Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 98-minute session, Ven Kaye Miner explores how mindfulness becomes powerful when infused with bodhicitta, the altruistic motivation to benefit all beings. She responds to a student’s question about whether bodhicitta mindfulness has scriptural support, explaining that while mindfulness is central to the Theravada tradition, its union with bodhicitta is a distinctive emphasis championed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. She traces how ordinary activities—walking uphill, downhill, washing, even using the toilet—transform into meaningful practices when motivated by the wish to free all sentient beings from suffering. She then expands the teaching to cover the four foundations of mindfulness: body and breath, feelings and emotions, mental states, and the thinking process itself. She emphasizes that mindfulness is non-judgmental observation, not thought suppression; thoughts naturally arise and fall, and the practice develops insight into how emotion triggers persistent thought patterns. She concludes by distinguishing how mindfulness deepens in the Mahāyāna tradition when focused on one’s motivation and state of bodhicitta, and hints at the advanced Vajrayana extension where all perception is integrated into the mind of the guru. The approach is direct and practical, emphasizing balance over ambition or compulsion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 2011 01 09 day2-session3.mp3
UUID: 5a83a312-930f-4a23-886d-02a3c5a6d28d
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Mindfulness with a Heart (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 2011-01-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.8 minutes
Words: ~12,146
So is anyone gonna say, hey. Can I ask a question? Is there a book called Mahāyāna bodhicitta mindfulness? No. Actually I don’t know a book that really recommends bodhicitta mindfulness in this way.
As I said at the beginning yesterday mindfulness is a practice that is focused upon within the Theravadan tradition and in the Mahāyāna tradition it’s not mentioned so much and there’s not such a great emphasis on it. You don’t find that much written about bodhicitta mindfulness. However, said that, it’s also something that Lama Zopa Rinpoche has been emphasizing the last two years. There’s a retreat or a course for two weeks every September in North Carolina in America called Light of the Path. The idea is that it’s a course on the Lamrim, on the graduated path that leads to enlightenment so all the different subjects.
But Rinpoche has really been teaching and emphasizing that the whole retreat actually is done with bodhicitta mindfulness so there’s a lot of information that’s come out from that. And so there’s some modules of this program called Living in the Path that are available through the FPMT Online Learning Centre and that includes motivation for life, module motivation for life and how to take practice this bodhicitta mindfulness. But otherwise I think there’s one teacher whose work I really admire but I haven’t really recently read many of his books. It’s called Alan Wallace. Maybe you’ve heard of Alan B Wallace.
There’s a couple of books that he’s written called the Attention Revolution’. I think they’re quite complicated, I think so. Alan Wallace was originally a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and he did a year’s retreat with a very great meditator has since passed away called Gen Lamrimpa. So a lot about calm abiding, Samatha meditation. Set up the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies in America.
Brilliant. Alan Wallace is really, really brilliant. Anything by Alan Wallace will also talk more about mindfulness and attention and awareness. But whether it will combine so thoroughly this bodhicitta motivation, I don’t know. I’m not really sure.
He does come to Australia, Raju, every year to one of our sister centres in New South Wales. Sometimes we pin the notice on the notice board. So keep your eyes open for Alan. He’s a really nice guy. He stayed with me in Holland before and he knows what he’s talking about and he’s someone that really has done a lot of meditation.
But in terms of a book about mindfulness, Maybe then I can find a new niche for myself. Maybe I can write a book. No, just teasing. Is it my hobby horse? No, I’ve taught this subject, this is only the third time I’ve taught this subject because I tend to be teaching more the FPMT Discovering Buddhism program and the basic program, so a little bit more Buddhist studies, more Buddhist philosophy.
But of course I teach other subjects as well. This is necessarily my hobby horse but as I say this retreat in America in North Carolina with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the first year he was really emphasizing this but I’m not such a good student, I’m not such a good practitioner. So I sat there for the two weeks and I think things went in one ear and out the other. I remember just like many old students, we all walked away from that course and we went, Wow, you know the way Lama Zopa is teaching, I’ve never heard Lama Zopa teach like that before, amazing, amazing. And so then the next year, oh definitely, twenty ten, yeah, definitely go back.
And so then Rinpoche starts, there was a couple hundred people, Rinpoche starts asking questions about you know what do you do when you’re walking? What do you do when you’re sitting down? Because everybody’s kind of going oh oh oh oh and Rinpoche asked one old student and he couldn’t even answer you know he had his he was so I don’t know anyway but it wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer I don’t think and it wasn’t that he was embarrassed or anything like that but somehow you know the fact that Rinpoche spoke to him I don’t know anyway he had his head down his head right down like this and then Rinpoche said ‘K?’ and I went went oh no!’ and he said ‘so what do you think?’ how are you mindful when you’re walking?’ and Kay went, oh oh, oh, you know, and it’s like my mind froze and then I thought, oh well, if I’m walking up the hill then I think I’m taking everybody to enlightenment. This is very good. And then when you’re going down, ah, ah, ah, ah, you know and went through my mind, know, because what Rinpoche had explained the previous year but I’d completely forgotten was that like if you’re going down you think that you’re going down to rescue everyone out of, the lower realms and the suffering of less fortunate rebirths and then he said what do you do when you’re sitting?
I said oh Rinpoche, I’m not very good at all of this stuff. I just try to have a good bodhicitta motivation. He said oh very good, very good. But you know because there’s a little booklet and I do have some of these things. I mentioned yesterday afternoon didn’t I?
Didn’t I mention yesterday afternoon that you had homework? Didn’t I say that? What was the homework? Opening the door, closing the door. Oh opening the door, closing the door.
Okay so you did remember some of these things? On the way here, yes. So there is a little book that has these different things in them. When you wash, you know what I always remember is when you go to the toilet because we have to do that right? How do you make going to the toilet beneficial?
And that’s when you’re thinking that you’re getting rid of all the delusions of all sentient beings and I tell you that’s when you have to do a very when you’re there a long time, you know, and it’s big then it’s great all the more, you know? So you can actually use it as a purification practice that when you’re sitting on the toilet you can be saying mantras like Vajrasattva mantra thinking that you’re purifying. So bodhicitta mindfulness is basically you do, the ordinary things that you do actually become meaningful. Otherwise they’re just something that you do. So it’s a way of training your mind, becoming more mindful of the positive motivation.
So yes, think and these things that I was saying like when you sit down, when you wash, etc, these come from a sūtra from the Buddha, the Sūtra of Clouds of Sublime Rare Ones and Lama Zopa Rinpoche has added a few things to that. But there’s a little practice booklet that comes from our organisation FPMT from their online shop. But I don’t really know of any other book that is specifically talking about bodhicitta mindfulness. What is this booklet called? I will be there and I will tell you in a moment.
