Working with the Scattered Mind

All over the world, in every spiritual tradition, and in every age, there have been individuals that went beyond the superficial spirituality of their times and came to a realization that transcended their limited identity.

As you may be aware, we tend to identify with or tend to say, "I am" with respect to our ideas and body sensations - in other words, our thoughts and feelings. Have you noticed that? Isn't that where we live? We say, "This is what I am." We are basically creatures of thought and feeling, and one of the things that has been discovered in the Buddhist tradition is that feeling can be tangibly accessed by paying attention to any and all sensations that arise within the body. And that takes us down into the feeling core of our being. Animals and babies live here - at that feeling core that knows pleasure and pain. Adult human beings still have that feeling core, but surrounding that they have a thinking surface. So ideas and body sensations is where we live when we say, "I am."

There is nothing wrong with ideas and body sensations. And in fact, nothing wrong with abiding in ideas and body sensations. But there is a problem if that's the only place that a person can ever abide and say, "I am." Which is the situation for 99.99% of our species.

So there is another relationship to the flow of ideas and body sensations, which is a relationship of, "Sometimes I'm this, but I'm not limited to it." And those that have achieved that relationship develop a completely different paradigm, a completely different model about what they are - about what the world is, about time and space, and about The Source: the source of those ideas and body sensations, the source of the world, the source of the universe, time and space. As I said, in every age, and inside and outside of every spiritual tradition, there have been individuals that have achieved this new relationship to the flow of ideas and body sensations.

Mindfulness and Equanimity
There are many ways that a person can cultivate that new relationship. And one of the ways that is particularly appealing is the path that involves two cultivated skills. One is the skill that in Buddhism we call mindfulness, which is the ability to be precise and clear about the components of one's experience moment by moment. And the second is a skill that we call in Buddhism equanimity, which means an attitude of openness or non-interference with the flow of those senses. These are skills that can be developed the way muscle can be developed by systematic exercise. This is one path. It is the core of the early Buddhist practice, which is known by the name Vipassana. But you'll find that these two practices exist outside of Buddhism. People that would never consider themselves Buddhist, or never even heard of Buddhism, will talk about this - but in different words. Krishnamurti talked about choiceless awareness, and in the Gurdjif tradition they talk about being awake.

What is appealing about this is that anybody can cultivate these skills, and that you don't have to become a Buddhist in order to develop mindfulness and equanimity. So you can practice the hardware without necessarily buying into the software, you might say. There are people that follow this path, that even practice with Buddhist techniques, but consider themselves to be Orthodox Jews, and there's even any number of Roman Catholic priests and nuns that do it. They're still Catholic; they still accept the software of Christianity.

By software I mean the philosophical perspective. But they have developed the hardware, the actual mechanics of the mindfulness and equanimity using Buddhist techniques. It's appealing because it's systematic - and it's step-by-step, making it relatively easy to each. And it allows people to have quite a bit of freedom as far as their belief systems go.

However, if you follow this path - the path of mindfulness of equanimity - there are some challenges that come up, and some of those challenges are more difficult to deal with than other ones. And today I wanted to address some of those challenges. But before I do that, I would like to remind everyone that, as you're listening to this talk, ideas are arising as the result of what I'm saying. Some of those ideas are conscious; and some of those ideas are subliminal, subtle processing.

In response to the whole situation of being here, feelings are arising. Some of them are quite obvious and conscious, and some of them are very subtle and subliminal. Feelings are arising instant by instant from the sounds and the visual impact of this talk. If I say something that's interesting, or something that's useful, pleasant sensations arise. If I say something that doesn't make any sense, that doesn't compute for you, the unpleasant feeling of confusion arises. If I say something that you violently disagree with, the unpleasant sensation of irritation arises. And if you get bored, the unpleasant sensation of sleepiness arises, and you start to fidget.

Listening with Your Bellybutton
I point this out because in the very act of talking and listening about this path, it is useful to cultivate the habit of practicing the path. My teacher, Joshu Suzuki Roshi, sometimes says "In order to understand my talks, you have to listen with your bellybutton wide open". Now, that's a Zen teacher's way of talking. What does he mean he says: "Listen with your bellybutton wide open"? It's not like opening your ears. He says, "Open up your bellybutton and listen to what I have to say." That's a center of understanding that's way far deeper than what's between the ears.

In other words, don't be so concerned instant by instant in attaching meaning to what you hear. Instead, be concerned instant by instant with mindfulness and equanimity about your own ideas and body sensations, which are arising in reaction to what you hear. And what will happen then is amazing. If instant by instant you are not so attached to figuring out what the teacher is saying, something can impact you deep down in the core of your being.

So I would encourage you to be aware that each sentence I speak to you today is a burst of sound. Each burst of sound, each transition in the speech, brings a new arising of yourself as ideas and body sensations, in reaction to what you hear and see. And if you can be precise and allowing with respect to that instant-by-instant changing sense of self, then you will be in the optimal situation to appreciate a talk about these topics.

As I mentioned, in a sense the principles of the Vipassana practice are very simple. One has this thing called experience. And one attempts to consistently cultivate precision and openness to that experience. That word consistency is very deep, and very important. If one can remember the principle of consistency, then a lot of the difficulties that arise in the course of this practice can be overcome.

Going from the Surface to the Source
Let me tell you some of the challenges that a person has to pass through in order to go from the surface to the source, in order to go from the top of consciousness down to the activity that gives rise to consciousness. Usually people tend to think of mysticism as an assent, a climbing of a mountain, and perhaps that metaphor is useful - but for me, it's much more of a penetrating, a journey downwards from surface to source.

