My first Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher often said things like, “Happiness and suffering come from your own mind, not from outside. Your own mind is the cause of happiness; your own mind is the cause of suffering. To obtain happiness and pacify suffering, you have to work within your own mind.”
I’ve come to realize that meditation practice is all about dedicating ourselves to the “work within your own mind.”
When we work within our mind, we find that it seems to have two aspects:
Distinguishing between the knowing aspect of mind and what appears to the mind is what we come to see and understand for ourselves in meditation.
Whatever moves through the mind is temporary and oftentimes fleeting. How long does a thought, an emotion or feeling remain in the mind? Or how long does the perception of one of the senses, like a sound, last in the mind?
Even though these ideas, thoughts, sensations, and desires are momentary, we often identify very closely with them and hold on to them for dear life. We have a habit of trying to grasp them, and then thinking about them, considering them the source of our contentment and happiness. But how can we find contentment and happiness in that which is so momentary and transient?
We give a lot of importance to appearances, especially to the stories that we narrate about those appearances—our thought loops, our long ruminations. We take them so seriously. We believe in them. We identify with them. We defend them. We act upon our thoughts about appearances, even when they don’t accord with reality.
We can spend most of our life thinking about these “appearance” aspects of the mind without understanding that we are more than that. Not understanding the difference between the mind and that which appears in the mind is where we might find the beginning of our own confusion, or what is sometimes called “ignorance.”
Our confusion is likened to the way that one may confuse a colored rope for a snake. The analogy goes something like this: say a man is walking on the grass in the evening and comes upon a coiled rope. Though it is a rope, he misperceives it and thinks it is a snake, jumps back, almost has a heart attack and runs to tell the neighbors that a dangerous snake is roaming the neighborhood. All the local children are locked in their homes, and then the media finds out and there are reports of a poisonous snake having almost eaten a child, so the police get involved, and so on.
Now, the scenario started with a two-fold problem. First, the man didn’t see the rope for what it was; a rope. That was his first mistake—not seeing reality as it was. And then he made a second mistake by projecting “snake” upon the rope. He projected the label of “snake” where there was no basis for it. Then he reacted and the entire town was involved in the search for the non-existent snake.
How often during the course of the day do we make this two-fold mistake?
Fortunately, our meditation practice positions our mind to correct these faults and misperceptions.
In our next meditation practice, we’re going to work within the mind itself. When we use the mind, and the appearances of the mind, in our meditation practice, the focus is not on trying to figure out, analyze, or even think about the reason for the arising of every thought, feeling, emotion, dream, desire, fear, or anything else that appears to the mind. Rather, the practice takes us to the very root of what awareness is, and by remaining in the pure awareness aspect of the mind, our thoughts, feelings, and emotions begin to lose the control that they once had.
In other words, we have a choice between engaging with our thoughts and emotions or not engaging.
A process of empowering ourselves through our own awareness takes place during this practice, because we see directly that the root of our contentment lies in our own mind.
For the meditation practice itself, we’re going to use the spacious aspect of the mind, and that which moves through the mind, as the object of our focus.
How do we do this? As usual, we rest the body in stillness, then scan it briefly, and then turn our attention to the space where thoughts, emotions, and perhaps mental images move. We rest our attention in that space, and we observe whatever arises and dissolves in that space. We don’t have to suppress anything because we’re afraid we’ll be distracted. Nor do we have to indulge any thought or emotion with thinking. We just observe the mental field of our experience in a relaxed and attentive manner.
Assume your meditation posture, either seated on the floor, on a chair, or lying down. Rest your body in a stable position so that your feet, ankles, thighs, and hips are firmly arranged and create a steady foundation. Straighten and then relax your spine. Find a comfortable place for your hands in your lap or on your knees. Your eyes may be open with a downward gaze, looking into space, or gently closed.
Take a few deep inhalations and exhalations, pausing momentarily with your lungs completely full and then exhaling in a long and slow manner with your mouth open.
After a few rounds, let your breathing return to its natural flow.
To establish your motivation for today’s meditation practice, perhaps think of a person, or people, or situation in need of material or emotional support, and think:
Through my efforts today in meditation, may all beings everywhere find comfort and ease in their mind.
Rest in stillness. Feel the motionlessness of your lower torso, and any other sensations. Feel the elongation of your spine. Scan all the way to the top of your head. And slowly sweep your attention down the front side of your body, relaxing your face, shoulders, and belly completely. Let your body remain immovable like a mountain.
