So you have not rested. True rest means that the mind rests while the body is busy. Your body has become still, but your mind keeps struggling even more intensely. On the contrary, when you are doing things, your mind does not struggle; you are more concentrated. The moment you sit down on that cushion—nothing to do today, nothing to do for half a year—oh, the struggle starts, the anxiety starts. Anxiety, disappointment, struggle, emptiness, bewilderment—all of it comes out.
Because you are accustomed to samsara—accustomed to samsara—rolling and rolling like a wheel, carried by momentum; you cannot stop. Your feet stop, but your mind does not; your brain does not. Most importantly, it is your brain. Especially those of you who work with the internet: your brains run faster than light. To stop that brain is genuinely very difficult. The brain cannot stop; the mind just goes slack, indifferent to everything; the brain is that thinking consciousness.
It is very hard to stop. You do not know how difficult your state is; asking you to stop and cultivate the Way is truly too difficult. You only have a bare intention—you merely say, “I want to.” Your consciousness will not stop, especially if you often look at the internet. You are in an age of light, after all. This kind of light pollution simply gets in through your heads, and you go straight into that kind of network time and space of light. The volume of information is enormous; you simply cannot stop. So it is actually very tiring—you cannot recover even when you sleep. It is this brain. People who watch films, watch television, and are often online are heavily tainted.
So you must gradually keep practicing in this way, practicing and practicing, and then turn back around; when you sit, your mind becomes very clear and clean. Once you have even a little basis for awakening, you do not know it yourself; as soon as you sit, it is different, absolutely different. Do not think you have not changed. Once that feedback information comes back, you know you are different—you are completely different from them.
There is no hatred in your heart anymore; you no longer get angry. When you speak about someone else, do not bring emotion into it. This is the biggest problem for ordinary people. You speak about him because you dislike him; you are not speaking because you want to love him, help him, and say something about him.
If you are angry and then speak about him, whatever you say is useless. You are angry at me, and then you speak about me—what gives you the right? Anger comes first, speech afterward; that is useless. You cannot stand the sight of me, so you speak about me; then if you say east, I will deliberately go west. If you love me very much—if you truly want to help me—then speak; I will slowly, slowly listen.
You need to be cleansed. Our six sense faculties are tainted. Why do we have to be kept together in one place to be cleansed? In the mundane world, you cannot control the taint, because you make too many distinctions and your attachment is too heavy; that environment, that field, will affect you. In other words, in one place, you first need to be cleansed—it is really a kind of cleansing. Whether it is the sound stream, music, or the field, whatever it may be. Even with the cleansing, your brain still will not stop; it will remain a complete mess.
But once you have first been cleansed, your knowledge and vision of Buddhism will become clearer. You will also be clearer in what you do in the mundane world: your ear faculty is clean, and your eye faculty is clean too. Once you are clear, your view begins to become clear; once your view is clear, you know what you need to do, and your cultivation can begin.
Because once your view is clear, you know: “Wow, realizing Buddhahood is best.” Then you can discern. If your view is not clear, how would you know what is best to do? With three things before you, you will certainly choose this path, because your view is blurred and impure, and your six sense faculties are impure. There is taint, then blurriness; your perspective is blurred.
In whatever matter, if you are unclear, whichever path you choose, you will not be at ease, you know? Even in cultivation, you are uneasy; returning to the mundane world, uneasy; starting a career, still uneasy. You are uneasy whether you leave the world or enter it. If your eye faculty is clean and the Six Sense-Organs are purified, then whether in the mundane world or in leaving or entering it, you will use the knowledge and vision of the Buddha to keep perfecting yourself, again and again—and then you will be at ease.
(Do you have any inner stability now? When you go back out there, do you remain untainted?)
(A little, I suppose.)
You probably do. Your ear faculty is certainly much clearer than before. At the very least, when other people curse you, you cannot be bothered to react anymore—you cannot be bothered to react, you know? If you curse me and I react, would that not mean I had fallen for your trick? Your ear faculty should be much clearer.
It is hard for the eyes not to cling to appearances. The eye faculty is the hardest one, the last to be cleansed. The eyes are the most heavily tainted. They cling to the appearance of form, cling to all kinds of appearances. The ear faculty will become much clearer. The mind will become a little clearer, a little more concentrated; that is, your concentration will be a little better than before.
Then, regarding many, many things in the mundane world that used to be boring, you can have a little inner stability and stop doing them. You think, “Oh, forget it.” Then you lose interest. It is not that you do not want to do them; you simply have no interest, no meaning in them. You stop playing with many of the things you used to play with. This means you have grown up a little, more or less grown up. This is cultivation and realization; it is gradual growth.
But cultivation and realization do not necessarily grow slowly and year by year, the way we grow taller. Cultivation and realization may really be like this: you set out now, and perhaps one day you suddenly grow a great deal all at once. You suddenly awaken; truly, after three days apart, one looks at you with new eyes. Three days, sudden awakening, and you suddenly shoot up so high—you grow very quickly.
After a couple of days, you stagnate and get caught up in one thing, unable to get out. Once you become attached to it, you may struggle in it for two or three months, unable to let go. Once you let go, another thing suddenly springs up. When you cannot let go, it is torment; it is quite difficult.
But you should know that you have already gone through this torment many times. You have been tormented this way for many, many lifetimes—many, many, many lifetimes; there have been far more times when the suffering was worse than this. So, if you do not want to suffer later, you must hurry and attain enlightenment. To hurry and attain enlightenment, you must make a vow: the afflictions are inexhaustible, and the vow is to cut them off; vow to cut off everything in this world that causes you affliction. Cut it off: “When I attain enlightenment, I will pick it up again.” Take as much as you want; the whole world is yours.
Learn to Let the Mind Rest @2013-01-13
Note: This text was prepared from a teaching video by Yang Ning. If it differs from the video, the video takes precedence. Watch the video.
1 thought on “Learn to Let the Mind Rest”