A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Notice that anything we can know is always partial and limited. The total, the limitless, and the unconditional can never be grasped by the thinking mind. A mind that seeks an answer cannot arrive at unconditional freedom, because thought can only divide reality into fragments and then cling to those fragments as fixed views.
When we clearly see the limits of thinking, striving naturally softens, and we can rest in the open space of not-knowing. Ask yourself: What is it that cannot be known?
Read an excerpt from this week’s video that unpacks the components and goal of the koan “What is it that is not a thing, not the mind, not the Buddha?”
If it feels impossible to quiet the mind and let go of thoughts and thinking, Haemin Sunim offers three helpful ways to tame what Buddhists call monkey mind.
What do we mean by “just sitting”? “Sitting” means sitting, walking, working, eating, speaking, and being silent. “Just” means that there is nothing in the world that is not sitting.
Whatever a person frequently thinks about and ponders, that will become the inclination of their mind. If one frequently thinks about and ponders healthy states, one has abandoned unhealthy states to cultivate healthy states, and then one’s mind inclines to healthy states. (MN 19)
Here a person rouses the will, makes an effort, stirs up energy, exerts the mind, and strives to develop the arising of unarisen healthy mental states. One develops the unarisen investigation of states awakening factor. (MN 141)
Reflection
Here right effort is defined as actively encouraging the better aspects of our character to emerge from unconscious potential to conscious embodiment. We are all capable of kindness, for example. Why not try more often to be kind? We are capable of wisdom; let’s actively try to encourage it. This suggests that happiness—the regular manifestation of healthy mental and emotional states—is something we can make happen through effort.
Daily Practice
The positive mental state singled out in this passage is the second factor of awakening, called the investigation of states. When mindfulness is present, it is natural that the mind takes great interest in experience and investigates its mental and emotional states carefully. See what it feels like to be curious about the detailed textures of your experience and see what you can do to evoke and support this sense of regularly looking closely at your mental states.
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna One week from today: Maintaining Arisen Healthy States
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on social media #DhammaWheel
Adopt the attitude of “don’t-know mind” today. Notice the moments when you rush toward an answer or toward certainty. What is it like to rest in the freshness of not knowing?
As certainty relaxes, does the world feel more alive and open? Let this not-knowing be soft and receptive. In this openness, experience can unfold on its own, without being filtered through what you already know.
