Once we start the job of working on our mind it becomes quite intense. We know we’ve got lots of emotions – anxiety and love and kindness and jealousy and the rest – but we only notice them when we feel them physically. All the thoughts that underpin these emotions are there already, deeper down, all rumbling along, but we don’t notice because we don’t look.
Concentration meditation is the skill that Buddha gives us to notice what is happening in the mind before it comes to the surface as emotion. That’s the essence of it.
When we start to do this job, the first thing is we all think we’re getting worse. This is a very interesting point. Pabongka Rinpoche mentions in the lamrim that when you start to learn to develop single-pointed concentration, which is described in the texts in terms of nine stages of cultivation – this meditation technique developed by the Hindus more than three thousand years ago, which is an essential technique in the Buddhist tradition; when you start to learn to focus the mind, to concentrate the mind, one of the signs of success at the first of the nine stages is that you think your mind is getting worse.
But he says it’s not getting worse; it’s just that now we are beginning to see our crazy minds! We are now noticing what’s already been there all the time.
When we start to pay attention, we can’t help but notice, and, of course, what happens then is we think, “Oh my God, my mind! I can’t believe how much anger I’ve got. It never stops. I’m getting worse.” And then we have a panic attack.
The fact is, from the first second of conception in our mother’s womb we come fully programmed with our past habits, past tendencies, past karmic imprints; it’s virtually instinctive. We call it “unconscious” or “subconscious.” If we think of the subconscious as coming from just this rebirth, can you imagine how much subconscious there is if you’ve come from countless past lives? Wow! That’s a lot of subconscious! And what comes out in dreams is not just from this life either.
So there’s masses of stuff deep down in our mind. We only see the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg because we live at the grossest level of our capacity for cognition: conceptuality (not even mentioning the sensory).
When we start to pay attention to this cognitive process – we begin where we are, at the grosser level – and we start to dig deep, inevitably we become aware of all the junk.
So we need to learn to dig deep, to unpack and unravel this mind of ours in order to eventually discover the marvelous potential Buddha says we have.
So don’t be scared of your mind. There’s so much junk in it, so many ancient lifetimes of old ancient habits. We have to put our mind in the washing machine, let the dirt come out. You’re happy when you see all the dirty water! You don’t have a panic attack. You’re glad the dirt is coming out.
We need to develop this view. But it’s hard because we feel like we’re naughty girls, you know?
One of our friends who’s been doing meditation retreats – thirty, forty years, in serious three-year, four-year retreats – at some point he was out of his brain with rage and arrogance; he thought he was going nuts. He was really distressed and went to see Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and Rinpoche laughed and laughed, and said, “Fantastic! The dirt has to come out. The dirt has to come out.”
We’ve got to understand this, but it demands intelligence because otherwise we feel guilty and think we’re naughty girls, or we try to suffocate it, and we just increase the drama; that’s no help at all.
So don’t be scared of your mind. We have these naive ideas of spiritual practice: “Oh, when you start to meditate you get better. Oh, I feel so lovely.” It’s just so naive, you know? It’s like thinking that when you go to the gym the first time, when you’re twenty pounds overweight, that you’ll come back looking divine. What a joke – you come back feeling worse! We know this. But we know we’re not getting worse; now you’re noticing those muscles you didn’t even think about before.
We have to be courageous in this job. I’m really serious. This idea that spiritual practice makes you feel more loving and kind – eventually, yes, it will. Eventually going to the gym will make you healthy and look divine with your muscle tone – but give it time please.
The dirt’s got to come out. I can’t stress this enough.