Share your "Suppressing the thinking mind" techniques

[allinone]

Think about emptiness and everything dies. Or have you ever finished something you have started?think about that where everything is done. At least when i do it i end up in no-thoughts.

[allinone]

Great answers, my advice

 

Chew on them a little - read them again

 

Basically learn to "listen"

 

Listening goes very deep, from listening to yourself, your body, energy, the outer (natural world) and listening to good advice all the way to deep meditative states.

 

I feel when a human starts to understand what it means to really listen and pay attention - what happens is something remarkable:

 

suddenly there is infinite potential to learn and grow

 

Boredom dies, ceaseless internal chatter gets less, the dancing colours of the outer world get brighter and more alive - the whole of manifestation is suddenly so alive that mind sometimes just stops in awe

 

Oh and relationships become healthy too

 

Just from learning the art of listening

 

You can meditate to escape, suppress, bypass - you can play with your thanatos drive like that , refine it till you stop breathing and fall over - no thoughts, no breath, no life... sure thing. Very male (intellectual) approach if I may say so

 

Mind is a two sided sword - can cut many thing all thing but itself

 

Its useful - but in our culture many times mind is overactive and not under the control of ethics and a genuine life pat

 

the things cease at first very easy but they rise again so when they rise then you are on a different point so these thoughts, feelings, insights are different. The gap between ceasing and rising again is really fast/or it hides well. So it takes a while to notice it and its no fun or easy, its a struggle.

Edited March 13, 2016 by allinone

[allinone]

Recognize mind has never once had a thought that wasn't your own choice already. 

 

Mindfully choose compassionate thoughts that are a pleasure to experience and the urge to silence thought passes.  

 

With no urges, the need to cling to some thought passes with it. 

 

Unlimited Love,

-Bud

 

You think we have a choice, yes when i have a house i have choice to enter it either from a backside or front or through a window or blow a hole into a wall if i have bombs with me.

[Sebastian]

I have a younger relative who, as a little kid, loved to sing this song:

 

This is the song that gets on everybody's nerves,

This is the song that gets on everybody's nerves,

This is the song that gets on everybody's nerves,

And this is how it goes:

This is the song that gets on everybody's nerves,

This is the song that gets on everybody's nerves...

 

You get the idea.

 

Screaming "shut up!" just encouraged him. Making a big deal about how you were actively ignoring him just encouraged him. Leaving the room didn't work because he'd just follow you.

 

I learned that passively observing him for a minute or two took all the fun out of it and he would either stop or go try to get a reaction from someone else.

 

Before long, he grew out of it.

 

Quoted for Truth... and for the win ?

 

This is very good - it this hits the thread title on the head without hitting it. Another metaphor is getting bullied - When you strongly resist what's happening to you and completely give power to others over you, they will keep exploiting you.

 

What happens if you turn your mindset 180 degrees... ?

 

If you show total indifference they will realize they have no power whatsoever over you, and then they will go bug someone else. Because It's really not fun to bully someone that doesn't react or doesn't care.

 

So the word "indifference" is very close, yet still a little bit too far. "Neutral" is closer because it implies slightly more attentiveness.

 

So perhaps.....Staying neutral and indifferent to thoughts, yet sincere. The latter means not to deceive yourself basically.....

 

Or "flatten and round the mind" as was shared recently in the practice logs by TheTaoIsEasy.

[allinone]

Specially who talk about loving kindness, hugging, compassion etc are hard to resist not to bully them, they are like asking it themselves. Because it looks fake if you are not that what you preach or doing.

[Sebastian]

Well you do it without preaching.... You do nothing basically. If you preach these things to those bullying you, then, yes, I think they could bully you more.

 

I was bullied through high school. For me this change of approach was the turning point. I gave others no power over me. No matter how cruel people are to you or much they dis-respect you, Life cannot take anything from you without your consent. You can choose to be undisturbed, shrug it off you could say.

 

Folks will realize they have no power over you and loose interest. I also confirmed this in multiple work situations when I was working as a project manager.

 

Some folks were pushing me, trying to see if I would snap at them or loose my cool.  Not being affected by it and just doing the task at hand gained their respect. Sometimes it was hard earned, sometimes it wasn't, it made no difference to me. I viewed at their problem, not mine. Sometimes those who were the toughest to me at first became my closest allies.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Sebastian

[silent thunder]

"... round the mind."  I really like that and it reminds me of something I want to share...

 

I work with some awesome, creative, intelligent and often, very wise people.  I'm fortunate and very grateful for that...  here is how a seemingly 'normal' moment at work, turned into a very helpful practice for me that I use in interrupting the emotional triggers that cause me to go into repetitive and useless drama loops that I'm so tired of in my life.