Gosh, how do we ever live before computers? My life a practice book that’s called ‘Taking the Essence’. It’s quite comprehensive. It’s got a lot of things like different mantras you can say to bless your speech and different practices that you can do. Taking the essence?
Before I talk to anyone every morning I do some particular mantras to bless my speech and with the motivation that the words that I speak today may they be beneficial, it mean that from the words I speak that others will be released from their suffering. They have been. Well it’s what I wish. So I mean that takes me a little while in the morning but those things are very kind of if you think oh mantras, oh gosh all these funny things like know what’s one of them? Namo, Namo, Namo, Teyata, you know all these funny syllables, it’s a language you don’t know and like what’s the point of saying these things.
If you think that all of these things the same with these images, same with, dressing in a particular way, the same with, keeping a certain level of ethical conduct or saying mantras with a mala or if you think of all of those things that just kind of being weird, fine. But if you understand that all of them are actually techniques, skillful techniques, skillful methods to help develop your mind. They’re not the end in itself and see that’s what really happens very often that people think oh it’s all about I have to do this practice, I have to say these words or I have to prostrate or you know without really getting to what the point of it all is. You know what’s the aim? The aim is to develop your mind, to develop your qualities of wisdom and compassion and skill for the benefit of yourself and for others.
And when you realize that, then it’s so so powerful. You know, saying, I I you know, as I say, I go through these things every morning. You know go through all of these mantras blah blah you know but it’s with this thought I’m blessing my speech with this thought may my speech be beneficial for others. Yes. Buddhism is Buddhism.
Buddhism is basic okay I mentioned this a little bit yesterday I know you weren’t here but you know we have your historical Buddha. Okay he was a prince, he saw that there were there was suffering he wanted to find out why these things happened and whether it was possible to become free from these things. So he spent his life studying, investigating, meditating until he achieved this cessation of suffering and the fulfillment of his positive qualities. And he observed what we call the four noble truths, the four facts about our existence, that there is suffering, unsatisfactoriness and that he advised that this is what we need to identify. He explained that all of these sufferings and unsatisfactoriness I love that word even though it doesn’t exist but that’s alright that they have a cause and the cause tends to be you know the cause is karma and delusions, the actions that we create under the influence of our delusions, the things like our anger, attachment and ignorance.
But he said it’s not like life is suffering that this is some kind of sentence that you know life is suffering but what we call contaminated life life that is brought about due to karma and delusions then there will be suffering there will be unsatisfactoriness but it is possible to be free from that. It is possible to have a cessation from this unsatisfactoriness, this suffering and there are methods that lead to that and that’s the four noble truths, that’s the four facts about our existence. Now the Buddha addressed these four noble truths, these four facts about our existence the whole way during his life. But of course, just like we’re sitting here we’re all different. We have different interests.
We have different backgrounds. We have different capabilities. We feel connected more with something rather than another. So the Buddha taught in many many different ways many different levels according to the needs of the people that were following him and so as a result the Buddha taught some teachings in Pali language. In the Pali language this is teachings that were more public, were more accessible, weren’t too complicated, were quite practical, that more people could have some access to.
And those teachings were more well known and so they developed what they call the Pali Canon or the Pali sets of teachings and that is what got propagated through southern India and Sri Lanka and across to Burma and Thailand and we have the Theravadan tradition, the tradition of the elders, the individual vehicle of Buddhism. But the Buddha at the same time also taught in Sanskrit. He taught to some other students who had a greater capacity, had a greater interest and a different background. And so to those he taught the Mahāyāna Sutras which we call sūtra being the teachings of the Buddha. So he taught the Mahāyāna Sutras but these were as I say in Sanskrit and they were more they weren’t so widely given they were given to select, sounds like you know what Woolworths have these days they have select everything don’t they?
You know but to group of people that were capable of more if you like and they were the Mahāyāna Sutras. And so the Mahāyāna Sutras, the study and the practice spread up in a northern direction, Tibet, China, over to Japan, etcetera. But the Buddha also taught an even more secret level of teaching to a very, very select, but it’s not select as in oh you’re better than the others but to a group of students that were even more capable and more interested and these became known as the vajrayana teachings and these were much more secret, they were more word-of-mouth and it’s amazing that we have any contact with those level of teachings because they were mostly preserved in Tibet but it wasn’t only in Tibet. These vajrayana teachings you also find in South Korea but you won’t hear about it. I fell in love with a South Korean monk once, well before I became a nun.
And I was absolutely amazed because he was showing me around the temple complex and there was a mahakala room and mahakala is a particular vajrayana vajrayana Buddha form if you like. And I was absolutely amazed to find out that there was this secret vajrayana practice of Buddhism was preserved also in South Korea. I didn’t know that before then. Anyway so the Buddha gave you know different teachings to different groups according to their capacities and so they got preserved in different ways. So the Mahāyāna teaching is, based upon bodhicitta.
bodhicitta, this altruistic mind attitude, this good heart is the door to the Mahāyāna. So this bodhicitta you find in Zen except Zen in the West very often these days is very secular and it’s only again a small group who take Bodhisattva vows or who try to develop this Bodhisattva spirit but you find that in the Zen tradition. It’s the same in the Chinese tradition that’s Mahāyāna also and they also take Bodhisattva vows. Within the Zen tradition the Bodhisattva vows is like a form of ordination which is quite interesting because according to in the Tibetan tradition we have Bodhisattva vows but but ordination is according to the Vinaya which the Buddha taught which is the code of ethics and it’s very clearly with the number of vows. And so practitioners in the Tibetan tend to have, especially the monks and the nuns, have vows according to the Vinaya but they also have the bodhisattva vows.
And also if they practice vajrayana they have the vajrayana vows. But anyway that’s probably going a bit too far. So in the Chinese tradition they also have the Bodhisattva vows, they have the Bodhisattva, the bodhicitta motivation just like in Zen. But the way Mahāyāna Buddhism is practiced and is studied is somewhat different. You’ll find it because Zen’s different, Chan from the Chinese tradition is different to what you’ll find in the Tibetan tradition.
The Tibetan tradition is really quite unique because of the location of Tibet because it was so difficult to access, Buddhism in its entirety was preserved there. That’s why, the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the subsequent, exile of so many of the great Tibetan masters and the destruction of those great monasteries which were a center of preservation of the entirety of Buddhism and a center of learning. That destruction that is why it is actually so you know so painful in a way because in Tibet there was this incredible combination of the Sūtra teachings of the Buddha as well as the Tantra the vajrayana teachings of the also within Tibet there was such a great emphasis on learning and practice, this combination. And so now that Buddhism has spread to the West, I mean we can thank the Chinese in a way because if it hadn’t been for the Chinese and the Tibetans having to go into exile, we probably wouldn’t have the access we do now in the West to Tibetan Buddhism. And I was just explaining earlier that, to really learn more about Buddhism, not just the theory that you can find out theory in a university from a professor of Buddhism, but to learn the kind of the practice aspects, the theory and practice of Buddhism.
