Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / Befriend your mind

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Befriend your mind · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:12
Well, I'm delighted to be here. I think that's the best word I
0:16
can use to describe this kind of inner excitement and curiosity.
0:24
What's going to happen and what's going to come out and
0:27
what's going to come out of our being together.
0:29
Anyway, thank you for inviting me.
0:33
And yeah, it's always an opportunity for me to, if I give
0:39
a talk or if I teach something to explore more deeply and to
0:45
ask myself, So what does that mean?
0:48
What does that, how does that translate into experience?
0:51
What's the benefit of that? Where's that going to go?
0:55
How's it serving my life? So this is kind of the the mood
1:01
of what I'm going to present to you today.
1:04
It's not conclusive. They're just some thoughts and
1:10
hopefully they'll be of benefit to some of you.
1:15
I'm assuming there's a mixed level of experience here.
1:20
Some people relatively new to to meditation.
1:24
Some people I know are, yeah, very experienced meditators.
1:29
So I'm hoping each of you will take what you find of value for
1:33
your own practice. Yeah.
1:39
So the text I sent around was Befriend Your Mind, an
1:45
invitation to explore how meditation can serve our life on
1:50
and off the cushion and especially during challenging
1:54
times. So this is the the ground I'm
1:58
gonna try to cover to some degree.
2:02
So in order to befriend your mind, you first need to know
2:08
your mind and to some degree be interested in developing your
2:16
mind. It's not a given.
2:20
Developing it in a healthy, wholesome, nourishing way.
2:25
Many years ago, I came across a description of a fit mind.
2:31
Sabuti, for those of you who knew him, knows him, he's still
2:35
around, used this description. I thought, oh, that's
2:39
interesting. You know, we're very into
2:41
fitness for our body, but what does it mean to have a fit mind?
2:46
And that just made me curious. And you could say the ultimate
2:50
goal is to free the mind. So this exploration is moving
2:55
from befriending to freeing in a way, by transforming the mind
3:02
along the way. And I'll use the word mind, but
3:06
I what I really mean is Chita, Chita, is this coming together
3:11
of heart and mind. Yeah.
3:15
So if you can hear that, and also when I'm talking about
3:19
meditation, which is at the heart of Buddhist practice, we
3:23
could say I'm not just referring to formal sitting practice.
3:29
I'm talking really about training our mind.
3:33
Yeah. So I often replace meditation by
3:36
mind training, and that's happening all the time.
3:40
Our mind is always with us, not just when we sit down to
3:44
meditate, although that's a particular situation which is
3:48
very, very valuable for deepening practice.
3:51
But it's not the only situation. And there are two approaches to
3:58
meditation. Some of you will be familiar
4:00
with this, some not so. But yeah, take what's what's
4:05
helpful for you. There's the approach of the
4:09
calming practices. When we talk about Samata or
4:15
Shamata meditation, these are practices that help us to calm
4:20
the mind. And then we have the counterpart
4:24
to that, you could say is Vipassana inside practices.
4:30
And it's important to to see these as being interwoven,
4:38
enriching and supporting one another.
4:42
And I hope that that might come out a little bit in what I'm
4:44
going to talk about. This is important for Buddhist
4:48
meditation practice to understand how it can go beyond
4:56
well-being or using meditation as a relaxation practice.
5:00
Yeah, that's in there. But that is not the end.
5:03
That's not the end of the journey.
5:07
And let's, I'm going to be looking at the calming practice
5:12
to start with. And the quality of mind here
5:15
that we are cultivating is samadhi.
5:20
You could say samadhi is the fruit of calming the mind.
5:27
With regard to inside practices, we may focus more on
5:31
mindfulness, on sati, which some of you will know.
5:35
That enables us. This quality of mindfulness
5:38
enables us to be more fully aware.
5:42
Yeah. Experiencing what's going on and
5:45
knowing it. This is the meaning of
5:48
awareness. Yeah.
5:50
And that gives us the freedom to choose how, what is a wholesome
5:55
way to relate to what's going on.
5:58
I mean, in a way that's a, a pith summary of the, the
6:02
journey. But at the moment I'm
6:06
particularly interested in exploring qualities of samadhi.
6:17
Samadhi the the qualities here bring to life a coming together,
6:27
a bringing together, a gathering you could say of energy,
6:33
positive, enriching energies coming together.
6:40
The a common or usual way of translating samadhi is
6:45
concentration. I'm going to avoid that word
6:49
because it has I think can have unhelpful connotations of
6:55
straining or making the mind narrow.