Then focus the attention that was just noticing the sensations of your body and redirect it for a moment to notice any sounds around you. Then just leave them be.
Notice any visual stimulation. It doesn’t matter whether your eyes are open or closed, just notice the shapes, colors, and shades of light.
And for a moment, notice what tastes are on your tongue, and what scents are around you.
Allow the world of your five senses around you to rise and fall. Keeping your body still, allow whatever is happening around you to come and go.
Then move your attention to the space where thoughts, thinking, emotions, ideas, and mental imagery move. It is a gentle turning inward of the mind.
Observe that space of the mind without suppressing any thoughts or indulging in thinking. Remain very relaxed, very alert. The object of your meditation practice is whatever arises in your mind in the immediacy of the ever-changing present moment.
There may be moments when there is nothing moving through your mind. Remain in the spacious clarity of that moment. Abide there.
Then, when thoughts, ideas, or emotions arise, watch them with complete openness. Like a hawk soaring through the sky without leaving a trail or wake behind it, allow them to move through the space of the mind leaving no trace.
As you continue to practice, be mindful that your attention doesn’t sink or collapse into lethargy, where you may not be distracted, but not have attentive clarity. If this happens, straighten your spine and revive your meditation.
If you notice you have become distracted and are thinking about something else, release the thinking, relax, and return to the space where thoughts and emotions move. Rest your awareness there, spacious and alert.
After 20 minutes or so, let go of the method and rest in silent stillness for a few moments.
And to conclude the practice in an auspicious manner, perhaps you can think:
Through the power and the truth of my meditation practice today, may I empower myself to be a force for good and peace in the world.
Different religious and spiritual traditions offer a variety of theories, concepts, and maps to understand our journey inward. These maps of course are not the territory, but provide us with helpful clues and the general direction in which to proceed. One Buddhist map of the mind in particular, known as the Eight Consciousnesses, I find helpful because it is very practical for meditators. We can use this map to understand a critical junction in our meditation practice—that crossroad where we either rest in pure awareness (the knowing aspect of mind) or veer into distraction (our well-trodden thought loops).
The Eight Consciousnesses help us to sort out conceptually what is happening with the complicated process—what is happening within the mind itself during the perception of stimulation and subsequent reaction to it.
You actually already have a familiarity with the Eight Consciousnesses through your practice of meditation so far. Now let’s look at each consciousness individually, and then how they work together.
The first five consciousnesses within our mind function with a corresponding sense organ to perceive an object, and include:
In our previous meditation practices, we concentrated on the objects of the six consciousnesses. For example, in our body-scanning and breath meditation practices, we relied primarily upon the tactile consciousness to be aware of touch. And in our meditation practice on all five sensory stimulation, we used the corresponding sense consciousness to know the various objects of our five senses. When we meditated upon thoughts and emotions, we relied upon the mental consciousness.
The eight consciousnesses
Regardless of which of the six consciousnesses we used, it was our pure awareness that perceived the object. So you could say that our pure awareness uses the six consciousnesses to know the world around us. Is there anything in our experience that is outside these six sense fields? It does not seem to me that there is.
Our perception of our physical surroundings and what is happening in our mind is marked by dynamism and fluidity. As we mentioned earlier, when our pure awareness perceives an object through one of the six consciousnesses, in the first moment of perception, it knows it exactly as it is, purely, just as a mirror reflects something perfectly as it is. For example, when our awareness, using our visual consciousness and eyes, sees a flower, for the first moment it does so with absolute clarity, even before the name “flower” or “rose” or “tulip” enters the mind. We just see the unique shape and color as it is right then and there. That is why I call it “pure” awareness.
Or, when our pure awareness uses our auditory consciousness and ears to hear a sound, our very first apprehension of that sound is a direct perception of it, before labeling, naming, or any other kind of thinking enters into the process.
With any phenomena of the six senses, when awareness apprehends an object, it does so in a pure, direct and unelaborate way, free of after-thinking or analysis.
If we were to abide continually in the direct perception of any and all objects as they unfolded to our awareness, then we wouldn’t talk about the seventh consciousness. But do we actually do that in our meditation practice or in life in general? How often do we leave the hearing in the hearing, the seeing in the seeing, or allow thoughts to arise and dissolve without thinking about them? Most often, the moment after our pure awareness perceives an object, we either like or dislike the object; we want to hold it or we push it away, we identify with it or negate it. This is the instant when the seventh consciousness emerges, sometimes known as the defiling consciousness, because it spoils the pure perception of our awareness.