It’s very difficult to do that if you’re not a monk or a nun, mostly monks living in a monastery because it’s not it wasn’t wasn’t really taught to lay people. Lay people were more like those that would help and support the monks but there wasn’t this culture. So with the Tibetans coming to the West, we now have the access. Actually, what we can learn in a centre like this is incredible. Don’t have that access as a lay person in India or Tibet.
You never had that. And also in China and also even Chinese Buddhism is really well preserved in Taiwan. And again it’s like if you go to the monasteries or the nunneries, yes you will learn, know, you can study and practice. But as a layperson, that doesn’t really happen so much. So I think the Tibetans bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West so that we have access is absolutely amazing.
Did I answer your question after all that? Yes. I mean, you told me more than I thought that I could even think to ask. No, I’m very grateful for that explanation. So then the question comes, well hang on, we’re Westerners.
Sorry, I’m asking a question for you. Can I ask myself a question? So as Westerners, then we’re not Tibetan so should we be taking on all the baggage of Tibetan Buddhism? Was it necessarily baggage or just a style or a school that evolved? What do you think?
Well, I have Didn’t the Buddha say you have to trial it all yourself and find your own way? So if if in those circumstances, you would try the things that you you you might start trying series of things, might be Tibetan Buddhism, or it might be with some of the other cultural varieties, maybe, Let’s see what works for you. Mhmm. Mhmm. We you answered that briefly yesterday.
You were here, John. When we look at the Tibetan artwork, when we look at the outer brocade, now that is cultural, but the Mañjuśrī in it, Hindu realised mind of wisdom in it, that is probably more universal. Yeah. I was talking about that yesterday, that’s true. I mean His Holiness has said recently in Dharmasala to a group of very old student practitioners, Westerners, that went to meet with him.
Because there are discussions. There’s one old kind of Buddhist practitioner. Previously he’d been a monk in the Tibetan tradition and a monk in the Theravadan tradition and became a lay person who’s basically saying at the moment that the Buddha didn’t really teach the theory of rebirth and reincarnation and didn’t teach about karma with many lives that it was all to do with just conditioning in this life. So it’s quite a kind of controversy at the moment so there are very many great scholars including Alan Wallace that I was talking about earlier. And so there was a meeting with His Holiness and it was about what is the future for Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
And basically, also because many of the old realized Tibetan teachers are passing away and some of the new ones that are coming up, they might have the years of study but they don’t necessarily have the practice and the realisations and this is also causing some distress. Basically His Holiness says, well you guys have been around a long time. You understand the Western mind and some of them are really great scholars like Robert Thurman and Jeffrey Hopkins and Alan Wallace etc. And he said you have to be able to present Tibetan Buddhism in a Western way. Be careful, and he said you need to be authentic.
You need to back to Nālānda tradition Nālānda was this great monastic university in India. Unbelievable. You can still go there. Mean this is just not made up stuff. You can go to these places places and it was a great monastic institution and there used to be great debates between the Buddhists and the Hindus about great philosophical questions and my mate Śāntideva, oh oh Śāntideva, gosh he’s my mate.
I love Śāntideva, great Indian master who wrote this fantastic text called compiled this text called a Guide to a Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’. Unbelievable and it’s in the form of an inner dialogue with himself about developing mindfulness and conscientiousness and alertness and about developing patience and all of these overcoming all of the delusions developing all of these qualities of a bodhisattva. Śāntideva lived there too. They used to call Śāntideva the three discriminations because all they saw Śāntideva doing was eating, sleeping and going to the toilet. But he was actually a secret practitioner so he was lying down but he was meditating on bodhicitta all the time.
I like that. You can lie down too if you have bodhicitta. His Holiness was saying you’ve got to go back to the Nālānda tradition in the sense that you need to preserve that so that the Buddhism is still authentic but you need to be able to present it in a Western way and which means again it comes back to if you’re going to be teaching Buddhism in the West then you need to be ethical. It’s not about making money. It’s not about becoming famous or anything like that.
That can sometimes be the problem with Westerners formulating Buddhism or presenting Buddhism in the West. So you need to go back and be authentic and it’s like not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And there was one other thing that I was thinking oh and so really getting back to your question also so in terms of in terms of, you know, what is Buddhism, what is Mahāyāna Buddhism, what’s Tibetan Buddhism, it’s all Buddhism. They’re all different ways of practice according to the levels and the interests and the aspirations of the practitioner. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I’m not Tibetan, but I I wear the robes. But, I mean, I get out on my bicycle in Holland. I have to. I’m not gonna cycle around like this.
It’s not so practical. I have taken the vows of a nun and you might say, well those kind of vows don’t fit with an Australian society or a Western society’ but I would disagree you know. So again being able to differentiate or to determine differentiate or to determine or to discern what really is Buddhism, really is like Australian culture or Tibetan culture, know you really to be able to make that kind of yeah how can I put it that kind of decision then you need to know very well what is Buddhism, what is Tibetan or Asian culture, what is Australian culture? You need to be able to know all of those things very well to be able to try and fit it together and so I think this is an ongoing process and I don’t think all of a sudden we can make Australian Buddhism and there are people as I say this person who’s saying Buddha didn’t teach about rebirth and stuff like that you know in ways those people are trying to make their own form of Buddhism and that appeals to a lot of people that want the easy way. We talk about Buddhism light you know like you get light milk.
Like skimmed Buddhism you know and it’s like it’s really coming down to the love and light aspect and anything that’s too difficult forget it and Buddhism isn’t about that. Buddhism and really the teachings and practices sometimes they are hard work because to be able to develop any true insight requires that we have to put some effort in and so often now you find in a secular world there’s this Buddhism light being being presented and in Holland there’s this magazine called Happiness and H A P P I N E Z and there’s this lady called Inez, I N E Z is her name and she’s made this magazine called ‘Hap Inez’ and it’s all about light spirituality and there’s Buddhism light presented all the time. And it’s got a mass market. There’s a lot of people that are interested in the feel good factor and that’s why I say yesterday you know all these Buddhist statues in people’s gardens and things like that you know who was it about turning it around? Okay the Buddha statue you know so there’s a lot of you know people and there is sort of the expectation that if I’m kind of Buddhist they don’t think about it as light Buddhism they think that this is is it and then so they kind of do this little dabbling if you were if you like which is fine that can get some benefit but it’s not lasting and so therefore it becomes a great disappointment again here we go again another thing that I tried to get happy and it hasn’t worked.