6:59
So if we can just put that aside for the moment and explore
7:06
samadhi more along the lines of this bringing together of body,
7:11
mind and the present moment. Sangarakshita has the Buddhist
7:21
teacher of the Sri Ratna movement.
7:23
Yeah, the founding teacher has a a pithy description of samadhi
7:32
being where you are fully, kindly and mindfully.
7:38
So kind of in a way is bringing samadhi and vipassana together
7:41
here, being where you are fully, kindly and mindfully.
7:48
And this will take us or invite a kind of calm, peaceful,
7:54
abiding in experience. So it's also we're making peace
8:00
with whatever is going on. And in an embodied way.
8:08
It's not just about what's ahead.
8:12
Meditation is not happening in the head.
8:15
Yeah. It's an embodied awareness.
8:17
It's embodying mindful, embodying meta.
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You know, the practice. We've just, we've just done
8:24
goodwill, kindness, benevolence. So really living these qualities
8:30
and not just trying to impose them onto ourselves.
8:36
Yeah. So gathering a gathering of
8:45
energies without strain in a quite a natural way.
8:54
There's another Buddhist teacher that I'm have a lot of respect
8:57
for, Biku Analio, and his description of samadhi is it's
9:04
as if the whole of our experience is held in a gentle
9:09
and loving embrace so that all of its usual fragmentation
9:15
vanishes. Yeah, unified, collected,
9:20
composed. And I think this usual
9:24
fragmentation, I'm sure we're all familiar with this.
9:28
We're tossed about by life, you know, can't decide or pushed and
9:33
pulled this fragmentation. But what might it be like to be
9:38
really in this embrace, this loving embrace of just being
9:45
with our experience as it is right now?
9:51
So I thought it might be helpful to look at some of the
9:54
beneficial qualities of samadhi. And I've put together six.
10:04
So the first one is doing calming practice.
10:10
It's a steadying and strengthening of the mind, helps
10:16
us to feel grounded. Then being grounded, we could
10:24
say there's a possibility of relaxing more.
10:29
Yeah, a soothing, a calming of body and mind, just inviting
10:36
that to take place. And that can sometimes be like a
10:43
sense of ease arising, being at ease, which is one of my
10:48
favorite phrases, you know, this felt sense of being at ease.
10:53
I'm not fighting. I'm not struggling.
10:55
I'm not resisting. I'm not needing to make things
10:57
different or better. Yeah, worse happens anyway.
11:02
Yeah, but it's this being at ease, relaxing.
11:07
I find for myself how important relaxation of mind and body is
11:13
for meditation and especially for going deeper in meditation.
11:20
The next factor I'd say is as important, if not more
11:24
important. And this is joy.
11:27
Yeah, joy, happiness, contentment.
11:34
With this ease, joy in our practice, in our meditation
11:43
practice, in our Dharma life, in our Buddha, following the
11:46
Buddhist path is absolutely essential.
11:50
If there's no joy, then we need to stop and ask ourselves, what
11:54
am I doing? Where's the joy gone?
11:57
Where am I looking for joy? So we're happy, Happy not all
12:02
the time, but we're happy to sit on our cushion.
12:05
We're happy to explore our mind and the joy that I'm talking
12:12
about that I think, not that I'm just talking about, but I think
12:15
it's being referred to here. It's not a spectacular intense
12:24
joy. It's not like the wow of special
12:27
experiences. It's a subtle joy, like the joy
12:32
of just sitting here now, you know, maybe you can just contact
12:37
it. There's a sense of alrightness.
12:40
That's where it might begin. Or a sense of, Oh yeah, I'm this
12:45
is helping me feel alive. Or there's curiosity.
12:49
It's it's making me come more alive, even just a seed of
12:57
contentment to be content. I'm here now.
13:01
I've made this decision to come here.
13:03
This is my choice. Can I be fully here?
13:07
Unless all but I could have done that or this the pull to what
13:11
I'm going to do afterwards, all these alternatives which will
13:15
feed discontent, dissatisfaction, you know,
13:19
greener on the other side. Can I be content with the
13:23
decision I've made? I'm just here, open, curious.
13:28
Yeah. With myself.
13:32
And if there's a seed of joy or contentment, then staying with
13:39
that, giving it attention will help it to grow.
13:44
Yeah. It's like, look, planting.
13:47
I don't if any of you are gardeners.
13:49
Yeah, I always have to bring in gardening nowadays at some
13:52
point. Yeah.
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Or you plant flowers or vegetables from seed and then
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you nurture them, you give them, you give them what they need and
14:01
they begin to grow. And these seeds of benevolent
14:06
qualities of the mind, they're like those little seeds.