What spoils it? Our own habitual wants, desires, fears, and stories. These hijack our awareness’s pure perception and lead it astray.
B. Alan Wallace suggests in Minding Closely that this spoiling of our awareness—in the seventh consciousness—is a kind of mental toxicity:
Toxic thoughts can ruin a day or a lifetime, but only if they are closely grasped. To the extent you can cultivate the ability of simply being present with whatever thoughts arise in the space of awareness—without grasping or aversion— thoughts lose their toxicity.
Some teachers suggest the seventh consciousness is where our “self-cherishing ego” is fully manifest, or where our “grasping self” emerges. In any case, it is in the seventh consciousness that our repetitive thought loops begin, minute by minute, hour after hour, and continue day after day. And in this repetition, our mental habits are formed, molded, and reinforced, one thought loop at a time, in reaction to the stimulation of the six senses.
How many times a day do we drift on thought loops and reinforce our habits of attachments or aversion? A couple times a day, a dozen, or perhaps hundreds or thousands of times each and every day?
The eighth consciousness is sometimes known as the storehouse consciousness, because it is here that our habits—our wants, desires, stories, and the like—are stored. The image of seeds being kept in a storehouse is often given, with each seed representing our habitual tendencies, our attractions and aversions, our likes and dislikes—all the fuel behind our self-cherishing ego.
Every time we react (seventh consciousness) to stimulation of the six consciousnesses, we are dropping more seeds into the eighth consciousness—stockpiling and reinforcing our habitual tendencies. We have seeds for the entire spectrum of our reactions stored here. It follows then that the eighth consciousness is the basis upon which the seventh consciousness arises.
How do we reverse the stockpiling and fortifying of habits in the eighth consciousness? Is it possible to empty the eight consciousness completely so that we can abide continuously in the pure awareness of whatever arises?
This is precisely why we meditate. We meditate to rid ourselves of our hang-ups, stories, and habitual tendencies to react. In other words, by continually resting in our pure perception, we can remove the force behind the seventh consciousness defiling our awareness.
When we remain keenly attentive of anything and everything that presents itself to our awareness but don’t react mindlessly, we don’t plant any more seeds in the eight consciousness. Every time we watch a thought move through our mind and we don’t react, we are emptying the eighth consciousness of one seed, one story, one hang-up. This process is sometimes called purifying the mind, because we are removing the veils that obscure our pure awareness.
This explanation of the seventh and eighth consciousness resonates with a beautiful poem by the English playwright Noël Coward entitled Nothing is Lost, in which he suggests that in our subconscious (the eighth consciousness):
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken…
Everything seen, experienced, each word…
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise.
It may seem as if we have no option but to be ruled by our habitual responses in our seventh consciousness. It may seem that we are pushed and pulled by our reactions to attachment and aversion all day long. But we don’t have to succumb to the seventh consciousness, where we continually chase, but never find, contentment or ease. Through training in meditation and coming to know our mind, we understand that we do have the choice of remaining in our pure awareness.
Our practice therefore is to remain aware—with utter clarity and spacious relaxation—and not be pulled here and there by the seventh consciousness. And when we do venture into the seventh consciousness with our usual stories, the rope of mindfulness can pull us out and we can return to pure awareness of the ever-changing present moment.
This may all sound rather theoretical and you may ask, “How is meditation relevant in daily life?” Of course only you can verify if practicing meditation brings benefits to you and is relevant in your life. You must study and learn the methods, exert mindfulness and energy in meditation, and examine if the results bring happiness, calmness, and concentration. And patience is required of course—the benefits do not come overnight.
Earlier I shared ways in which meditation practice has helped me understand my mind and mental habits, especially within the context of formal sitting practice. Now I want to tell you one specific way in which meditation has been directly applicable off the meditation cushion in my life as a writer.
Back in 2011, I published my first book, In the Shadow of the Buddha. It was a memoir of my decade-long pilgrimage in Tibet, during which I not only studied the life of a 19th-century mystic named Tertön Sogyal, but also documented human rights abuses and smuggled clandestine information out of various countries. When I completed the first draft of the book, I sent it to Gary Snyder, the American Beat poet, who had kindly offered to read and comment on it.
