… More and more of the voices in your committee are
suddenly echoing what it has to say. Like that old principle of the
Big Lie. If it keeps getting repeated over and over and over again
enough times, it seems to be the truth because that’s what everybody
is saying.
So you have to be careful. You have to be quick. As soon …
… As for other voices that come up, the other members of the committee,
friends, true friends and false friends: You want to sort through
them. This practice of recognizing who’s a true friend and who’s not,
both internally and externally, covers a lot of the practice right
there.
We use the principle of appropriate attention to sort these things
out. Which friends …
… This
is the problem with dealing with the committee of the mind. If you
ask, “Which one in there is you?” they say, “All of us are you. All of
us are me.”
It’s like that story that Ajaan Lee tells about Ven. Cūla Panthaka. He
was a monk who was not all that bright. But, one day, when he was
embarrassed by …
… And how does that work its way through your inner bureaucracy?—influencing this person, that person inside, all those committee members working together, creating little sensations here and there, and all of a sudden you’ve got a full blown case. If you want to believe their propaganda when that happens, you’re throwing away your protection.
Your protection is to remind yourself, “This …
… Keep thinking of the mind as a committee. There are lots of people in there, lots of ideas, some of which are helpful, some of which are actually destructive to your own wellbeing. You can’t regard the destructive ones as your own true emotions or your own true ideas. They may be real, but they’re not the “true you.”
Ajaan Lee has …
… So when you’ve got the safe space,
you can get the whole committee to sit down around the topic of what
kind of happiness is genuine. That’s when you can compare the allure
of, say, the guilt or the remorse, with the drawbacks that you’ve
seen: that at the very least, you weigh yourself down.
It’s one thing to recognize …
… one, not seeing clearly; two, not having
the strength even when you do see clearly; and sometimes, you can see
clearly and have the strength, but you don’t have the wisdom to deal
with the unskillful members of your mind’s committee.
Boil it down to those three issues, and the training that the Buddha
gives in virtue, concentration, and discernment helps right …
… That pulls you out of all the arguments of all the different committee members in the mind.
When there’s physical pain in one part of the body, you can focus on the breath energy in another part of the body. This is how we build our powers of endurance: by giving ourselves a place of well-being, even in the midst of a …
… When you listen to a teacher, you’re adding that teacher’s voice to the committee of your mind, passing judgments on your actions, so you want to make sure that that voice will be a positive addition. As the Buddha pointed out, if you can’t find a trustworthy teacher, you’re better off practicing on your own. An unqualified teacher can do …
… Think of
it as being one voice in the committee of your mind, and let it be in
the back corner. Don’t put it on front stage. In other words, you know
it’s there, it’s chattering away, but you just decide you’re not going
to focus on it.
If that doesn’t work, notice how, when you’re thinking, there …
… Think of them as different proposals that are being offered by your
inner committee, and you don’t necessarily have to take up the
proposals. The thoughts can just go through. They arise and pass away,
and because you have a foundation in the body, you can look at the
mind and be in a better position to gauge the thoughts: what things
are …
… It’s as if you have a whole committee offering their suggestions and opinions. So this is a very good way of getting to know the mind because a lot of things buried in the mind will tend to surface and focus on what’s happening when there’s pain. Instead of trying to run away from the pain, you just sit with it …
… We were talking earlier this afternoon about the committee of the
mind, the different voices that come up in the mind, and one you
really have to watch out for is the one that says, “It doesn’t matter
what you do. Go ahead and act on your impulse.” Well, conviction is
there to remind you that not all impulses are good and that …
… Or you can just tell yourself, “The thoughts can go on, but I’m not
going to pay them any attention.” This is where it’s useful to think
of the mind as being like a committee. You have lots of commentators
commenting on what’s going on, what you should and shouldn’t be doing,
and you’ve got a ferret out: “Which …
… Here it’s useful to see the mind as a committee, composed of many members with different ideas of how to find happiness. To find the allure, you have to learn to identify not only which member of the committee is urging you to go for the emotion, but also how and why.
This step in the process requires a great deal of mental …
… The why is also important, because it helps keep you with it, and to
understand what you’re doing, to understand the point of all this,
because you’re going to find different voices in the mind saying, “Why
am I doing this? Why don’t I think about that, why don’t I think about
this?” Not everybody in this committee of your …
… But we’re too interested in other things—or at least some
members of the committee are interested in other things. They want to
go off someplace else. They say, “Well that’s nice. You can stay with
your breath a little bit. But then let’s do something else.”
It’s like the person who gives up alcohol for a while and says …
… This is the kind of pride that can use a sense of shame, integrity, and all the other attitudes the Buddha is teaching here as means to negotiate with your less skillful selves, the less skillful members of the committee, and win them over to the path to true happiness. In the factors of the path, this comes under right effort: the ability to …
… Ask the member of the committee that may have closed the door, “What are you afraid that I might see?” If the thought doesn’t come up for you again, then let it go for the time being. Rest assured that the opportunity to explore it again will come back again, and the next time you may be more ready for it.
Q: There …
… We also talked about some of the qualities the Buddha recommends for skillfully negotiating with the less skillful members of the mind’s committee and motivating them to do the right thing.
Tonight’s talk approaches the same topics from a slightly different angle, looking at them in terms of what modern psychology has to say about mature ego functioning.
Sometimes you hear that …
A Warrior’s Stronghold | Meditations4
… Keep thinking of the mind as a committee. There are lots of people in there, lots of ideas, some of which are helpful, some of which are actually destructive to your own wellbeing. You can’t regard the destructive ones as your own true emotions or your own true ideas. They may be real, but they’re not the “true you.” Ajaan Lee has …
