone that you care a great deal about, someone that you love. We’ll use that person as as a again, to as a basis for our motivation. And prior to that, we use again the technique of the nine round breathing meditation. Breathing in the blocking first blocking the left nostril, breathing in this brilliant white light which is, you know, representative or symbolic or in some ways actually is all the blessings of the Buddhas, whatever is positive in the world, in the universe, and what goodness of life. Taking that in and bringing it through the right nostril and down, crossing over and breathing out all the negativities and obstructions, physical and mental heaviness and whatever is wrong, especially that associated with desire through through blocking the right nostril, through the left nostril, breathing out in the form of a thick black smoke which goes far off in the distance and disappears.
And doing that three times and reversing the process and breathing in bright light through the right through the left nostril and breathing out in all the negativities and obstructions, especially those associated with anger and hatred, hostility, aggression, whatever is wrong and associated with those areas. That that that that attitudes those attitudes of mine. And then doing that three times and breathing in through both, the lights come in through the two side channels to about three fingers below the navel, and merge into the central channel, and breathing out again the thick black smoke and all of the the heaviness and difficulties and problems, both mental and physical, which are which the obscurations associated with ignorance, moving off into the distance in the form of thick black smoke and disappearing in the distance. Then we’ll adjust our motivation using this someone that we love a great deal, someone we feel we can readily develop these levels of love and compassion toward. And then we’ll do practice mindfulness breathing using the techniques of counting and noting.
And then I thought we’d practice with the first with choiceless awareness. And here, we we don’t direct the mind to any particular object. We don’t try to concentrate. We don’t try to focus the mind. We simply allow the mind to become involved in any object that it naturally tends toward.
It might be an external object. It might be a sound. Maybe somebody’s moving around. Maybe there’s a car coming down the street. An odor.
I don’t know. Possible. Maybe it’s an internal object. Maybe it’s the pain in your knees. Maybe it’s a thought.
Maybe you maybe it’s a fantasy about the future. Anyway, whatever it is, we simply want to note it. We want to be maintain alertness, stay awake. So we continue this quiet noting, hearing, hearing as the car goes by. You know, we’re not directing our mind.
We’re not trying to to force it to focus on any particular object. We’re just but we are trying to maintain maintain alertness, awareness. And we can do that best by noting, hearing, thinking, thinking, hearing, hearing, feeling, hearing, thinking. And then we’ll come back to the breath. And then I like to practice focusing upon the mental consciousness itself.
So having come back to the breath, we’ll practice using counting and noting for a while, then we’ll stop counting. And if you if you’re noting, continue to note. If you don’t note, try try it. It’s it’s a very extremely useful technique of noting. And then we’re going to switch the focus of our concentration.
Rather than the breath, we’re going to take the mind itself, the mental consciousness. More than not, you know, these are the objects of mental consciousness are feelings, emotions, mainly thoughts. But whether it’s feelings, pleasant feelings, unpleasant feelings, neutral feelings, whether it’s emotions, maybe it could be could anger could arise, sadness could arise, you know, all types of possible emotions that that might arise, could seemingly come out of nowhere, could come up. Worries, doubts, anger, various possibilities. But also just thoughts.
But whatever they are, we simply want to note thinking. You know, we’re not judging whether they’re good thoughts or bad thoughts, comfortable emotions, uncomfortable emotions, like attractive feelings or whatever. Simply thinking. Trying to if you’re just watch watching the mind, all of these thoughts, feelings, emotions continually rising one after another. You know, if we can begin to develop the skill of letting go.