Okay: let’s look at the way our mind cognizes things. One way of breaking it down is this. First, we’ve got sensory consciousness, and then we have mental consciousness. Sensory is just the bare-bones, grossest level of our capacity for cognition: eye consciousness cognizes shape and color, ear consciousness cognizes sound, etc.
Then next millisecond, our mental consciousness takes over and our thoughts make up stories, interpretations of that flat-bottomed thing or that round white thing or that sound coming from the music: they’re conceptual stories: “A beautiful cup,” “An ugly sound.” All this is in the mental consciousness: that’s where the workshop is, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says.
There are very subtle levels of mental consciousness – this is the genius of Buddha’s findings about the mind – but we live at the grossest level, the coarsest level of mental consciousness: conceptual thoughts. And the shock to us is that all our emotions are driven by conceptual thoughts at their base. Once we can get that – and it’s very hard to get this, and I’d like to discuss it so I can hear what you think – then we understand what Buddhist psychology means. Then we know how to practice, then we know how our mind can change.
When we say emotion, we mean those strong feelings when our body feels something – and we only notice them then, and that’s the problem. But it’s simple to prove that these emotions – like your emotional anger, your emotional jealousy, your emotional attachment, your emotional depression, all the emotions we talk about – are driven by, manifestations of, conceptual thoughts. It’s easy to prove it, but we still don’t kind of join the dots.
If you had a person who’s screaming and shouting, big noise, flailing their limbs – a child, anybody – we would think, “Oh, they’re angry.” That’s only because we see the physical. And then you have another person who’s sitting there really quietly.
You could simply record the first person and write down exactly what you’re hearing. Then you get the other person, who knows their mind and they can hear all the angry thoughts, they’ll write down their thoughts. Now, the person who doesn’t have naughty behavior, their thoughts might even be more violent, more angry, than the person who’s shouting – and you can prove that by reading the words on the two bits of paper!
What are words? Words are expressions of concepts. Concepts are thoughts. That’s it. So it proves anger is conceptual. Anger is conceptual: “How dare you do that to me! Who do you think you are! I do not deserve it!” They are thoughts. And then they come out of the mouth as speech – speech is a manifestation of thoughts! They are concepts. That’s the grossest level of mental consciousness, and that’s the level we live at. It’s very easy to see this.
As I said, the trouble is we only notice these kinds of thoughts when the body is shaking – and that’s way, way too late! We don’t pay attention to the thoughts and feelings and emotions beneath that drive the physical, that drive the words, you know, we don’t even pay attention.
We don’t even think of them as thoughts: we think that kind of diminishes it – we call them feelings. No, they’re thoughts, and then they’ve got emotion packed on top, absolutely.
We’ve got to hear our thoughts: our angry thoughts, our jealous thoughts, our depressed thoughts. And we’ve got to conjure and grow loving thoughts, kind thoughts, compassionate thoughts.
Basically Buddha’s a cognitive therapist. Cognitive behavioral therapy is all about this: hearing the thoughts and then changing them. We, of course, think we invented it in the West, you know, but Mr. Buddha’s been on about this for a couple of thousand years.
Even most Buddhists don’t think this way. We’re all about watching the mind, watching the breath, watching, becoming mindful – which is perfect, we must do this. “Oh, I am being angry.” And then what? “I don’t know,” we’ll say. “What do I do?” Somehow we don’t know what to do, or we don’t think there is anything to do. That’s nihilism!
Well, what if you had the thought “One plus one is three”? First you’d have to notice you’ve got it, wouldn’t you? And then ask, “Is that a valid thought or a not valid thought?”
Once you recognize it’s not valid, what would you do with it? Chuck it, right? And then you’d change it to the valid thought, wouldn’t you? Same here when it comes to an angry thought – of course, slowly, slowly: it takes time to stop believing in the angry thought.
We’ve got to hear the thoughts. And this is the point about these thoughts, these emotions: we’re only in touch with the tip of the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg of our emotions, because we don’t pay attention until we’re shaking. But they go to levels of incredible subtlety, and we’ve been doing this since we’re born – and in countless past lives.
That’s why some people who are very sweet, kind people, they suppress their negative emotions, and then they have mental breakdowns when they’re 57 or whatever, you know, and we call it APDD or whichever one of those it is, you know, TPSD, whatever one I’m saying – I’m being sarcastic. People who are angry like me, I didn’t suppress, so at least I can hear them.
That’s why we need to have very powerful meditation and concentration, so we can hear our mind at these subtler levels, so we can then unpack and unravel the thoughts. Until we’ve realized emptiness, we’re going to unpack and unravel levels and levels and levels and levels of subtlety of all these neurotic states of mind, until eventually they’re gone. That’s the job of being a Buddhist!
Are we communicating now?