The instruction is to notice the mental chatter – not to stop it. So when you are reading, you just notice the way you voice the words to yourself (or not) and continue noticing what happens at other times too… Continue reading Do we have to get rid of all our mental chatter?
Sane people think – rational people think. So why do you say we have to abandon rational thinking? I would say we need to abandon clinging to views, opinions and intellectual conclusions when opening to the true nature of reality… Continue reading Do we have to abandon rational thinking? A conversation about thinking, intuition and faith
As long as we are noticing we are practising. Don’t then think ‘I’m a bad person’ – to notice is a positive thing – commit to just notice without doing something. We don’t have to change then and there. Continue reading Why Noticing is Enough
When we talk about meditation in terms of letting go of thoughts, it can seem as if it is a matter of setting oneself up as an observer of one’s mind and to root out thinking. This is a misunderstanding of the whole process. Setting up a watcher in this way perpetuates our false sense of what we are and what our experience is. The observer might well be well intentioned, but the problem is that it is heavy-handed and believes too much in itself. Continue reading Meditation: Recognising ‘the watcher’ as thinking too
Lama Shenpen answers a question on meditation from a teaching given in 2014. What’s really going on when we feel our meditation isn’t working? Is it really ‘not working’? How should we reflect on this, what insight might we be missing? Continue reading Video: What’s really going on when we feel our meditation isn’t working?
“The tendency is to think ‘I shouldn’t be thinking, I should be staying with the breath…” In a teaching from 2014 Lama Shenpen points out how to work with our thoughts during meditation and why thoughts aren’t a problem. Continue reading Video: Working with thoughts in meditation
Just be very simple about it. There is a thought that thinks ‘let it go’ and there is the intuitive sense that this means something and an intuitive response that lets you do it. That is simply responsiveness and well-being, a sense of what would feel ‘right’. Somehow when you get the right touch it is not really thinking…In itself thinking is not a problem, but it bends back on itself and gets into knots. Continue reading When can thoughts be helpful in meditation? How can we learn to trust them?
Just wake up and look. Where are they? What are they? Who told them to come? Who told them to go? Just look straight at them – how long do they last? How many of them are there? What is the sound of their voices? This kind of direct looking is what meditation at its best is. Continue reading A Student’s Question: How can we work with judgemental voices during meditation?