14:10
So we give them our attention, we give them the time of day, we
14:14
get interested in them, we value them.
14:21
Joy in one of the Buddhist teachings is the proximate cause
14:27
for concentration. Remember the first time I came
14:31
across that? I thought, my God, it's not
14:35
trying hard and striving and doing.
14:40
It's joy that gives rise to this quality of a bringing together
14:46
of the energies being more fully present.
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It's joy, joy. And that, that is the next
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factor I'm going to talk about is this unification.
15:05
Yeah, a collectedness, this coming together, not in a narrow
15:10
or tight way, not forced. 1 description I've I've found
15:17
interesting is rather than sometimes you talk about here, 1
15:22
pointedness. So you're focused on one point,
15:26
and that can be a bit. It can turn into strain.
15:32
It's a one point that includes everything.
15:36
Oh yeah. What might that be like?
15:38
One point that includes everything.
15:41
And that includes relaxing into the present moment.
15:47
So again, being where you are fully, kindly and mindfully,
15:54
this is concentration. This is unification of energies,
16:01
deeply satisfying, deeply nourishing.
16:08
The fifth quality is flexibility of mind or malleability.
16:16
I love that word. It's malleable.
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You know, you're not getting into a rigid dogmatic approach
16:23
to practice. This is the right way.
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You have to watch out for the finger.
16:27
Yeah, this is the right way. This is how I've learnt it.
16:31
Yeah. And if that that gets can get
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tight and then you you hear or you discover in your own
16:40
experience another approach, can I do I have the malleability,
16:46
the flexibility to try that out and find out for myself?
16:51
Yeah, I recently was asked to take on another level of
16:57
responsibility. And I think, oh, God, that's
17:01
going to really challenge me. And the person who was who'd
17:06
approached me just kept saying to me, Prasad Avati, you find
17:10
your own way. It has to work for you and that
17:14
was the mantra. It has to work for you.
17:17
So we learn, we acquire the tools, and then we need this
17:23
flexibility to try out what works for you.
17:26
Well, there are general guidelines, but take
17:30
responsibility for your own practice.
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The following general guidelines, you could say, and
17:39
being flexible, not deciding beforehand what's right and
17:44
wrong or even getting attached to what's right and wrong.
17:48
Yeah. I think this is important, that
17:50
we keep practice alive. Yeah.
17:54
And what worked for me, let's say, 10 years ago, it's changed
17:58
now. Can I go with that?
18:01
So there's a continual deepening and a developing and coming more
18:05
to life and being lived. And the sixth quality is a mind
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that becomes unshakeable. And I think this unshakeability,
18:22
this is what I'm going to move onto soon in difficult times,
18:29
challenging times. And we feel the winds blowing,
18:35
the push and pull of life. Is there this quality?
18:40
Can I find it in my own mind and heart?
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An unshakability? Probably.
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We could also talk here in this connection about deep faith.
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Yeah. In my chosen path, in the
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practice. And in order to deepen that, we
19:00
need to be unshakable. So this is a kind of mind
19:14
training that will help transform mind and heart.
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It's a kind of nurturing or strengthening the mind and heart
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by paying attention to qualities that will serve our life
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internally and externally. So on and off the cushion in our
19:36
relationships, in our interrelating with life and
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these qualities where I, I've come to appreciate so much about
19:47
them, they form the basis for caring for our own well-being.
19:53
Yeah. If I don't have this stability
19:55
myself or this joy or this sense of ease and peace, how can I
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move and interact with the world then?
20:05
Yeah, in a way that's going to be wholesome and helpful.
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So the basis for caring for our own well-being and then caring
20:16
for others. And it's the basis for
20:18
compassion. Yeah.
20:22
And it's also the basis for meeting difficulties.
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So this is the second part I want to explore a little bit
20:30
more. So we're trying to establish
20:35
this groundedness, relaxed, contented with the kind of inner
20:41
strengths of the malleability, unification, unshakable.
20:49
And in life, we are faced with uncertainties.
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We're faced with impermanence all the time, but especially at
20:57
the present moment. I think, yeah, the political and
21:01
social climate at present, we really are living in challenging
21:07
times. You know, there's no denying
21:09
that. And an effect of this could be
21:13
for I'm sure many of us are familiar, trusted circumstances
21:19
are under threat. Things we may have, conditions
21:25
we may have taken for granted are being threatened.
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They helped us feel safe. And now we don't know.
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Will they still be there in a few months time, in a year's
21:38
time? We become attached to certain
21:45
conditions, to things being a certain way.
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They've got their place. We become attached to people,
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you know, And this becomes even more problematic when we become
21:58
dependent on them being that way because they will change.