 

A coworker and buddy of mine Scott, who exudes all of the attributes I listed above, has a particular pet peeve and tends to get worked up and pissed off when we are working on set, he goes to his hand crafted, old school, wooden toolbox to get something to finish a task, only to find someone has thoughtlessly/lazily dumped stuff/trash on it.  It's an annoying habit that many people have developed on tv and film sets.  "I'll just set this here, as I pass by..." anyway, here's where he embodies the awesome, creative, intelligent and wise parts I was alluding to...

 

One day, rather than revel in resentment, or rant in anger at the garbage and carelessly left bullshit on his box, he comes over to me and says "I should make a dome that sits on top of my box.."  Then he goes into his baritone super villain voice and strikes a world crushing pose and at the top of his lungs screams out... " Bam Bitches!  Set something on that!", and he laughs and stomps away, like a super villain crushing a city underfoot. 

 

Problem solved.  I laughed, did my own stationary, arm pumping imitation of his stomp of victory and then after saying, 'that is a good freaking idea mate!', went on with my day and seemingly 'forgot about it'. 

 

However, the idea took root in me and sprouted in a very spontaneously unexpected and wonderfully effective manner. 

 

I found this dome, coming to me unbidden during emotional triggers, during shenpa moments and everyday encounters when those people who carelessly try and set their projected garbage on me; cut me off in traffic, or settle their random careless impressions and opinions on me.  This dome appears quickly in my mind and along with the image and association of my buddy Scott, the trigger slips passed without engaging me.

 

It happened spontaneously, someone cut me off on the freeway and I started to get pissy and begin my usual internal monologue/drama loop of ' The Uncaring And Lame Assholes Who Make The World Lame With Their Lame-Ass Lack Of Thought For Other People' rant, the exact same rant that I so often, mindlessly go back to... that tired old loop that I have memorized and performed countless times, the rant that leads to the exact same solution-less emotional conclusion of solution-less emotional spewing... only this time, just as I was about to get all wound up in it... the image of a white glowing dome flashed in my mind and I smiled instead.  

 

I thought of Scott's tool box with a cup of coffee sliding off of it, splashing onto the floor, followed by Scott's face saying, "Bam Bitches!" and his awesome super villain stomp of victory...  The moment passed, the emotional trigger slid along with it, utterly abolished by the potent image and I was left, smiling to myself thinking... "Yea!  Bam Bitches!  Set your shit on that!".  It was awesome!

 

So I've now planned out how I'm going to make him a hand made, wooden dome lid that will match his box and give it to him at the end of the show to say thanks.  A gift inspired by my gratitude for how he has helped me by helping himself not wallow in anger for just one moment... to turn what could have been a mindlessly easy rant of justified anger, into a moment of humor and creative love and in the process, seems to have given me so much more.

 

We are interconnected in so many ways...  life is fucking awesome.

 

 

 

[Taomeow]

minds are like puppies and should be trained for similar reasons...?

lest they bark incessantly and shit everywhere

 

Some minds are like cats though... they only need to be provided with a litter box and they don't need to be trained at all -- they just know what to do.

 

The simplest yet very efficient technique I know...  well, OK, if we go with animal metaphors, it matters what kind of animal you choose as metaphor for your mind...  if you think of it (or it thinks of itself, or picks it up from the environment, whichever you prefer) as a "monkey in a cage," it will most obediently behave like a restless monkey.  If you think of it as a puppy in need of training...  it will chew up your mental furniture and demand constant attention and yelp at every noise.  So....  with this in mind,

 

try thinking of your mind as a cat and your thoughts as mice.  Is the cat afraid of mice?  No.  Are mice afraid of the cat?  They better be.  I put my mind by the mouse hole whence thoughts-mice might emerge, and she waits for them -- patiently, with unwavering focus.  Come, mice, come!  I need a snack!  A mouse-thought shows up from the hole, the mind pounces on it instantly, and the thought-mouse either runs away, disappears back into the hole, or gets devoured.  The cat does not lose focus.  She waits for the next mouse.  ALL the mice know now that the cat is watching and never loses focus and waits for them!  Fewer and fewer dare emerge from the mouse hole.  Until there's none.

 

I think a very common mistake of the beginner who wants to quiet her mind is to assume some sort of position of opposition to her own thoughts.  They are intruders, they are not wanted and yet they come, "they are not mine" and so on.  This makes matters more difficult since you effectively split into the "good you" who successfully avoids thoughts vs the "bad non-me" who you are trying to bargain with, suppress, ignore, disown, kick out, silence, train, you name it.  The conflict keeps matters interesting in your mind -- and keeps it occupied with them.

 

Whereas the cat-mind watching for mice-thoughts is not concerned in the least that mice are "intrusive" or "not mine" or "not me."  All she cares about is catching them and eating them.  She wants them to come.  But she wants them to come only because she wants to eat them, no other relationship is being created between the cat-mind and the mice-thoughts.  THIS attitude scares the thoughts away better than any other. 

