Something Bigger: The Container

There can be times when there is wisdom in our minds, when we will have wise emotion and times when we have no wisdom in our minds, when we have unwise emotion; the same with thought. When there is wisdom in our minds, then we will have wise thoughts. When there is no wisdom in our mind, then we will have unwise thoughts as a result.

These are all results of the perceptual process, which is the thing that we tend not to see, the thing that we are blind to, the thing that comes before everything else.

It’s the way we see things that forms our thoughts and emotions. And this is true moment by moment. If we can get in touch with this perceptual process, the knowingness of the mind, and become aware of how we see things, then all this becomes clear. Seeing how “oh, yes we’re seeing in a certain way today”. And we can be seeing in a certain way because we have certain thoughts and feelings; it can then go the other way also.

It’s all cause and effect; it’s a spin that we find ourselves in. It’s a kind of chain: the chain of saṃsāra if this is all connected up with greed, hatred and delusion. But this is the chain of enlightenment just the same if it is not caught up with greed, hatred and delusion.

So we don’t expect the great masters not to think or not to have thoughts. Their minds will naturally be emptier of this kind of automatic pilot, but they are still able to think, and they still have feelings. All be it for different reasons, they have a different set of feelings according to their different set of values, their spiritual values.

And also for the spiritual practitioner then, over time, we realize that there is something bigger than both of these – the container. Bigger than both thought and emotion, it contains both thought and emotion. Something bigger and something more stable.

We begin to see these things as things that arise and cease within the bigger frame.

This reflection by Ajahn Kalyāno is from the book, The Thread, (pdf) p. 33.