Buddhism doesn’t work. Buddhism does. But it’s because of not knowing really what Buddhism is about. So I think we have to be very careful, very careful. No.
And what he was saying was if you’re presenting Buddhism in the West, you guys are intelligent. I wasn’t there. He was talking about other people. You need to work out how to present it in a Western way but you need to be authentic and go back to the Nālānda tradition and so that basically means be careful of all the Tibetan cultural baggage or the Tibetan trip. You need to go back to the essence because even Tibetan Buddhism comes from this Nālānda tradition.
It’s pure there. It is pure Buddhism but there are cultural trappings. There’s a lot of superstition that you find in Tibetan Buddhism. Superstition. Tibetans are unbelievably superstitious.
Do you know maybe I’m telling tales. But I know Geshe’s that need to travel and they have to work out whether sort of astrologically and numerologically that this is a good day for them to travel. The Feng Shui of travel. The Feng Shui of doing everything you know and okay yes there’s something to it but in a lot of aspects it becomes really quite paralyzing you know. So yeah so I I don’t think we need to take on the superstition.
Actually Rinpoche asked me once, said, hey. Are you superstitious? And I said, don’t think so. But I tell you what, I won’t walk on a crack and I won’t walk under a ladder. I mean it’s not that I think I’m really superstitious but let’s face it if you walk on a crack and it’s going to open up and swallow you down, you know, and if you’re walking on a ladder and someone’s up there and dropping something on your head, I mean, you know, it’s not superstitious.
It’s damn practical. Yes. Have a question, Karen. It’s a very quick one. Somebody asked me this question and I didn’t well, can you take refuge if you don’t believe in the whole refuge if you don’t believe in the whole, teaching of rebirth and, future lives and karma?
Can you still take refuge until you reach those other points? When you talk about don’t believe, is it rejecting outright? Saying it doesn’t exist? Just not sure. Just not sure.
Well, I think you need to know very clearly what refuge is and that is like following a safe direction. Oh, you asked that, did you? Remember somebody. Okay, it’s knowing what refuge really is. Taking refuge is you can do that without having to go through a formal kind of ceremony.
A formal ceremony is something that you can do but it’s really a feeling from your heart of wishing to take a safe direction and a safe direction is away from suffering. And so taking a safe direction by relying on examples provided by the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Remember we’re talking about the one hundred and twelve and thirty two and the eighty yeah okay so it’s by recognizing what a Buddha is, what the Sangha is, recognising the qualities of each, the positive qualities of each, recognising the function of each, recognising the differences between each. So having full understanding of following a safe direction and yet not being totally one hundred percent convinced about reincarnation or one hundred percent knowing about karma and, the workings of karma? Yes.
Of course. Of course. You can take. Because I took refuge. I became a nun even though I can tell you now, I can’t say with a hundred percent conviction I believe a hundred percent in, rebirth and reincarnation.
And I haven’t been struck by lightning. I keep looking, but I haven’t been struck by lightning but it’s not that I reject it. Okay? I think I probably started off like in the beginning certainly certainly sort of in the beginning I couldn’t believe it. Then after a little while I started to think well yeah it could be possible I don’t know everything.
I think I know everything but I don’t. I behave as if I know everything but I don’t. So then I started investigating, I started thinking more about it. So I think I was probably about ninety five percent believer, I don’t like that word, but ninety five percent I thought reincarnation existed. That when I became ordained.
I’d say I’m about ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent now. But I have a little bit of open mind because I have not proved it to myself and I’m afraid I’m one of these people that only really believe things when I can prove it to myself. So I am absolutely determined that my next life remember that I was this nun Kay who’d always said to herself ‘she’s got to prove it’. So I’m really, you know, I’m very, very clear this is what I want to be able to do next life. You said that you met this young fellow?
Yes. What did you think about that? Did you Well and this is actually these kind of meetings and meeting these kind of people helps to move it up to the ninety nine point nine percent because I met him when he was what two years old? Was that it? Two years old?
He was born ninety five. Maybe just before his second birthday or something. And I mean he’s just a little boy actually and he came with his family from Spain to Nepal to Kathmandu when I was living there. He couldn’t even really speak much at that stage. I remember in nineteen eighty seven, I think it must have been September September we came to Buddha House.
Do you remember Lingy? It was in the old Buddha House over at Fullerton, Nelson Street, and I was there during the days looking after him. I think I was probably staying with your mum or someone at that stage. And all of the children that we knew, because I had young children, and all of the children that were neighbours children, everybody wanted to come to Buddha House to see this little boy. It was a real phenomenon.
It was quite unexplainable. And when he was on the aeroplane all the children wanted to talk to him. You know, this little boy running around in monk’s robes. And I had reactions of motherly concern for this child being, you know, kept taken around the world and he should have a routine and where’s you know, he’s sort of separated from his mother and all this kind of stuff going on that bit. And I was unwell and I went and I was lying down outside in the extension of Buddha house and this little being came up to me and said are you alright dear?
That’s what he would have said to me, you know, when he was laughing. He called everybody dear. And this boy didn’t really speak very much at that stage. So this is amazing. And I was helping to look after him at that time and he just had this amazing way with the other children to bring them in but also to get them to do something positive, not kind of racing around and punching each other.
He just sort of commanded some attention. And before we came to Adelaide, because I was living in Kathmandu and he was in Kathmandu at that stage, he was up at Kopan Monastery and I lived down in mandu. I used to go up in the afternoons because I’d do some work up there to see Lama Zopa or sometimes he wasn’t there but anyway to do some work up there. I’d arrive up in the taxi and Lama Osel we called him was up in the monastery and he’d be looking out the window and he’d see me arrive and he’d come running down. I mean he’s what two years old, two and a half years old?
Would that He was born nineteen eighty five. This was the beginning of eighty seven. God eighty five, eighty six, yeah and he’d open the door for me and then he’d grab my hand and he would actually take me for a walk around the monastery and, there were different rooms or different classrooms and the monks with the different ages would be debating and he’d pick up a stick. Lama Osel pick up stick. So he’s holding one hand with me and the other hand he had a stick and he’d walk he’d lead me into all of these rooms and he’d be you know kind of like listening to the monks and tapping with his stick.
Apparently Lama Yeshe used to do this and then he would take me to the kitchen and he’d be, he’d be again looking in the kitchen and, you know, with the stick he’d try to push the lid of the pot and because he’d want to look into the pot to see what was there and apparently Lama Yeshe used to do this. He used to go and check the cleanliness of the kitchen and what was cooking and stuff like that. Mean it really amazing this child. Of course he’s now, well he was born nineteen eighty five, okay, and he’s not a monk and he lives on Ibiza. You say Ibiza don’t you hear?