22:04
Even if times are not so challenging, they will change
22:06
anyway. You know, one way or another in
22:12
life, we're faced with loss. Yeah.
22:15
Continually. Maybe you lose your work, your
22:19
job. Yeah.
22:22
I mean, it's at the moment the I have contact with some people in
22:27
the USA who work at universities and because of the clampdowns
22:32
regarding diversity that they've lost their job.
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Yeah. Because they don't fit into the
22:37
system anymore. It's not reached us yet, but
22:43
some things, we think we're safe.
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We think we can take that for granted.
22:48
But loss can happen at any time. So losing your job, a
22:52
relationship coming to an end, losing 1's home?
22:57
Yeah. Illness, loss of certain
23:03
abilities or faculties, ageing. Death.
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Yeah. Death of dear ones are our own
23:13
deaths. These are certainties, Yeah.
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Certainty of death, no doubt about that.
23:25
So regarding practice then, could the inner stability or
23:32
strength, the calm and groundedness be a way to
23:37
disentangle from the overpowering or disempowering
23:44
effect of difficulties? Could it serve facing
23:50
difficulties and not getting, not drowning in the
23:53
difficulties? I'm just going to mention a few
23:57
things about working with difficult emotions to make this
24:02
maybe more practical or accessible.
24:11
The qualities of samadhi that I've I've mentioned can serve as
24:17
a source of strength, which give us a kind of staying power in
24:23
being willing to face difficult emotions.
24:27
You know, they are part of the human condition and they're
24:32
gonna be around for a long time whether we like it or not.
24:36
And they show up in different guises.
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So can this inner stability, this staying power, could it
24:46
take me into developing interest in these difficult emotions
24:51
rather than, oh, must get rid of this, don't want this.
24:55
Could I get interested? And this requires a shift in
25:00
attitude from resistance to openness.
25:05
It's what's happening anyway. Can I get interested in that
25:11
rather than needing it to, to replace it with something else?
25:19
So the staying power, shifting in attitude and then bringing in
25:26
a greater understanding of the nature of these difficult
25:32
emotions. All emotions are impermanent.
25:39
The good ones too, sorry to say. Yeah, but they serve us in a
25:44
different way. They will change.
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They will pass too difficult. Emotions are impermanent, it is
25:53
their nature to change. So we don't need to make them go
26:00
away by somehow trying to fix what's going on in our mind, not
26:07
getting caught up in resist, in resistance, or suppressing them.
26:13
That ends up being a kind of feeding difficult emotions.
26:18
The more we try to get rid of them, the more we try to resist
26:21
them, repress them, it feeds them.
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It's paradoxical. You check it out in your own
26:28
experience. They just seem to hang around
26:31
for a long time. The more attention we give them,
26:35
yeah, the more we feed them. So that's the first thing.
26:38
Just being open to art. They're impermanent.
26:42
Yeah. Secondly, they're impersonal.
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Difficult emotions are impersonal.
26:52
They are not me. They are not mine.
26:56
Yeah, we all have them. It's part of being human, as I
27:00
just said. And the problem can't get
27:03
stronger when we start to identify with the emotion.
27:08
Yeah, I'm a fearful person. I'm so.
27:13
I get so angry. Yeah.
27:15
And we kind of take on an an identity of this difficult
27:21
emotion. Yeah.
27:23
I'm. I'm such a doubter.
27:24
Yeah. And then, you know, you, you're
27:27
just strengthening that by making it personal to yourself.
27:33
We believe in their power. We give, we create stories
27:38
around these emotions and that just, again, makes them
27:42
stronger. It's a kind of food for them.
27:45
So difficult emotions grow by trying to resist them or
27:49
believing in them. So what's a constructive way of
27:58
meeting them? First of all, then
28:04
acknowledging, observing what's actually going on in your
28:09
experience? Know what you're feeling when
28:13
you're feeling it now in real time.
28:21
We name it. Maybe there's fear and turn to
28:26
feeling it in the body. How is it manifesting?
28:30
So this is part of this is how we get interested rather than
28:36
projecting into the future or getting caught up in the past.
28:41
Worry and fear are often about the future, are they not?
28:46
Yeah. Anger, resentment is often about
28:50
something that's happened. Yeah.
28:53
So the more I go into the story about that or the more I lean
28:57
into what I'd like to happen, I'm not here now.
29:04
So this naming and feeling it in the body can help me develop a
29:11
different kind of relationship, a constructive relationship with
29:15
what's actually painful or difficult right now, without
29:19
needing to get rid of it, without needing to solve it in a
29:24
way to fix it. I can get interested in its
29:29
flavour in the mind. I no doubt very well, yeah.
