Very Delicate and Precise Work

The work of looking into the mind, ferreting out the causes of suffering and figuring out how to put an end to them, is very delicate work, very precise work. Which is why you have to get the mind very still in order to do it.

It’s like threading a needle. You hold your breath, get the rest of the body still, and then you can very carefully stick the end of the thread into the eye of the needle.

But working with the mind requires more than just stillness. There has to be a sense of well- being as well, because in the course of looking into the causes of suffering you’re going to start seeing some things you don’t like to see. Different parts of the mind are working at cross- purposes. One desire for happiness may run up against another desire for happiness—which may not be especially open and aboveboard.

When you look at the mind, you see that there are many different selves in the mind, many different ideas of who-you-are, what-you-want, clamoring for your attention at any one time. They can pull you in all sorts of different directions. With some desires, you act on them, but you don’t feel very good about acting on them. So you tend to hide them. These are often the ones that cause suffering.

But some causes of suffering go deeper than that. After all, the Buddha said, suffering comes from the clinging-aggregates. And the clinging-aggregates are also what we create our sense of who-we-are out of. Our sense of “I am this” or “I am that” can be centered on form, feeling, perception, thought-constructs, or consciousness.

As soon as we slap the label of “I am this” or “I am that” onto something, we’re going to cling to it. And there you are: suffering. Suffering is bound up in how we define ourselves.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the talk, Battling Negativity, August 8, 2008, (pdf) p. 1.