Ibiza. So his mother’s there too. And he’s sort of, you know, he’s a young man and he studied to be a filmmaker. He makes films and he’s still quite remarkable but he’s not Lama Yeshe was never traditional and so Lama Osel is also not traditional but Lama Osel is not Lama Yeshe. They are different people.
It is a continuation of the consciousness of the mind from the Buddhist perspective and there are imprints on Lama Osel’s mind or Oz we call him now. Oz, isn’t that wonderful? Oh, that’s great. It’s so Aussie. Yeah, well that’s only if you go Aussie.
There’s imprints on Oz’s mind on the mind that has come from was Lama Yeshe before but Oz and Lama Yeshe are very different people and when he was young that was one of the biggest problems for him as a young boy growing up was that all the old students of Lama Yeshe had the expectation that this boy would be exactly the same as Lama Yeshe that would recognize and would have the same old relationship that Lama Yeshe had with them and of course different person. It’s a different but it’s a continuation of this mind, this consciousness. Seeing him and hearing how he was recognized and the way he and it’s the same with the Dalai Lama that it was through the the the kind of clairvoyance, the wisdom mind of people like his holiness, the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, that this boy was identified as being one of the possible candidates for being the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe. But there are other people that were also possible candidates. But this boy was Zopa Rinpoche and his Holiness the Dalai Lama said this boy looks like it was it.
But he had to pass a series of tests and so they put out on a table these different kind of implements, ritual implements, malas, you know the rosaries and things like that and all on a table and they mixed the ones that had belonged to Lamayeshi with those that belonged to other people. And so these prayer beads, they were old wooden ones and they were pretty crystal ones and colored beads and things like that. And so here he is. Mean, was I think don’t think he was even two. I think he was only about a year and a half old when this happened.
Yeah. Just over a year old. And so he was asked, will you please show us your mala from your previous life? And so there’s all these pretty ones there and picked up this old wooden one that had belonged to Lamayeshi and he puts it above his head like this and put it back down. He was just over a year old.
Now when I hear stories like that and I know people that were there, Lama Zopa Rinpoche was there, a number of monks and nuns that I know were also there and they tell me this story. People that I trust that I’ve known for years you know they tell me this story and it’s the same the Dalai Lama did something similar like that. Did you see the movie Kundun? You know? So then you start to think, oh you know maybe all this is possible.
Maybe this is possible. And then there’s a very good book by a Doctor Ian Stevenson I think it’s from the University of Virginia Press and it’s called ‘twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation’. And he, as a university professor and his team, investigated these twenty cases where it seemed people had the remembrance of their previous lives. And they investigated cases I think in Sri Lanka and India but in Syria, in Alaska, I mean a number of different places around the world and they did it as a real formal study and they were trying to see whether there was any they presumed that it was was fake okay so they had they tried to see whether there was any way that child had connection with its previous life. Did they know the village?
Relatives? Etc. And each time of each of these cases there was no way that child could have had knowledge. And I can remember also seeing a documentary maybe it was made with the same sentient beings in Syria with the Druze in Syria and there was this one boy who said who he was in his previous life and they actually took him back to the village that he said he came from, know this village and he met I think it was it had been like his grandmother or something I don’t know some and this very old woman and he of he described the whole house and everything and of course and he gets there and says oh it’s different it’s different something’s changed it’s not like it was before and then they found the old woman and, they’ve been building renovations and everything had changed but as soon as he saw this old woman he recognised and recognised the name but they couldn’t show any possibility of any kind of link. So you see things like that, you hear things like that and you’ve got to think ”, but then more than that for me it’s also understanding what mind is and how mind functions and how one moment of mind leads to a following moment of mind and that this is this kind of flowing, this mind stream of moments of mind and it’s like well where did the first moment of mind come from?
Anyway blah blah. Very interesting all of this stuff. So the answer to your question is I have taken refuge because I really do trust in the direction, the safe direction that’s shown by Buddhadharma and Sangha. Very much trust. I have great confidence in it.
Because of that confidence my fear has really diminished, my fear of suffering. Yet I can’t say one hundred percent about reincarnation. I think it’s probably likely I find it logical, but whether it’s valid or not, whether it exists or not doesn’t really matter. For me it doesn’t really matter. If there’s no life after this one, God I’ve been a nun for so many years, you know, what have I done with my life?
But I know that I will die thinking that I’ve done the best with my life. So even if there’s not a future life, even if karma doesn’t exist then I just know that I’ve done the best I possibly could and that’s fine. However. I took refuge not knowing. Refuge.
Not knowing. Anyway, just as you were talking about Śāntideva, I just want to add that that’s what Lama Zopa will be teaching in April. Yep. Anyway, listen. It’s quarter to three.
We finish at four. We haven’t done the other two two foundations of mindfulness. I mean we could say mindfulness part one but then that means I have to come back for mindfulness part two and when that could possibly be. But anyway, we were just talking before lunch about mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of emotions and so there’s a couple of exercises you can do. One of the things is to try and spend a part of it every day making a concentrated effort to notice, to really be aware of your experiences of happiness, of contentment, of well-being, of joy, of pleasure.
And even if your day is actually completely the opposite to those, even if you know any kind of positive experiences is really quite small and what might seem insignificant. You know just try to, identify that. Even if it’s simply you know how they say take the time to stop and smell the roses? Just for a moment to be aware of like the blue sky out there. I think just to be aware of that.
That is unbelievable. If I see the blue sky I have a positive feeling. Someone else might a farmer in drought might not have such a positive feeling but anyway so you know just to try and do that. It’s not an exercise in trying to manufacture some kind of positive state but trying to discover that there may be far more of your life that is possible positive than what you really notice because you’re so preoccupied. So just take the time and then try and spend also part of another day noticing which emotions tend to pull you down, tend to you know pull you into a state of preoccupation.
Sometimes there are patterns in the kinds of emotions that lead you to become very much lost in your own thoughts. So things like you know, those kind of emotions that distract you. Things like, desire, aversion, fear, restlessness, doubt. Know, and check up. Are any any of these more common for you?
You know, some more common than others? And what is your relationship to these emotions magnetic force. They pull you into their orbit. And so noticing their presence, see if you can overcome the ways that these emotions, sort of interfere with you being able to function well in your life. Just try to become more aware.
So I think I should just keep going about other. So we’ve done as I said there were four foundations of mindfulness. What were they again? Breathing which also body. Right okay so we’ve done this body one which is you know the breathing and the body sensations.
