The Buddha made an important distinction between physical seclusion
and mental seclusion. You might be sitting alone under a tree, alone
in the sense that there’s nobody else around you, but there can be a
lot of people in your mind. He said, all your cravings, all your
thoughts of past and future, all that conversation going on in the
mind: It’s …
… This forces you to step back from the unskillful committee members that push for those ways of looking for pleasure, and to ask whether you want to continue associating and identifying with them or not.
This process isn’t always easy. You tend to identify with those unskillful committee members because you associate them with pleasure. But the practice of jhāna helps make this …
… You’ll find that the committee of the mind has some members who
are happy to be here, and other members who are not. This is why the
Buddha says there are two duties that you *do *as you get the mind to
settle down with right mindfulness and into right concentration: One
is to keep track of the object you’re determined to …
… It’s as if you have a whole committee of voices inside, with all
different kinds of ideas, and you have to sort them out. Who are the
ones you can trust? Some of the ones that come from outside you can
trust, some you can’t. Some of the ones that come from inside you can
trust and some you can’t, but …
… It’s as if there’s a committee in the head. And the
different committee members can either be really detrimental for one
another or they can learn how to work together and help one another.
One member can see the drawbacks or the weaknesses of another member
and can provide the strengths that are needed.
This is why there’s no one-fold …
… We talk about the committee of the mind. This is one area where the
committee can actually be useful. You have different members: You have
the equanimity member, you’ve got the concentration member, you’ve got
the uplifting energy member. And you want them to work together, to
get coordinated, to be able to observe one another, to see where
things are lacking …
… The other sense of ego, though, is the ego who’s is the member of the
inner committee who tries to negotiate between your sense of what you
should do and your sense of what you want to do—so that the shoulds
don’t get too overpowering, and your wants don’t obliterate your sense
of right and wrong. In other words, you …
… It’s like having a committee in your mind
and there are some bullies in the back saying, “Okay, now it’s my
turn!” And they don’t really care whether your long-term happiness is
going to benefit or not. They want something short, something quick.
Which is why you have to learn you can’t listen to them either.
If you’re …
… This is where it’s useful to think of the mind as being like a
committee. There are lots of people in the committee. When we talk
about dealing with self and not-self, you have lots of selves in the
mind—lots of opinions, lots of advice. There may be a lot of
unskillful members of the committee, but you don’t have …
… It’s as if you’ve got a whole committee and you have to determine
which members you’re going to side with. This is a very basic
principle the Buddha said in finding protection in life: learning
which people to take as your friends and which ones not to take as
your friends. People who are just your acquaintances and you’re
friendly …
… Here again the image of the committee is a useful background perception: Whatever the emotion, it’s simply one of the committee members—or a disruptive faction—claiming to speak for the whole committee and trying to overthrow the members who want to meditate.
The number one lesson in dealing with disruptive emotions is that you have to identify with the members who want …
… As for the voices in the mind that say “I can’t stand the pain, it’s
too much for me, I can’t do this,” think of them as committee members
in your mind who are not being very helpful, so why pay them any
attention? Try to point the conversation in the committee in a better
direction. Talk to yourself about the …
… A group of
Burmese people had gotten together, formed a committee, and wanted to
present him with some land to build a monastery. He talked about this
to the Thai Ambassador to Burma. Apparently the Thai Ambassador had
some connections back in Bangkok. When Ajaan Lee got back to Bangkok
and started looking into how this might succeed, he found out there
was a …
… We talk about the committee of the mind. Well, a lot of the members of
the committee are just old kamma. You want your skillful new kamma to
be the chairman of the meeting who can decide who’s speaking out of
order and who has the right and who doesn’t have the right to vote on
what you’re going to be …
… Is this a good desire? Is it a bad
desire? Is it something I want to identify with? Something I don’t?
You begin to get a sense that there are lots of different members of
your committee here in the mind, lots of different voices, some of
which you can trust, some of which you can’t. Being with the breath
makes you …
… They’ve
taken over that much of the mind, that much of the mind’s committee.
You want to see them as soon as the first thought comes into one
member of the committee. Why does it come?
Sometimes you find that some strange physical sensation in the body
kicks in these thoughts. Other times it’s when you’re tired. Other
times it …
… To work with the breath is to create a space where all the different parts of the mind — all the different members of the committee, all the different levels of sensation and activity going on — learn how to be with one another in a peaceful spot, working on a common goal. You’re showing goodwill for one another because you’re cooperating. In that …
… Remind yourself that the mind is like a committee. There are
lots of different voices in there, and you don’t have to pay attention
to every voice in the committee. Just listen to the voice that says:
“Stay with the breath. Stay grounded in the breath.”
Then have a little dialogue with yourself over how the breath feels.
Is it too long or …
… However the money is to be collected, have it go toward the cremation until the committee in charge feels that it has enough.
2. If there is any money left over, appoint a committee to consider handing the excess over to the hospital.
3. If the committee doesn’t see fit, the money needn’t go to the hospital.
When these three points had …
… Even though you’re sitting here saying you’re going to meditate, only
part of the committee in your mind has signed on. There are a lot of
committee members waiting for you to leave a gap in your mindfulness
so that they can go off and do what they want. So you have to be
mindful, alert, watching what’s happening—reminding yourself …
Not-self for Transcendent Happiness | Selves & Not-self
… This forces you to step back from the unskillful committee members that push for those ways of looking for pleasure, and to ask whether you want to continue associating and identifying with them or not. This process isn’t always easy. You tend to identify with those unskillful committee members because you associate them with pleasure. But the practice of jhāna helps make this …
