Taming the Monkey Mind with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (filmed at KMSPKS Singapore)

the opening verses of the Dhammapada say that all Dharma's or phenomena are preceded by the mind the mind is chief mind made are they in other words everything depends on our mind if we are not conscious then it was as if nothing exists so therefore in Buddhism the primary the primary quest is to know our own mind because where do we live you think you live in Singapore well yeah on one level we really live in Singapore and then we think we live in our houses our apartments our rooms yes sometimes we live in our homes so we think we live in our body but during sleep we even leave our body but where can we never leave what do we take with us everywhere we take our mind if we are conscious then we are here but although we may take care great care of our homes our rooms our apartments we take great care of bodies what we eat medical care exercise but the real place that we live and we can never leave behind even in dreams is our own mind and yet how much attention do we give to cleansing and exercising and making beautiful the one place where we really live which is our own mind now first of all let me clarify in Buddhism when we talk about mind in sanskrit that is Cheeta in chinese it's in yes yes so it means not just the intellect it doesn't just mean the brain which is like the computer if it means the heart mind which is a much deeper level of our essential consciousness our essential awareness than merely the mechanism of our conceptual thinking mind which is located in the brain so when we talk about mind we're talking about the heart mind much deeper than just our intellectual thinking there are many levels of consciousness beyond the surface consciousness of our thinking if we think of the mind like an ocean then we could say that our ordinary conceptual thinking mind which is where we are normally living is the waves on the surface of the mind on the surface of the ocean with the undercurrents of our emotions but the depths of that ocean the depths of our consciousness normally we do not know anything about because we're living on the surface on the way so the Buddha 2,500 years ago said that the average mind is a monkey mind it doesn't mean those monkeys living in zoos now you're in Asia so you know what monkeys are like in India we have monkeys everywhere there are real pain and an ordinary monkey is not that kind of bored docile thing that one visits in zoos and the ordinary monkey in the wild is it's very active always jumping from branch to branch always picking them nip first fruit one bite throws it down next fruit most monkeys spend their times jumping around looking for food looking at if you know for the male's at least looking for sex and fighting each other occasionally they groom each other nicely but mostly they're very restless they're always agitated and they are never at peace and so the Buddha said the average mind is like a monkey that was then over 2,000 years ago what he would say now I don't know but he also did say that the average mind is like a drunken elephant and drunken elephants are very very destructive and out of control and so this is where we live all that all that action isn't just on the television that action is going on in our own minds that's where we are and this is why we have to if we want any genuine happiness and any genuine peace we have to this world monkey mind so fortunately one thing can be said for the buddhadharma is that the buddha didn't just say be peaceful be kind be patient he also gave methods he gave techniques for learning how to be more calm how to be more patient how to be more kind and loving and so this is very very useful for any of us just to learn how to be good human beings so we have this mind this mind which is like a mad drunken little monkey jumping and screaming and running all over the place what to do because we cannot leave the monkey behind the monkey is with us wherever we go wherever we travel so what to do well first thing is to tame the monkey we have to tame the monkey then train the monkey by training the monkey we get a transformed monkey and eventually we can transcend the monkey right so we have the forties we tame we train we transform and eventually we transcend okay but we cannot transcend if we haven't even started on step one which is to tame so how to tame the monkey traditionally people in Buddhist countries in Asia they regard any serious Dharma practice as the particular duty for monks sometimes nuns but mostly monks and laypeople Duty is simply to support the monks who are the professionals doing the job and so it's for 2,000 years more than two thousand two now a thousand years this was how it was in all of these countries that the main practitioners would be the monastics and the day people's main duty was to support the monastics in doing their professional Dharma work but in the last 50 years maybe things have changed a lot in the Buddhist world not only in the West but also in advanced Asian countries such as Singapore where the majority now of very sincere Dharma practitioners are lay people look at you we have three monastics here a Lama who is a wonderful Lama but he doesn't speak any English so he's going to sleep but he's here to support he told a lovely lovely woman and two eminent my Alamance that's it the rest of this audience only people this is the first time in Buddhist history that this has happened that the main people wanting to know how to practice are actually the laity now this has come about party because now you are all highly educated obviously you are english-speaking otherwise you would not be here but also you are all very educated many of you are professional people you have families you have social commitments you have your own professions which demand a lot of time and energy and yet you have enough interest in spiritual matters to take out this Saturday afternoon to come to listen to me which is amazing so therefore the question then is how can we use our daily life without renouncing family profession and so forth how can we transform our everyday life into a drama practice because this is very important even the most dedicated do not have much time for formal practice or for formal retreats traditionally you might think when you go to temples when we sit reading sutras when we are in the retreat situation then that is Dharma practice and the rest of our day with the family at work in our social life that is worldly activity and so we have this much Dharma this much worldly activity and then we wonder why nothing changes so clearly this is not so helpful what we need are certain ways of taking our ordinary daily life our family our friends our colleagues our work and so forth and those very situations transforming them into our practice so that's what we're