 

...and it helps if you have ever seen the unwavering focus of the actual cat at the actual mouse hole, as I have.  Nothing compares.  The cat never wanders, never gets distracted -- never.  And the mouse dares not emerge -- or else gets pounced on immediately.

[blue eyed snake]

We are interconnected in so many ways...  life is fucking awesome.

 

[silent thunder]

I nearly spit my coffee all over my wife's laptop when I read that cat analogy!  Pure brilliance... litterbox, omg, scooping, sifting... sometimes the residual and lingering scents.  It's brilliant.  I often rake patterns in our litterbox when I finish attending it... lmao, the zen scoopy box...

 

 

Some time ago Hawk Medicine was brought to me and as medicine often is, it was when I was quiet and not seeking anything.  It was a crystalline and palpable experience/awareness shift of being a hawk in flight and having no feet.  Pure flight and action/reaction to the wind.  Pure being.  Free.  And until the moment of the landing (or the strike), the feet were simply not part of my process.

 

I sifted it into this poem:

 

like hawk's feet in flight
folded, closed and forgotten
until the landing

 

This is the direction I'm moving in having a relationship with my mind, treating it like hawk's feet. 

When conditions require attention, they attend to the process with deft flexibility and adroit precision.

Yet when I take flight (in the moment, clarity of being), they veritably disappear, utterly tucked away and forgotten, or maybe not forgotten, but outside of the process of flight, the simple act of flight/being.  Unnecessary and not to return unbidden.

 

I really love that in our language, the word light is contained in flight.

 

Hawk Medicine.  She's been circling my heart from my earliest memories. 

 

Another stunning thread.  By the Gods... this place.  Such treasure.

[MooNiNite]

Is a technique needed?

 

SImply sitting and experiencing..

 

Anyways I would go with Bhodidharma technique. 

[silent thunder]

I think Taomeow put it well... perhaps for some no technique is required, just the litterbox... in the end game, I sense that release and not effort is the ultimate way to diminish mind.  Any grasping or trying is, counter to the goal.  Even a goal is counter.  Just be.  Release.

 

But for years, to get to the simple point where I could let my feet go, so to speak, in my specific case, yes, training and intention were both absolutely necessary and instrumental to break the inertia and diminish the obsessive and parasitic process of mind.

 

Somewhere in my travels I came across a great quote on this topic... loosely paraphrased it is:

Where sensory information is available, it will tend to dominate awareness. 

 

For me, to break that obsessive dominance of awareness, technique and intention were instrumental.

[Taomeow]

Thank you, Silent Thunder.

 

And from one hawk medicine recipient to another, greetings!  I have had a connection with this magnificent teacher for the longest time too.  Real life, one or two show up for my taiji practice on a regular basis...  I don't take it as a compliment, rather the opposite...  they scream at me too...  I know what it's about. 

[silent thunder]

*deep bow of respect*

[Taomeow]

*Reciprocated.*

[Sebastian]

If you're going to do this, remember to maintain vigilance at all times....

 

[Taomeow]

I agree, Sebastian.

[Jonesboy]

One technique that really helped me was called Samyama. Now like others have mentioned it is not about suppressing a thought. This is more about working with the beginning of the thought and letting it go into silence.

 

Samyama is a practice that is done after meditation while still sitting and will add another 5 minutes to your practice.

 

You have a list of sutras that you work with.

 

Take the word "love".

 

At first we think the word and let it go.

 

Then as you are able to let it go even more you start to notice the word love repeating over and over.

 

Next one notices the energetic quality of the vibration of the word.

 

Here you are noticing the waves of energy of the sutra. Not so much the word but the waves of energy the thought creates.

 

Next you get to the point of raising the energy of the thought and letting it go without a ripple.

 

This is the feeling of the sutra. It is energy and learning to let go into silence at the very beginning of its creation as one can imagine can be freeing.

 

This translates into daily life as being able to at the beginning of an negative emotion or thought being able to just let it go into silence.

 

You are beginning to realize that thoughts are energy, that emotions are energy.

 

http://livingunbound.net/lessons-resources/level-1/techniques/samyama/

 

 

Working with emotions as energy is a very powerful practice as well. Learning to integrate that energy also allows one to stay present in the moment. This is another method of helping to silence the mind while in daily life.

 

I work in a cubicle and besides taking time and working with deep issues I would do this everytime I got up and walked around or talked to anyone. One aspect of this is to walk around with an open heart. Just be open to everyone around you. It is amazing the feeling one can get from such a thing.

 

Here is a link to the technique of Working with Emotions. It is long but well worth the read.