We’ve done the feelings and the emotions. Knowing very clearly what’s difference between feeling and emotion. Then what we’re up to now is the mindfulness of the mind and the mindfulness of thinking. I just lost my leg down the underneath the table. No.
Okay. Now, again, the instructions from the Buddha for mindfulness of the mind. Very simple. Look at the mind as mind. Look at the mind as mind, not my mind.
Remember I was talking about with the emotion like anger. Oh this is just anger. Just anger. Anger. Just anger.
Rather than my anger. I’m angry. You know you’re taking out this identification with it. So it’s the same with mind. The Buddha was very simple in his teaching very straightforward you know but when you put his advice into practice you actually see how incredibly profound it is.
So you know what you could say then about this third type of mindfulness mindfulness of the mind you kind of put it into the question. Well, how is the mind right now? You don’t wanna know, do you? Don’t wanna talk about it, you know. So the Buddha is saying, well, how is the mind right now?
Is there desire? Desire? Is there hatred? Is there ignorance? Is the mind right now narrow or wide and open?
Is the mind concentrated? Is it distracted? Is it a noble virtuous mind? Or is it completely caught up with this samsaric trip, you know? Is it a liberated mind or an unliberated mind?
Is it tensed? Is it relaxed? So, again, with the first level of mindfulness, it’s simple observation, non judging. Just being aware of the current mental state. And you’re looking into the mind just as if you were looking into the mirror and you say, ‘A bit tense, that mind’ or ‘Quite open, quite calm’.
So you simply note what is present. Then that’s the first level. Then on the second thing the mindfulness goes a step further to examine what the cause is for the appearance and then disappearance of the various states of mind, what they are. Because if we learn about the way you know how can I put it if we learn about mental states and how their nature is conditioned okay conditioned means that those mental states depend upon conditions to come into existence then that helps us to let go of some kind of situation that is the condition for that mental state? So then we also understand how we can encourage the virtuous wholesome mental states to arise and what’s going to help us, let go of the unwholesome mental states.
So basically with mindfulness of the mind, we begin to know the qualities and the capacities of the mind and that gives us incredible strength. When we really know how our mind is, we know what the strengths are, what the capacity, what the power of the mind is, then that can really help us to heal from emotional wounds, things that cause us problems. Also does anyone do yoga? Okay, you know one of the things with doing yoga, you find that there’s something kind of physically quite difficult with doing yoga, then there’s often some correlation between the physical and the mental. So sometimes you can see that there’s some sort of like knot.
There’s like a knot in the body and that has to do with like an emotional block in the body or some emotional problem. So when we know begin to know and also so in the yoga then we might know for example I can I can just feel it straight away I have often a knot between my shoulder blades in my back and I know what it’s all related to but anyway that’s another story? So I will know that there’s certain exercises I need to do to help release that knot, that physical knot, that physical tension. But when you know what the emotional difficulties or challenges are for you and you know the power of the mind, then you can help to also soften and lessen and eliminate those emotional knots. You know, you can loosen them up.
So mindfulness of the mind is really already quite subtle. You have to be even more relaxed to notice these more subtle workings of your mind. So when we’re becoming mindful of the mind it’s not a gross level of mindfulness anymore. You know you go from mindfulness of the body to mindfulness of feelings and emotions. Now we’re going to mindfulness of the mind itself and so we need far more experience here of, you know, interfering with what we observe.
So most practitioners can’t stop, no sorry can’t start with mindfulness training directly on the level of their mind. They’ve got to work up from being mindful of the breath, then being mindful of the physical sensations, then being mindful of feelings and emotions. You know because you’re developing your skill of mindfulness of not judging, not interfering, not controlling. You develop your skill of mindfulness so that when it comes to being mindful of the mind, you know, the idea is you are aware of the state of the mind. You know a lot of people think that meditation is really to stop sinking, to have a silent mind.
Sometimes that happens but that’s not necessarily the point of meditation. Thoughts are actually a very important part of our life and mindfulness practice is not meant to be a struggle against our thoughts and our sinking. So the idea is it’s much more beneficial, much more useful to be friends with our thoughts, rather than thinking that thoughts are a problem, the thoughts are a distraction. I don’t want them. So can you see what’s happening here?
Remember we’re concentrating on the breath and there might be a perception of sound and usually we say oh we have aversion to that’ and we’re saying ‘OK’ you know we just let them go. We don’t get involved. We don’t have the aversion. We don’t judge you know. And so here it’s coming with mindfulness of the mind and the thoughts coming in ‘OK’ we don’t have aversion to them.
We don’t judge them. We don’t want some thoughts and not others. So mindfulness technique, is really an observation of our life in all its different aspects without discriminating like or dislike. It’s without going through this whole judging process. So in those moments when thinking is most predominant then mindfulness is the clear silent awareness that we are thinking.
So we’re meditating. Okay. And we are aware that there are thoughts. We don’t start judging involved with those thoughts but we are aware that there is this sinking process going on. But you can live mindfully and still make judgements can’t you?
Because you have to to survive. Yeah of course. But not when you’re sitting doing a formal mindfulness practice. Yes, of course. Of course.
I mean we have to have a certain level of judgement. You’re absolutely right. Is there a difference between judging and being judgemental? Yes, there is a difference between judging and being judgemental. But in mindfulness practice mindfulness is a non judgmental awareness.
You know, so non judging awareness. Non judgmental, non judging. Judgemental we normally say, someone is judgmental when they see somebody else and they’re always judging them. So it’s a play on words isn’t it? Yes, yes.
Yes, but we’re doing mindfulness practice and in mindfulness practice you don’t judge the good or the bad. You’re just being aware. In our life of course, we need to be able to judge. We need to be able to determine what is virtuous, is wholesome, and what is unwholesome. Absolutely.
We need that. But in mindfulness practice, when you’re doing a formal mindfulness practice, then the idea is not to judge and not to be judgmental in the sense of I can’t do this very well. Know we’re talking about developing a non judgmental or non judging reactive awareness so that we can actually let the thought, the emotion, you know, go without getting involved in wanting it or not wanting it. Just seeing it for its true nature. So you know for the purpose of mindfulness meditation and just remember we are talking about mindfulness meditation many different techniques you know but this is what we’re doing here.
Mindfulness meditation. For the purpose of mindfulness meditation, actually nothing is particularly worth thinking about. Thoughts can come and go as they wish. And as a meditator you don’t need to get involved with the thoughts that’s what we’re doing with mindfulness practice formal mindfulness meditation practice so we’re not interested in getting involved with the thoughts with the contents of the thoughts. Mindfulness of thinking is simply recognizing that we are thinking.
