Who is your enemy? Mind is your enemy. No one can harm you more than your own mind untamed. And who is your friend? Mind is your friend. No one can help you more than your own mind wisely trained-not even your own mother or father.
The Buddha? Obtained from Jack Kornfield in the below video.
It has been debated if these words actually came from the Buddha as such or if it is a paraphrased form of his teachings.https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/who-is-your-enemy-mind-is-your-enemy-who-is-your-friend-mind-is-your-friend/ It doesn't really matter I suppose...I can see it as something the Buddha would say...what any enlightened master would say. The importance is the truth in those words.
Mind, untamed, can be the enemy
Our unconscious minds are the problem not what is going on around us. Our reactivity, our anger, our fear, our despair all are products of an untamed mind. It is this that causes our experience of suffering. And if we learn to tame the mind, train it so we are not being used by it...so it becomes instead a tool used by us...suffering will subside.
Jack Kornfield, in Levels of Liberation explains there is three levels to becoming more mindful and thusly more free. We need to become more aware of content, process and then consciousness.
Content
In regards to the content of our experiences...we need to be able to "feel" what is happening in our bodies and minds...what the senses are picking up. Whenever I begin meditation I close my eyes and do a quick body scan, noticing without judgment what is going on in my body. Am I experiencing any pain anywhere? Any heaviness? Numbness? Coolness? tingling? Warmth? etc. I just notice where in my body I am having these sensations and I sit with those. I make it a point not to resist...but to allow and accept and examine almost.
Then I go to my surroundings. What am I hearing? Smelling? Feeling? as I sit where I am. I do my best not to look at any "noise" or environmental sensation as an interuption. I just notice, allow and investigate it a bit.
Then I go to my emotions? What am I feeling and where in the body am I feeling it? What does it feel like? Again I do my best not to resist but to name it briefly, accept, allow and even embrace the emotion I might typically want to run from.
So I become aware of the content of my moment, of my life.
Process
Then I become mindful of the process. I watch how the sensations in the body come and go. I might have a pain in my shoulder and as I breathe into it I might notice it subsides. Then suddenly I have a cramp in my foot. I watch that as it comes into my awareness, as it peeks, and as it leaves me. I go to my surroundings...noticing how the sounds get louder maybe or come in and then they are gone. I go to my feelings and watch as I allow one emotion to be...it fills me, then it leaves. Behind it is another emotion.
The thing about examining the coming and going of all form is that it connects us to the coming and going of life. All things come , stay for a while then go. Everything is constantly changing, switching, moving, fading. Everything that is, except our awareness, our consciousness. When I watch the process I am distancing myself from it. I am watching a movie being projected onto a screen...interested in the technology and how it is doen but knowing taht what I am being shown is not me. All the pics that flash before my eyes...come and go...they are in constant transition.
Consciousness
That brings me to the final level...awareness of consciousness. We suddenly become aware then that we are not the movie being played but the watchers of the movie. We become aware of the deeper demension of Self and all the external tings: feelings, pictures, thoughts, stories, roles, the body, the personality become almost insignificant. I mean we know that we need all those things as part of our human experience but we do not have to be overly attached to any of them. We can enjoy watching them without being lost in them or overwhelmned by them.
This awareness brings freedom, peace, joy and well being.
There is a reason why we want to tame our minds. We can't necessarily change all the things going on in the world around us but we can change our minds, our attitudes, ourt view points...our responses to Life.
Hmm! Someting to think about.
All is well.
Jack Kornfield ( Nov, 2017) Episode 66-Levels of Liberation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZADtWxZ1vFM
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