going to talk about today so number one taming monkey mind I do think it is very helpful to have a daily formal practice if possible early in the morning when we get up then we can put aside a small amount of time for just dedicating ourselves to the practice that if whatever meditations any of you have learned do it different people have different meditations but all of them are valid do them even only 10 minutes 20 minutes half an hour however long we can give for it that is our time just to go inward and to at the same time commit ourselves to using this day to be of benefit to ourselves and to others today I will use my day for the benefit of others center your GPS write your energy PS benefiting others then whatever happens we can remember that this is what we are trying to do others doesn't just mean people out there you know sometimes in Buddhism we talk a lot about all sentient beings right all those little s bees out there all sentient beings right well thinking may all sentient beings be happy is very good it's very comfortable but you know what about the sentient being you know right next to you your family your colleagues yourself all the sentient beings means all and we shouldn't just think of them out there somewhere on the horizon but they're the people around us the people we meet the people we know best our partners our spouse our children our parents our neighbors the people we work with these are all sentient beings and all sentient beings wish for happiness right keep that in mind so we get up in the morning and if possible we sit and we try to bring to our mind into our body and whatever is your particular practice as I say that time that is the time to do it when the mind is still fairly fresh before the rest of the day takes over just to be with ourselves and to sit with our practice even if it's very short it's better to do a short practice constantly then just once a week to do just one long practice and the rest of the week to forget it no so even if we can only give it 10 minutes 10 minutes every day is more precious than two hours on Sunday do you understand it's the continuity which builds up so we sit and we practice whatever is our particular technique of meditation and we commit ourselves to using this day for the benefit of others and that we will try our best to bring kindness into our interrelationship with others all genuine meditation is based on cultivating a quality of mind which is called awareness it also can be called mindfulness attention consciousness it's that ability of the mind the first step first step is the ability of the mind to observe to observe without comment this is a very very important quality in Buddhism the ability to be aware to know without having to evaluate or judge just knowing and because this is such an important quality for us to learn how to cultivate how to develop this is the way to take the monkey and then to train it in Buddhism we usually start in open schools with the press now many many of you here I'm sure know the meditation on the press as it is taught in various Buddhist schools but the the point the reason why the breath is useful first of all is because we are always breathing and normally when we are breathing we are not aware that we are breathing we it's one of those automatic functions of the body which we don't give any thought to we just breathe but we can know the breath if we want to so if I ask you all to stop breathing new we can all hold our breath right we can't stop the heart beating we can't stop the liver functions or the stomach from digesting food but we can stop our breath for a limited amount of time if asked to do so so there is a connection between our consciousness and the breathing at the same time we cannot breathe in the past or in the future we only breathe now so if our awareness knows the breath as it goes in and it goes out then moment we are present now it's very hard for our leader correct mind the mind ruled by this smooth self to stay present if we get to understand our mind we recognize how much our mind is caught up in the past in memories comparisons and just thinking back to what happened before 50 years before 20 years before yesterday 5 minutes ago all put up in the future with our plans our fantasies our dreams our ideas of what will happen next our fears of what will happen next but the one place that the mind has a really hard time to stay is now to stay in the present it's very hard from the mind we don't recognize how difficult it is to actually be present with what is happening right here right now without commenting without discussing it in our heads so therefore it is very simple meditation on the breath is a very skillful way to bring the mind into the present and at the same time to develop this important quality of awareness awareness means knowing normally we don't know what's going on because we are too busy talking to ourselves we are chattering away to ourselves or and we miss what is actually happening for example we are all sitting here but how many of us are aware that we are sitting experiencing the feel of sitting unless we are uncomfortable normally once we are sitting then our minds gone off in all directions but it's not where we are so it's very important to develop the ability to be present to be centered so we learn how to observe how to witness and first we observe the breath so we are just going to sit for five minutes and do this it's very simple the most important thing is that you keep your feet on the ground if you can if your feet are too small then never mind if you're at home then you can put a cushion under your feet and keep the back straight but not tense the hands can either be here or on our knees resting gently just keep the neck feeling slightly down but not feeling relaxed the most important thing two important things first to be focused and to be relaxed don't make the mind tight keep the minds out here isn't it wonderful you have nothing to do except sit breathe I know that one is breathing that's it nothing right so please just breathe normally the attention should especially be on the out-breath and then a slight pause and then the in-breath just naturally coming in and then again the out-breath just knowing it that's all and if after a short time you get bored and the mind gets carried away with thinking again just notice bring it back to the breath what we are trying to do the breath is not being really important thing so maybe only 30 percent of our attention is to the breath and the majority of the attention is to the fact of being aware be aware of being aware do you understand because this is a practice in learning how to develop this quality of being mindful of being conscious and aware so that is what we are interested in is the awareness rather than just the breath the breath is like a support for our awareness ok so