Extract :
MIND TRAINING
Mental cultivation, or mind training, is the essence of the Buddhist path of practice. All the meditative techniques and various other disciplines of body, speech, and mind are all forms of mental cultivation. We should, however, be clear about what is meant by mind training and mind cultivation. We are not talking about manipulating our everyday experiences of consciousness in some purposeful fashion. In a way, we are trying to bypass that mind and access a state of consciousness that is undeluded precisely because there is a sense of perspicacity or clarity within it already. According to Buddhist thinking, such deliberate maneuvers would still stem from everyday consciousness that is not all that conscious, due to the delusions that we constantly carry around and reinforce, producing diminished awareness and a dull, incapacitated mind.
There is another way. of being ourselves. We are not at all familiar with this other way in our normal states of consciousness, because we perceive and experience things from a limited, myopic, egotistic perspective. In fact, this is the only way the deluded consciousness will ever be able to perceive things. Through mental cultivation, we can rise above deluded, egotistic perception. This is the attainment of wisdom consciousness, a level of consciousness that is literally lit up or illuminated so that our ability to perceive things increases exponentially.
Mind training develops wisdom consciousness and allows us to gradually extricate our being from the influence of our ordinary deluded consciousness, which is so habituated that it can only bring more misery and pain to ourselves and others. As such, mind cultivation is the very essence of Buddhist spiritual practice. There is no separation between the two. Buddhist spirituality would not exist if it were not for the cultivation of the mind. Part of this training includes inculcating the correct view.
As we train our mind, the influence of our deluded consciousness gradually decreases, and as a result the greater powers of our wisdom consciousness begin to develop. Eventually the ordinary deluded consciousness ceases to operate completely, leaving only the undeluded wisdom consciousness.
Hence a buddha’s mind is completely different from our own mind. This seenis obvious in some ways, but it is not generally well understood in the West because we try to psychologize spiritual realities. It is important to resist that temptation. We can still appreciate the importance of psychological techniques and psychotherapies, but we should not confuse them with the Buddhist view of mind and mind training. They are quite different and distinct conceptions of mind.
It is extremely important to understand that in the Buddhist view there has to be a complete transformation in our individual mental continuum. In the West, many people say that Buddhist practice involves nothing more than simply being aware; if you can stay in the present moment you will be less likely to be overwhelmed by negative states of mind. They equate this lack of disturbance with enlightenment and claim there is no difference between a mind that is aware and a mind that is enlightened. That is not entirely true. Of course, we have to start with a state of awareness in terms of our psychological states, but true awareness stems from the wisdom consciousness, not from the deluded state of mind. Simply training your ordinary deluded consciousness to be aware and in the present will not lead to liberation so easily If that were the case, every professional athlete would be enlightened by now, because they have to focus and be in the present; their livelihood depends upon it. The distinction between these two different types of awareness—the psychological and the spiritual—is exceptionally important from a spir— itual point of view. Psychological awareness is still a deluded state and should never be confused with wisdom consciousness.
Spiritual realization occurs over an extended period of time. There can be no quick transition from deluded states of mind to wisdom conscious— ness.We must learn gradually to operate from the level of the wisdom mind through methods of cultivation and endeavor to extricate ourselves from delusory, habituated states of consciousness. This is regarded as an option in Buddhist spiritual practice, for it is firmly believed that we are not and never can be free in our normal states of consciousness.
Ordinarily, even when we think we are making choices about our lives, we are not choosing in any genuine sense. It is more the case that we are following our habitual tendencies and deluded understandings. We will never be free as long as our habits are continuously reinforced, and according to Buddhist teachings, this karmic reinforcement is going on twenty-four hours a day. Every experience leaves an imprint on our consciousness, which contributes to the many distorted ways in which we perceive the world. Whatever we perceive, we perceive according to the structured functioning of the mind. As we have seen, this is a mistaken structure formed of distorted thoughts and conflicting emotions. The sorts of things we think about and the sorts of emotions we experience all go toward perpetuating delusory states of mind. We have to understand that our perception of normal consciousness is illusory, predicated on and animated by distorted views and emotional turbulence. This is the state of samsaric bondage described in the teachings, and this is what we need to extricate ourselves from.
If we are honest with ourselves, we know from our own experience that the more we try to find solutions to our problems through thinking about them, the more we start going around in circles, sometimes interminably Buddhism counsels us to resist being abused by our conflicting emotions and to let go of excessive thinking. Emotions can be expressed in an unhealthy, self-destructive manner or in a healthy and constructive fashion. Similarly, we can think in. a self—destructive, confused way, which reinforces our negative habits, or we can think in a constructive way. Buddhism emphasizes that overindulgence in conflicting emotions and distorted forms of thinking only reinforces our old habits, which solidifies our karmic tendencies even further.
This is not to say that we are trying to eradicate our feelings and emotions altogether. It is not the emotions or the feelings themselves that contribute to our spiritual ignorance. Many people have a notion of the spiritual state as something extremely rarefied and lofty because we have left behind all our normal mental states and attained some pure state of consciousness. According to Buddhism, this is not true. Once ignorance has been purified, all the capacities and functionings of normal consciousness are in fact enhanced. None of the features of our functioning consciousness need be renounced. We simply have to train our minds to renounce the ignorance that is behind our deluded states of mind. |