Substitutes for Actual Practice
In that journey, there are challenges that are encountered. Amongst the difficult challenges, the first thing that most people have to face and come to grips with is the tendency to substitute something for actual practice. That will wipe you out right there, that's a mortal blow right there at the beginning. What do people tend to substitute for practice? They tend to substitute intellectual study and discussion. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, in fact, those things are exceedingly useful. But not when they become a substitute for putting the tush to the cush. People tend to substitute belief and a related phenomenon which I call "wishful thinking."

How many times have you heard in the New Age, "It's all perfect, it's all just as it's meant to be." Sounds nice, but those ideas can become a substitute for a tangible experience of perfection. So the next time somebody with a New Age consciousness says something like, "It's all perfect," remember what the litmus test for that philosophy is: you have to be able to find the perfection in your root canal therapy. You have to be able to find perfection in a pain that's so intense that you can't remember the idea that everything is perfect, you can't remember who you are. So where's the perfection then? That experience of the perfection of things cannot be wishful thinking or blind faith; it has to be something that's really tangible.
So one of the biggest challenges that people face is that they find reasons to not do the exercises that will develop the mindfulness and equanimity that will allow them to have real experience, material tangible experience of the source, as opposed to the vicarious experience that comes through intellectual understanding and belief.

That's perhaps the most dangerous of all challenges. Because it could wipe you out right at the beginning. Basically you'll never take the journey; you'll read the guidebooks, and that's the substitute for taking the journey. Or you'll argue about the guidebooks for years. "Well, this one says this is the way to go," and, "This one says this is the way to go," and "This Vipassana teacher says it's this one," etc., etc.

The Force of the Past
Amongst the difficult but not impossible challenges that a person faces, and most of you have had intimate experience with it, is the fact that it's very hard to develop concentration. When you sit down to meditate, your main experience is your mind wanders. You try to pull it back, your mind wanders, and you try to pull it back again and again. And it can be very frustrating to people.

You may have to struggle many years with that phenomenon. I can only say that the frustration that you feel at your inability to be focused and concentrated is part and parcel of the learning process to become focused and concentrated. If you weren't experiencing the pain of the scattered state, you would never have the motivation to develop the focused state.

You've had many decades of the habit of being scattered, compared to the time you have been practicing meditation. So you're dealing with an enormous re-training of consciousness, and it's not just you as an individual.

You may have had years and decades of being scattered, but behind you are centuries, probably millennia, of your ancestors and everyone around you being scattered. That's why the Buddha referred to the path of enlightenment as "swimming against the stream."

There's a stream of human conditioning which we, I guess you might say in the Christian metaphor, we inherit the sin of Adam - our species has been scattered for at least a couple thousand years, in terms of Europe, if not longer. I suspect that in tribal times, ten thousand years ago, life was much simpler and the activities were much more focusing, and life was harsh, which tended to drive people into states of concentration. I don't know how long this addiction and hypertrophy with respect to thinking has been going on, but probably several millennia, at least.

And then you've got all the millions of people on this planet that have no concept whatsoever of the most important thing for any human being to know: which is that the very consciousness which will achieve anything can be honed in terms of its focusing ability. So they try to achieve all these different things without ever being willing to spend the time to sharpen the axe. And then they wonder why the trees aren't being cut down very efficiently and why it seems to take a lot of effort and sometimes you can't cut them down.

In general, you've got a billion people, most of them very unfocused, living at this time, and you've got all your ancestors behind you. That's a huge force of conditioning in the direction of scattering, not to say of your own personal life. And like the indomitable salmon that can swim up seemingly impossibly cataracts, we have to swim against the stream of the habit of scatteredness of our species.
That's a big challenge. But, with time, with effort, with support, it can be overcome, it's just a matter of time, effort and support.

Review
So just to briefly review what I talked about today. There is a universal path, a perennial philosophy found at all times and in all places, where people have gone beyond their limited identity. Scholars of religion refer to them as mystics. Not every saint is a mystic, and not all mystics act the way we think saints should act. One way to get there is through the path of mindfulness and equanimity, or put in other vocabulary, attentiveness and openness. To what? The flow of ordinary experience.

But in order for the attentiveness and openness to work, there has to be a certain critical mass of it. A little bit won't do much. You know what I mean by critical mass? A little bit doesn't do much, more doesn't do very much more, but at a certain point there's enough that something really dramatic takes place. And in order to develop enough, one has to remember in addition to the mindfulness and equanimity, the importance of consistency. Consistency in terms of daily practice, consistency in terms of regular retreats, and consistency in terms of whatever comes up as a reaction to your practice. Consistently have mindfulness and equanimity with that.

Comments

[peter]

thank you!

[NAN DICKINSON]

THANK YOU..... THIS WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED AT THIS TIME.....
SMILES, NAN

[Tom]

Hey, jerk. It's Joshu Sasaki Roshi, not Joshu Suzuki Roshi. Get your names straight or miss the collective unconscious archetype of Joshu Sasaki Roshi's name and wisdom. Don't talk unless you can back it up with the accurate name. Shinzen fo-eva. Period. . The End. The End. Love. Love Fo-eva. Fo-eva Love. Love One 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 COLLECTIVE All One. All Zero. All ShinZero Young. On the Net. No... I won't say Zero. Fuck me. Up the Ass. Bitch. Sorry, wrong human nothing. Not men. Other nothing.