Working with Thoughts and Emotions in Practice
by Sandra Hammond, The Prairie Sangha
Working with mental activity is often a difficult aspect of the practice because we are so wrapped up in it. We experience mental activity all the time in the form of thoughts, emotions and various mental states or moods. Let's consider how we can approach this aspect of insight meditation, since it is so central to our practice. Please take the time to contemplate the following material so that you can challenge and verify it for yourself.
The heart of the matter is this: like sensations in the body and perceptions of the world, thoughts and emotions are simply experiences in the mindstream which arise and disappear according to conditions; they can be observed in this natural state of flux while resting our attention in focused, relaxed, alert, present moment mindfulness. However, this open awareness is not our usual relationship to emotions and thoughts. It is more common to be lost in a thought or swept up in emotion. [Take a moment here to reflect on this. Is it true for you? Please continue to consider your own experience as you take in what you are reading.]
Why is it that we do not regularly relate to thoughts and emotions in a non-reactive manner, but instead are as caught up in them as we would be in a movie or book? Thoughts and emotions are the domains in which we humans live and know ourselves. They are inevitable - they come with the equipment. From birth, the discursive mind is cultivated and highly conditioned in us. We are taught names which make distinctions between this and that; we are taught judgments between this and that; we are advised to feel certain ways about situations, people, and the world around us. We don't easily see that the worldview we are taught is simply a point of view and not absolute truth. In short, it is this conditioned narration of our being with which we identify the most.
When spoken of, emotions and thoughts are usually prefaced with I...me...my (idea, sadness, etc.) as if we own them or are defined by them. The more we narrate life's experiences in this way, the more we solidify our identity, our sense of Self, within the stories we tell. We inhabit these stories so completely that we do not challenge their validity and substantiality. It is so complete a "delusion" that we do not even know they are simply narrative constructs, not absolute reality. Yet the truth is that thoughts and emotions are simply conditioned expressions of mind, and as such, are relative reality. In practice we can learn to see them arise and subside according to current conditions and circumstances, with no inherent substance of their own.
To remain unaware that we are caught up in the pervasive, seductive, mirage-like world of cognition and emotion automatically limits our freedom of choice and skillful action. These activities of mind are powerful energies that can move us to action when we are not mindful of them. Like intense weather patterns, their force in our lives cannot be underestimated. However, this is not to say that developing the capacity to see concepts and emotions directly and clearly is an invitation to not think or not have emotions. That would be impossible, for they are built into the species and not subject to our control. Yet it is a common misunderstanding that the meditative state is one of no thought, no feelings - a dead zone, an empty, dull sort of a place. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mindfulness is a lively, alert state of mind which calmly rests in bare attention, allowing everything in the mindstream (including perceptions of the "outside" world) to arise and be noticed with compassion, including those aspects of ourselves we do not like or accept. Mindfulness is therefore called wise attention; wise because, with universal acceptance, it sees through the cognitive-emotive process which binds us, to the underlying conditionality of all phenomena, thereby pointing the way to peace and freedom.
It really is as simple as noticing the sensations, emotions and thoughts themselves, before we are lost in them; letting the experience of them rest directly in bare attention; and finally investigating their nature and what happens to them next. But it is not easy to do something so simple because our awareness is usually glued to or wrapped up in the stories in our mind. At times it is like a multi-screen movie house in our head; we move from one screen to another, one scene to another - each equally compelling. And of course we are the star in all of the productions! You will encounter all manner of human experience in these movies, one after the other. The endless flow of this mental activity includes: conversation and monologue; judgments; creative ideas; comparisons; happiness; boredom; anxiety; gratitude; unhappiness; love; plans; obsessions; remembering; diatribes; shame; problem solving; self-satisfaction; objects of fear, hatred, joy, anger, greed, lust, frustration; resentment; and much more. This opening to our inner life may seem to be taking place in the past or future, but this is part of the illusion, the mirage of mental activity. The "past", where our conceptual mind likes to hang out, is just a memory occurring now. The "future", where we also like to go, can occur nowhere but in the present moment as we think and feel about what we imagine will come next. Yet this immediate experience of body-mind is the least obvious to us and the Now is the place we usually spend the least amount of time with clarity.
Slowly, though, your awareness will strengthen and stabilize, becoming increasingly spacious and luminous for longer periods. It will then be easier to stay in the aliveness of the present moment body-mind. With this bright, clear open mind you can comprehend the subtle workings of phenomena and see how you form identity around the sensations, thoughts and emotions which arise in the mindstream. With increasing frequency, you will be able to ground your awareness in the fundamental feelings of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, which are the bedrock of each and every moment of experience. You will also be able to see how the everyday discursive mind, useful as it is, is driven by all sorts of emotion and painfully limited by conditioning. Once all of this begins to open up with mindfulness, you will understand through your own direct experience why identifying with the incessant ebb and flow of the cognitive-emotive body-mind process is at the root of so much of our suffering and unskillful action.
The meditative process involves training the mind to observe conceptual activity ... and then to observe it with neutrality, allowing precognitive, intuitive mind to reemerge from behind the veil of conceptual activity. Just a taste of uncrowded, unobscured natural mind spaciously holding conceptual and emotional activity without clinging to it, awakens us to mind's true nature of clarity and emptiness. Out of the emptiness arises all that we experience in the ebb and flow of impermanence. Liberation is to be found in this moment of awakening.
As you regularly practice sitting and walking, you come to realize that you are looking into the true nature of your own mind. However, staying present to your own awakening takes perseverance. Each time you sit, remember to establish your posture, open to the field of your body in the Now, anchor in breath (or hearing) arriving finally at open mindful attention to what is arising in the body-mind. If you get confused, lost or overwhelmed, just come back to breath and start again. It does not matter how many times you have to begin again. Having to begin again is good, for it is the act of remembering to be mindful. In fact, it is the constant coming back to being awake, to being present, that trains your mind in the difference between wandering attention and alert attentiveness. A mind cannot be still if you don't show it how, so be happy whenever you find your mind has wandered and you have the opportunity to establish it again in stillness. This is a large part of mindfulness practice. Finally, remember you are training mind to allow its own nature to shine through; you are not being graded on how many things you observe nor is it a round-up of all stray thoughts and feelings. As you move from one-pointed concentration (exclusive awareness of breath) to moment-to-moment concentration (mindfulness), it is easy to make a competitive project out of meditation. Relax and let your mindfulness unfold naturally - it will if you sit down, open your mind in stillness.
So please be patient with yourself and with meditation. It takes time to cultivate, but can transform how you relate to life. Mindfulness practice is designed to move awareness from the appearances of life to its inherent nature, out of which springs our very being and creativity. This retraining of the mental processes is our natural great awakening. It is the place of wisdom, compassion, and abiding peace in any circumstance. It is freedom.
I offer this to you for your consideration.