So if you know thoughts are sort of in the background or very subtle when you’re doing your mindfulness meditation then it’s enough to return mindfulness to the breathing just like with the physical sensation we were saying, just like with the emotions. When that is, know, whatever the object of your mindfulness recedes then you can always go back to being mindful of the breathing. Question. With the mindfulness of breathing, you dwell on the breathing. Yes.
But with the mindfulness of thinking, you shouldn’t dwell on things. It’s not dwelling. Okay? When you’re mindful of your breathing, you’re just aware that the breath is coming and going. You’re not getting into this process of judging whether the breath is good, whether it’s long, whether it’s short.
When you’re mindful of the emotion, you’re aware that the emotion is arising, that there is anger, but you don’t get into my anger, I’m angry, anger’s good, anger’s bad. You’re just aware. It’s just anger. It’s just an emotion. When we get into mindfulness of thinking, one is aware that there are thoughts that are arising, that are coming, that are going.
We don’t get into the contents of that thought or get engaged with that kind of thinking process. We just notice that there’s thinking going on. So it’s almost like you know we become this observer that’s a little bit in the background watching what’s going on. That’s what mindfulness practice is about. Can you stay with it?
Can you stay with the mindfulness of thinking for a period of time? It depends on the practitioner. Depends on their skill. It depends, as I say, it’s more subtle. This is probably getting a little bit more difficult and a lot more difficult than trying to just be mindful of the breathing.
So it depends on the practitioner. It depends what’s going on in the practitioner’s mind. Maybe there are no thoughts arising. You know? So it depends on the practitioner.
The moment you start observing the thoughts, the thoughts stop. Maybe for you they do. You know, depends on the person. It depends on the practitioner. And in ways, if you think about it when you were mindful of the physical sensation, really mindful of it, after a while that physical sensation ceased and then we would return to the mindfulness of the breathing.
So it could be that the mindfulness of the thoughts in the mind, as you say, that whilst you’re being mindful of them they start to disappear. But the sensations never stop. They are always there. Oh, I don’t know. I think they change.
They change. There is one sensation or other. It may not be pain, may be tickling or tingling. But that’s another sensation, but the first sensation stops. What I’m But okay but the thought would be a different thought.
Time, there’s nothing to observe. The thoughts have stopped coming up. Mhmm. Okay. But I I most probably I haven’t stayed with it for a long enough time.
Mhmm. I think our experience yesterday with also perhaps this morning with meditating on the physical sensation. There was one physical sensation that was so demanding that we found that we were drawn away from being mindful of the breathing. So then we became mindful of that physical sensation until such time as that physical sensation stopped and then depending on whether we were pulled away by the demand of another physical sensation or the sensations were so subtle that they were kind of in the background and we would return our awareness to the breathing. When it comes to being mindful of the mind, being mindful of the mental state or being mindful of the thoughts, the thinking process going on in the mind, again we’re mindful that we are thinking, just thinking, it’s thoughts, it’s thoughts, and when you’re mindful of that then it can be that that thinking stops, that thought process is not happening anymore, and then again you can be mindful of the breathing.
Or it might be that you don’t notice the mindfulness of thinking anymore because there’s a physical sensation that you focus your mindfulness on. So it kind of changes a lot. Can I ask another question? Yeah. When I think about my thinking, I think mostly it’s verbal.
It’s kind of voice is the monkey mind, voice chatter, and some other thinking. But because I’m not a very visual, visual is not my big thing. But in the last meditation we were doing, actually, I had some quite visual, like, totally irrelevant. Mhmm. Fish or something I’ve seen.
So is that a manifestation of mind as well? Yes. Some people think in pictures, some people think in words, some people think in thoughts, sort of like voices or some kind of talking. So the idea is to try and let your preoccupation with your thoughts to let that go. Really strong episodes of thinking a kind of fueled by an identification we have with our thoughts or a preoccupation we have with our thoughts but if we just observe that we’re thinking then we’re kind of stepping out of that strong identification we’re stepping out of that preoccupation and then the thinking starts to soften if you like and it just becomes sort of like a very calm stream that we’re not really affected by.
So sometimes our thinking can be really strong it can be kind of compulsive you know but even while we’re aware of it and then when that happens again it’s useful to notice just like we were talking with the previous mindfulness practice it’s useful to notice how that thinking is affecting your body in terms of physical effect and also in terms of energy. Okay so I notice if I’m really strongly thinking a lot then I tend to get a bit tight in my shoulders you know or sometimes I feel you know the pressure in my head or sometimes it feels like there’s a buzzing going on in the head. Yes, a buzzing in your head? Yeah. Sometimes it’s almost like the machinery.
You can hear the machinery in your ears of the brain ticking over. So again you know here what we’re trying to do is to be mindful of the sensations you know whatever we’re able to discover and to help us become a little bit more grounded rather than getting preoccupied or identifying too much with the thinking. So trying to trying to bring your mindfulness just to the acknowledgement, if you like, that you are thinking rather than getting caught up with that thinking, rather than starting to identify with it and get involved with it and know getting involved with the storyline if you like of your thinking. And when there’s sort of a strong strong theme of your thinking that keeps reappearing then it’s probably likely that that thinking is being triggered by an emotion and then the idea is if you don’t recognise the emotion and do something to let the emotion go then that thinking is a bit of a concern that comes from the emotion then that’s going to keep reappearing. So it’s like somehow you have to address the emotion that is causing the thinking by applying your mindfulness to the emotion just like we were talking before with the mindfulness of emotions, which had to do with the recognition and the naming and the acceptance and the investigation.
We can use those four aspects because it’s the emotion that’s probably triggering this kind of strong thinking process. So if you don’t address emotion that’s causing that by shining your light of mindfulness on it, that thinking process also won’t calm down and subdue. Would it be true to say that a negative emotion is due to some attachment? I would say that it’s true to say that a non virtuous negative emotion or attitude has to do with ignorance. I love it when I answer things not exactly what people want to say, yes or no.
It’s to do with ignorance. An ignorance about the way things exist and then an attachment which is grasping at an I. So they’re two different things? Yes. Ignorance and attachment are two different things.
So there’s an ignorance regarding the way self and phenomena exist and so that ignorance perceives an inherently existing I for example and then there is sort of the grasping and grasping is a form of attachment, a grasping at this I. Know so there’s the ignorance which is one thing but then it’s the grasping that comes after it that is a problem. So if there’s a strong strong kind of thinking process going on and that’s disturbing then it’s usually due to an emotion so it’s good to become grounded and you know discover the emotion and know ground yourself in the present moment of the emotion apply your mindfulness to the emotion so that it can subdue, it can soften, it can cease and then that kind of thinking process that comes from the emotion also will slow down and will cease but it’s you know thoughts are very much a huge part of our lives and you know most of us actually spend an enormous amount of time in our world our world of thinking and perceptions and you know almost like you know making up all of our stories and ideas that’s going on all the time this kind of process.