 

http://community.livingunbound.net/index.php?/topic/472-working-with-emotions/#comment-3445

 

Hope this helps,

 

Tom

Edited March 15, 2016 by Jonesboy

[steve]

Serendipity...

[RigdzinTrinley]

I'll just share some strange vajrayanist insight to this discussion:

 

it's connected with Ju Mipham Rinpoches well... Masterwork, if you can say something like this about a buddhist shastra, called "beacon of certainty" (I called for a long time the bacon of certainty, till a native english speaker kindly helped me overcome that speech impediment)

 

it regards topic number six of this treatise and is not a technique per se, more an insight, something to ponder

 

topic six is called "what is the common basis of perception for different beings" - if you want it westernized, it means something like "Why don't we all see the same flower?" or... do we?

 

it has alot to do with mind, dualistic mind, because thats what is doing and organizing the perceptions of the non conceptual sense organs

 

bare with me

 

so in short mipham askes and asweres following question: If a glass of water is perceived differently by different beings, then what is actually there and serves as a basis of our perceptions??

 

so some buddhist cosmology is important to swollow, but at the same time its about emptiness and as I said before its simply a matter of answering the question "why don't we all see the same flower? or do we?" in more psychological terms "why is talking with humas so fucking difficult sometimes? well lack of skill and different Point of View... whats this different point of view about?"

 

so I see a glass of water, a deva sees a glass of amrita, a naga sees a home, a hell being sees molten iron, a preta sees blood and pus

 

what is acutally there? whats the basis of perception?

 

short answer: essentially nothing is there, no substance on the ultimate level - relatively speaking based on karmic patterns and karmic vision a human sees water (shared vision of human beings) while a deva sees amrita (shared, conventional vision of devas)

 

whats the implication of this on the relative level of human interaction?

 

the example that came to my mind: I have green colored glasses on, someone else has blue colored glasses on, we both look at the same white conch shell and argue about its color = will lead to alot of confusion for sure - whose perception is valid and true?

 

usually this leads to alot of arguments on many levels - why because we can't take off those glasses, taking of the glasses is being pretty enlightened I would say. not just as a wish or as "sure I took of those glasses long ago" - lived experience that manifests also in the way we interact with others... empathy, love, compassion etc. not so easy not sooo easy also for the so called dzogchen yogis out there

 

those glasses are how we learned to interpret sense data with our dualistic mind, how we learned to interpret words of others etc. the way we do this is our karmic style (neurosis) from a long time ago, not just childhood and trauma and schooling etc...

 

Mipham makes another interesting conclusion on the relative level about this: based on the purity of vision the perceptions become more valid on the relative level

 

so a hell being perceiving molton iron, perceives validly in the context of being a hell being and the shared vision of those beings - but is invalid when compared to perceiving it as water, which is a more purified vision with much less suffering (we can relate that also on our human level where certain people like to stone woman for odd reasons - that seem horrific in my understanding and toally normal from their POV. I would suggest that no need for being culturally/politically correct here, there is a higher vision and understanding of the feminin in the west and in other asian cultures and that vision is more valid in relation to those peoples perception and interpretation of the feminin)

 

so ther eis essentially no substance and no way to know for sure what we see and taste and smell, its finally ungraspeable - yet relatively speaking there is a deeping of understanding of what we perceive

 

so pure vision and karmic vision are different as well

 

karmic vision or the vision of the 6types of beings: hell beings, pretas, animals, humans, asuras and devas is impure or limited when compared ti pure or enlightened vision

 

that sees insubstantial pure deities instead of "things" -> I guess on that level thoughts are not a problem anymore because there is so much enjoyment of things as they really are: appearing divine and sacred, made of immaterial light that why bother to figure it out with thought or label and name them??? nice to life without those colored glasses I imagine

Edited March 29, 2016 by RigdzinTrinley

[THACS]

Should find the book titled:  Patients has keen Insight, written by Everyone.  It's not the destination, it's the journey.  This book is very special for many reasons.  It takes a single choice to read it, from that choice you are set on a path.  This path is automatic, in time people have/will experience a state.

They go to bed, when they wake, they are not thinking about what they did before and what they have to do that day, they feel peaceful, they feel the silence, they are in the moment.  Then things through the day seem if they are falling into place, in today's society it is difficult to maintain this "falling into place", but it's not needed.   After that they will become hypersensitive to life around them and people become transparent.  They find that inner peace and inner happiness from a single choice.

The book is written so that interpretation is not needed and it will be true till the end of time. And only takes about 45mins to read.

 

When the mule goes blind, keep loading the cart.

[WisteriaWinds]

Don't do a technique. Just stop the thinking and the attention will fall into the belly. Techniques are like someone tightly gripping a sgard of glass and trying to figure out techniques to get rid of it. Just let go.

 

As long as part of you is wondering what's going on "over there", you'll never shut up. The calm of your belly has to become the love of your life