After a few months, I met him to discuss the draft. Gary Snyder is a Zen-monk-meets-American-lumberjack kind of character, very incisive, and quite stern. We met at a diner, and before coffee was served, he opened his bag and took out my manuscript. He pushed it toward me and I could see red marks all over the first chapter, where I’d written about meeting the Dalai Lama for first time in the 1990s.
In the draft, I’d written something like, “The Dalai Lama departed his residence and I was waiting there with many Tibetans. Tibetans consider the Dalai Lama to be the manifestation of compassion, known in Sanskrit as Avalokiteshvara, and in Tibetan as Chenrezig, who is iconographically depicted as the deity who has eleven heads and one thousand arms, each with the eye of wisdom in the hands…” and so forth.
Gary Snyder pointed to that passage and said, “Is that really what you were experiencing when you saw the Dalai Lama for the first time? Iconography and terms in Sanskrit and Tibetan?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember,” I said.
Snyder looked disappointed with my response. “But it’s your job to remember!” he said gruffly. “What was the experience for you? Whether you are a meditator or a writer, or just alive, this is your responsibility: to know, to remember, to be aware of these things—because this is your reality. Recall it for me. Right now. What did it smell like? What were the sounds around you? What did your skin feel like? What did you actually see?”
As he asked the questions, the scene came back to me and I remembered what had actually happened.
“There was juniper incense burning,” I recalled. “Monkeys were chattering in the trees above us. And actually I didn’t see the Dalai Lama very well at all. When he exited his residence, the group of Tibetans behind me surged forward with devotion and pushed me forward too. In the crush, I found myself on my knees when the Dalai Lama walked by. So I didn’t see him at all—or at least, all I saw was his sandals. And all I heard was his deep chuckle.”
“Ahh,” said Snyder, “then that is what you should write—juniper incense, monkey chatter, and the Dalai Lama’s sandals and laughter.”
There are very practical applications to bringing more mindfulness awareness into our life, as Snyder reminded me. I took his advice and rewrote the entire book.
How often during the day do we get lost in our thinking and miss what is readily before us? For example, when we meet our wife, husband or partner, or our children, do we actually hear what they are saying or do we hear what we are thinking about what they have said? Oftentimes, we only hear the commentary in our head rather than what the person in front of us is actually saying.
When I first started meditating I noticed immediately that I would often get lost in my mental projections rather than be present, for example when I’d meet a friend and have a kind of inner “comparison” commentary. How often do we see a friend or colleague, or even a stranger, and observe the totality of their presence instead of comparing some aspect of ourselves to them? How often do we allow our awareness to unfold and take in the ever-changing present instead of constricting our mind and being tightly bound by our thinking?
In coming to know our mind through meditation practice, we continue to be open to what is actually happening rather than the stories in our head.
Perhaps you can write down in your journal how your practice benefits you on and off your meditation cushion.
When we are working with our mind, we might find that while we want to meditate for longer periods of time, our body doesn’t want to come along for the ride. So, learning some basic yoga postures, or exercises that focus on flexibility and mobility, can be very beneficial to our meditation practice. This is because yoga postures, stretching, and mobility training prepare the body to sit comfortably with ease and strength for extended periods of time.
Classic meditation postures include half- or full lotus pose (padmasana) and the adept’s pose (siddhasana), as well as simply sitting on a chair.
Half- or full lotus pose (Padmasana)
The adept’s pose (Siddhasana)
Chair posture
The most important aspect of your seated meditation posture is that it is steady and comfortable. Make sure your sit-bones are comfortably placed on the floor, cushion or seat, and your pelvis is neutral, i.e. you are neither arching your lower back nor collapsing backward. When your stable foundation is set, your spine falls into natural alignment with greater ease and comfort.
To increase flexibility and strength so that you can remain in physical ease in your meditation posture, take some time each day to sit in postures such as hero’s pose (virasana), cobbler’s pose (baddhakonasana), or squat pose (malasana).
Hero’s pose (Virasana)
Cobbler’s pose (Baddhakonasana)
Squat pose (Malasana)
These postures might be part of your daily yoga practice, but you can also sit in them when you are on your computer, eating, or doing other activities during the day.
Using support with blocks or blankets is highly recommended when assuming these postures, or when meditating. With the right preparation and some regularity of practice of these poses, you’ll find more openness in the joints of your legs and strength in your lower back, and will be able to remain comfortable in meditation for longer periods of time. You can also consult your yoga teacher or physical therapist for suggestions on how to increase your mobility.
