The Open Committee
March 7, 2005
The mind is like a committee with an open membership. It seems that anybody has the right to say anything at the meetings. No one ever checks credentials to see who’s coming in and with what kinds of intentions. If you sit and watch the thoughts that go through the mind for a while, you begin to …
Informing the Whole Committee
March 16, 2006
One of the strangest things about the mind is that it talks to itself. You’d think that if the mind were a single thing, it wouldn’t have to talk to itself. Everything it knows, it would know, without having to communicate. But the fact is there are a lot of different power centers or knowing …
Each person’s mind is like a committee, and each person brings a
different committee to the meditation. This is why we have such
different issues as we try to get the mind to settle down. Some
members of the committee are willing to settle down; others are a
little bit more resistant. And the politics within each person’s
committee is extremely individual …
… It’s like a big committee, a
very disorganized committee. The members don’t listen to Robert’s
Rules of Order. Whoever gets there first takes over the chairmanship
and runs the committee meeting any way he or she likes. This is
something we’ve got to work with. There’s strength here but there’s
also weakness.
The strength is this: If the …
Organizing Your Inner Committee
February 6, 2011
As you meditate, you want to bring the whole mind to the breath. Sometimes it’s easy. You’re in the mood, everybody in the mind is in the mood, and they all can settle down. But other times, some members of the committee would rather do something else. They have their other agendas, their other desires …
Factions in the Mind
September 14, 2003
When you stop to look at your mind, you begin to realize that there’s a whole committee in there: lots of different opinions, lots of different agendas. You see this especially when you’re trying to get the mind to settle down. One part of the mind decides to focus on the breath, but other parts …
… The part of the mind
that realizes that that’s true becomes the trainer inside and it has
to deal with all the other members of the committee. The weird thing
about this committee is that everybody looks like you. Everybody
sounds like you. So you have to be very careful to figure out who’s
the genuine you, who’s not.
It’s …
… Sometimes you can do the
understanding in the abstract, but often you don’t understand a
committee member until it’s really insistent, screaming at you, “You
want this! You hate that!” In cases like that, you’ve got to learn how
to ask the committee member, “Okay, why?” right then and there.
Don’t wait until afterwards to think about it more in …
The fact that the mind is like a committee can be a weakness or it can
be a strength. It’s a weakness when you’re trying to get the mind to
settle down. You have a clear idea of what you want to do but not
everybody in the mind is on board. You realize that there’s some free
time here, and …
… That’s why we talk about the committee of the mind, or why Ajaan Lee
talks about the various consciousnesses in your body.
So let’s just look at the committee. There are different voices in
there with different agendas, and as you meditate, you’re trying to
convert them all to this agenda of staying with the breath. One way
you can do …
The Committee of the Mind
April 22, 2022
We have that phrase in English, “to make up your mind.” It’s an interesting way of saying “to decide.” So make up your mind that you’re going to stay right here with one thing, with the breath. Make that your intention and try to maintain that intention all the way through the hour. You …
… So once you’ve made up your mind to stay here, you’ve got to talk with
the whole committee in the mind, because every member of the committee
will want to come and say, “You’ve got to think about this; you’ve got
to worry about that. Now you’ve got a whole hour. You can dig up some
old bones that …
… They’re part of the committee of the mind. But just because a committee has a few unskillful members doesn’t mean that they have to take over. If you’re nourishing the good members of the committee, the good members can get stronger and overrule the unskillful ones.
This comes under the Buddha’s teachings on fabrication. There are three ways we fabricate …
… That’s because the mind is like a
committee, and not just an ordinary committee. It’s like the Chicago
City Council. Different members have different agendas. You don’t know
whose interests you’re representing, and they don’t want you to know
whose interests they’re representing.
What concentration does is that it brings some clarity to the mind.
It’s only …
The Committee of the Mind
… That’s why we talk about the committee of the mind, or why Ajaan Lee talks about the various consciousnesses in your body. So let’s just look at the committee. There are different voices in there with different agendas, and as you meditate, you’re trying to convert them all to this agenda of staying with the breath. One way you can do …