So mindfulness doesn’t stop the thinking and that’s not really the idea but it helps us to get the space and to stop us from compulsively following the thoughts that have appeared and this helps us to become more balanced so that our physical side, our emotional side, our cognitive side that these all work together. We’re three sided. Okay. So that all of these sides aspects of ourselves start to to work together as more of a balanced, whole. So you know there’s a lot of questions that come up you know like do do I remain indifferent or do I become interested?
What attitude do I take towards my life, towards my mind? Am I interested to know the mind, how it operates in order to be able to utilise it in order to become free from suffering. Or don’t I give a damn? Am I just happy to remain the topic of Tuesday night’s talk? Next Tuesday night, is ignorance bliss?
Do I want to stay stupid? Do I want to be indifferent to what’s happening and not care about my future? Not care about others? We need to start asking ourselves these kind of questions because if we do wish to fulfill our potential we need to have intelligent mindfulness combined with authentic unwavering compassion and then that kind of motivation and this intelligent mindfulness that protects us, it stops us becoming from how can I say it over over enthusiastic about having a lot of ambitions or a feeling of duty? Know so when we’ve got the compassion involved and we’ve got intelligent mindfulness we take the pressure off ourselves from feeling you know duty bound or very ambitious and so that we end up practicing not from this perspective of ambition and not from this perspective of duty.
So there’s a true effort that comes and it’s not like an order, it’s not like an obligation, it’s not just because you want to get somewhere. Know it’s kind of a true natural practice that comes. So I think I have to kind of skip along a bit you know. So the mindfulness actually becomes natural and it becomes balanced. It becomes in tune in tune with the kind of movement if you like that leads us out of problems and out of suffering and so it’s much more sensitive and it’s not hesitating, oh am I doing the right thing or should I be doing, should be, be, I should be you know.
It’s something that very naturally arises. It’s serious but it’s not too serious. Know it’s decisive but it’s not tight or tense and that’s what this kind of balanced mindfulness is what helps us get out of our dream world you know. We look into the mind the way the mind works. We look into the reality of the mind and so at first we use this aspect of this element of the mind is just like the observer.
Do you remember what I’ve been talking about sitting on the sidewalk cafe and people walk past and you just observe it. You don’t get up and run after them. You don’t start saying, oh I don’t like the way they’re dressed’ you know you just observe them wandering. So this is what we start to do with our mind. We’re kind of like this observer, this non emotional observer you know to get to know our mind.
Sort of like oh yeah yeah you know. So in ways our mind sometimes it feels like there’s one part of the mind that’s watching the other part of the mind you know. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with what might seem to be dualistic mind processes. There’s nothing wrong with that because we can use this observer to get out of our emotions instead of getting you know kind of more tangled up.
Gradually as I said you know it becomes much more subtle when we’re starting to be mindful of the mind and the workings of the mind. So you develop a greater insight, a greater wisdom, know more a direct seeing or a direct knowing rather than this kind of fabrication and so you know there might be a darkness, there might be confusion but there’s direct moments of seeing and it’s it’s like those moments. You know this non conceptual understanding. You don’t have to think, but there’s a non conceptual knowing how your mind functions. You know, it’s like you get to a point where there is no concepts.
It’s not like you have to be thinking oh this is how the mind works’ it’s like it’s an experience Okay? And these are like moments, they’re like flashes of clarity. As I say it’s like these ” moments” but as soon as you start to go ” then you’re conceptualising. Okay? So if we are aware in almost every meditation session there’s a little understanding, there’s a little flash of something that comes through.
So over the course of time there are many of these kind of flashes and that’s what shows the progress of a practitioner. That’s what increases the understanding. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche again. He gives some examples of this.
He says that you know, that it takes some discipline, right? But he said this is the ground for moments of clarity. It’s a feeling of being committed to enter into contact with reality and so he gave some examples and one of them was like falling in love. And he says falling in love means that we are basically open to this experience. Are present and basically prepared.
Can you remember falling in love anyone? Yeah okay and then in the presence of some person suddenly there is this something different, something awakening all our faculties making us fully alive. Even the simple presence of this person in the room in the middle of a crowd is noticed as just this. We cannot really say what exactly but it makes us fully present. So it’s like you know you’ve fallen in love with someone and they walk into a crowded room and maybe you can’t even see them but there is an awareness.
Have you ever had that? This kind of awareness of this person in the room. So you’re kind of open to it. You’re ready you know and you’re willing to have that contact with it so that when that person walks in there there is just this awareness. So it’s the same thing with mindfulness.
You’re being open to it. You’re kind of open, willing to have contact with these flashes of insight. Yeah, I can go on and on but we don’t really have much time. And so in these moments of clarity that can come, it’s like when the clouds are about to rip apart and it’s like the mind opens to an almost magical perception of what we call ‘suchness’. So of course this is getting much more involved than just meditating on the breath okay we’re talking about a very profound experience that can happen as a result of the mindfulness.
It’s like, you know, there’s just this incredible space and an opening up to reality. So mindfulness means to be present. These flashes of insight, well, they don’t occur for everyone. For most practitioners it’s like a gradual dawning of insight, of some kind intuitive insight, like the sun appearing from behind the morning mist. It’s not just like suddenly.
And so for a lot of people these flashes of insight almost go unrecognised. And it’s just like the sun rises. So although we and the sun rises even if there’s clouds you know obscuring it the sun still rises so even though we might have these flashes but we don’t recognize them, we’re not so conscious of them but nevertheless they’ve happened. So we take this mindfulness of mind as our mindfulness in the Mahāyāna as our main practice to know at all times actually what our motivation is. Know, this is mindfulness of the mind is being also mindful of our motivation, of the bodhicitta.
You know, being mindful, am I being self centered here or am I being altruistic? Am I in touch with bodhicitta here or am I on my self centered ego trip? You know, Do I care about others or do I only care about myself? So that’s in the Mahāyāna this mindfulness is more profound because of being mindful of this state of mind, the state of bodhicitta. And I know that we should have a little bit of a break but just one more thing.
We can also extend mindfulness of the mind in vajrayana tradition and this is when we actually meditate on the mind of the teacher, of the lama, of the guru. This is combined with the practice of Guru Yoga so that everything that is perceived is integrated into the dimension of the mind of the Guru. It’s very profound, absolutely profound. Path with a Heart actually talks a little bit about this if you can open be open to it. But it’s good just to know that.
Alright. We’ve got half an hour. Would you like a quick cup of tea? We’ll get a cup of tea and we come back in. So who’s gonna