29:36
Doubt has accompanied me for a long, long time.
29:41
And at one point I just had to turn to it and say I wanna get
29:45
to know you. And I started to explore it.
29:50
What does it actually feel like? What?
29:52
How does it show up? Yeah, without needing to do
29:57
anything with it then. Another really helpful thing we
30:06
can do is to explore is there an underlying belief or story or a
30:13
view or an attitude that feeds this emotion?
30:21
These beliefs or stories or views kind of lock the emotion
30:29
in. Yeah, it's another way of saying
30:32
it gets fixed. Then I'm right and they're
30:35
wrong. Yeah, I'm OK.
30:38
He's the buddy feeds the fire. The story feeds the fire of the
30:44
emotion. So what about if we try and drop
30:50
the story? Doesn't mean we we feel good
30:54
then suddenly. But this turning to what is
30:59
actually showing up in my experience right now, turning to
31:02
the felt sense maybe of fear or anger, dropping the story and
31:11
seeing what happens. Yeah.
31:19
So what we're doing here is we're staying applying qualities
31:26
of samadhi that are gonna be helpful on our way to freeing
31:32
the mind, not getting rid of difficult emotions by resisting
31:39
or pushing them away, but getting interested in them on a
31:45
different level of our being. And there's a, a, a verse in one
31:51
of the Buddhist suttas that says what we dwell on becomes the
31:56
inclination of our mind. What we dwell on becomes the
32:01
inclination of our mind. So if I dwell on the anger in a
32:06
way that I'm feeding it by going over again and again this
32:10
ruminating and telling the story again and again, yeah, that is
32:14
going to make it grow. And it's like as if it takes on
32:17
a life of its own. Then you can substitute any
32:21
other difficulty motion for the anger.
32:24
Yeah. So we can ask ourselves, what
32:29
kind of seeds do I want to plant in the garden of my mind and
32:35
heart? And if I spend time
32:39
familiarising myself with a quality of joy perhaps, or a
32:45
stability, a groundedness of being, feeling at ease or really
32:55
present, that will also grow. What we dwell on will become the
33:02
inclination of our mind. So this means befriending,
33:08
getting to know the wholesome qualities of mind and heart,
33:12
really inviting them in, spending time with them.
33:20
And that includes acknowledging our own inner strengths,
33:26
weaknesses and tendencies of mind.
33:30
Yeah. Doesn't mean you're a bad
33:33
person. Yeah, doesn't mean that.
33:36
It doesn't mean anything. It just means that's a tendency
33:38
of a of your mind, full stop. Yeah.
33:44
It's like experiencing the mind from the inside out rather than
33:48
sticking on labels. My mind, I can't, I think
33:56
honestly say, used to have a tendency to worry about 15 years
34:04
ago, I became aware of this and it was just like, my God, it was
34:09
like, it was as if somebody had pressed a button and something
34:14
was released. Because I acknowledge, I was
34:16
able to acknowledge and see my mind has a tendency or this mind
34:21
has a tendency to worry. It wasn't like, oh, you're such
34:26
a warrior, Prasad Avati, you're always worrying, you know, the
34:29
self judgement, the self criticism.
34:31
It's just this mind stream we could even say has a tendency to
34:38
worry. So acknowledging that getting
34:42
interested in that is a way, that's what I mean by
34:46
befriending and freeing the mind.
34:49
And now I no worry. We're kind of very familiar with
34:53
another, but we've changed our relationship.
34:56
Now it's lost the power to kind of make me feel small and
35:01
something wrong with me. Yeah.
35:08
And I think this is helpful because a, it helps us change
35:13
our relationship to difficulties, you know, what we
35:16
perceive as difficulties. And we can wake up in the middle
35:22
of the difficulty, in the middle of confusion, in the middle of
35:27
stress. Yeah.
35:36
OK, so I'm going to end with some words of the Buddha.
35:42
I know of no greater happiness than a well developed or well
35:47
trained mind. I know of nothing else that
35:52
causes as much harm as an untrained mind.
36:00
So our mind is the most precious thing we have.
36:05
It is our greatest wealth. It holds the potential for deep
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happiness and for liberation from suffering.
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And it is through this kind of mind training, meditation, as
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well as other practices on the path that the nourishment for
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the liberating of heart and mind can be found.
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And consequently, it informs how we are in the world, how we meet
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life. So it's not just about me.
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Yeah, it's about us. It's about being connected.
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Rather than feeling separated. It's about maybe helping others.
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Yeah. Being present in a way that's of
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benefit.