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.
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 the 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 maintain arisen healthy mental states. One maintains the arisen investigation of states awakening factor. (MN 141)
Reflection
Practice is not just about abandoning the mental and emotional states that get in the way of a peaceful mind; it has equally to do with encouraging and supporting all the beneficial states. When kindness, generosity, compassion, or wisdom arises, this is a good thing, partly because it encourages further healthy states and partly because it blocks out unhealthy states. Only one state at a time can occupy the mind.
Daily Practice
When you are able to arouse the interest and curiosity that characterize the awakening factor of the investigation of states, see what you can do to maintain or sustain such interest. Mindfulness is a supporting condition, as is energy or relaxed effort. It is a matter of taking interest in the phenomenology of the inner life and inquiring deeply into the texture, not the content, of experience. What does it feel like to be aware of what is actually going on?
Tomorrow: Establishing Mindfulness of Mental Objects and the Fourth Jhāna One week from today: Restraining Unarisen Unhealthy States
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With a don’t-know mind, go for a walk. When you don’t know, does the world appear as many separate known objects or as an undivided whole? Each time you notice yourself thinking, simply recognize it and gently return to the koan.
Impermanence means that the appearance of stability we take for granted in everyday life, for practical purposes, is ultimately an illusion, the construction of a mind infused with desire and fear.