these are very important it's a very simple simple practice but it is the very first step in learning how to tame our monkey mind first step into taming the monkey mind is to be a loud the mind to become more quiet more calm and to watch the monkey by looking at this point at the breath as it goes in and especially as it goes out any sounds we hear just ignore them there just sounds so we will just sit for five minutes and observe the breath comes in it goes out it comes in and it goes out and we know it that's all there is to do so this basic awareness of the breath is very fundamental and it's very useful I mean even during our day if we get tired if we get agitated if we get a bit overwhelmed then just to bring the attention back to breathing in breathing out even for one or two minutes can really really help to diffuse the situation and get the mind back into a state of open spacious relaxation and attention it can be very useful also you know if we are if we're travelling in the train or plane instead of just getting up load in all these you know things that people get themselves absorbed into when acidnam planes we can sit and do some practice we can sit breathing in breathing out breathing in breathing out in traffic jams instead of getting all upset and agitated every time we hit a red light or you know you know too much traffic ah what a good opportunity to practice their breathing in breathing out in Delhi in New Delhi in India they used to have on the stop lights on the red stop lights they've had white letters saying relax so that's something for Singapore you know those red lights breathing in breathing out this is very useful in Tecna and Sangha Ticknor on the great vietnamese master they have what a cool mindfulness spell and so throughout the day when people are working or whatever they're doing from time to time [Music] everyone stops what they're doing and just focuses on the breath breathing in breathing out just for a minute back to the present back to here now when we have become really able to maintain our focus our attention our awareness the awareness is clear watching the breath going in going out we can do that without getting distracted maybe twenty-one breaths without being distracted we we are present watching the breath as it comes in and it goes out when we feel a sense of really being aware then we can turn that awareness that attention back onto the mind itself this is a very important step in our spiritual lives because normally we are so identified with our thoughts and feelings that we think I am my thoughts and feelings we believe our thoughts and feelings people believe what they believe people will kill for what they believe they will die for what they believe our four words we swim in an ocean of thought and like a fish we don't recognize the medium in which we're swimming so the ability to step back and observe our thoughts and feelings just as thoughts and feelings and not me and mine is a big step forward but we cannot do that until we have cultivated the ability to be aware and we cultivate the ability to be aware by observing those breath do you understand its it goes up step by step we can't skip steps but if we consider the the forts and feelings now as like a river endlessly flowing by normally we are caught up in river and we slipped along by the river completely engulfed in the river our thoughts our feelings our hopes our fears our Joy's our sorrows we have absolutely totally immersed in our mental world and now we are going to step out of the river and sit on the bank of the river and watch the river go by and we can do this we can do this and what will happen is that first of all we will understand we are not our monkey mind because if we were the monkey we would not be able to observe the monkey the fact that we can observe the monkey means we are not the monkey right do you understand so the fact that we can step out and observe the mind these mindstream all the thoughts means that we are not that mind stream that there are further levels of consciousness beyond the normal conceptual mental stream otherwise we could not witness now when we can witness what also happens is that we feel a space between the witnessing awareness the mindfulness which knows and what it is knowing which at this point ODS is the mental stream so between the two there is a space so it's a rise in that space and disappear into that space normally because we also invest in our thinking we don't even know their space there it's it's like if you're in in the clouds then if we're surrounded by clouds we don't even recognize that there is other parts of the sky which is not loud so here we're stepping out and we're observing the clouds but we're not immersed in the clouds are you following this is also very very very useful this is not ultimate truth but it's very very useful to witness and even during the day as much as possible we should try to observe the mind when I first began I lived with these Yogi's and they told me that every hour I should look at mind three times the books say to observe the mind at all times but you can't do that at all times if you can't even do it once so we start with a very simple three times every hour to make the commitment to stop for a second and look back what is the mind doing at this time because normally we are so carried away by our mind that we learn even aware of what we're thinking or what we're feeling so now we're stepping out and we're looking and seeing what state is the mind in at this time [Music] are we happy are we peaceful are we concentrated our we anxiously annoyed are we depressed once our mind doing at this moment and then if the mind is in a positive state then that's good and we can you know carry on if the mind is in the negative state then we are aware of that and we apply the antidote we will deal with antidotes in the minute so it's like if we have a sickness you know if if the if the limb is healthy then we leave it alone but if there's some problem then we have to find a remedy to help that problem to cure it right that if we might even if you're not conscious of it then it's just going to degenerate more and more and more until it becomes incurable so our mind is like that the negative emotions the Buddha called poisons they poison our mind and make it sick so we have to be aware is our mind sick and if it is what poison is it's doing this and then how to find the remedy how to find the antidote to that poison in order to make the mind healthy again so during our formal meditation time we should learn how to make the mind calm and especially more conscious more aware more present then use that attention to look and observe the mind itself and to recognize that we can be centered within ourselves without needing to always be caught up in the turbulence of the mind as we become more skilled in being aware then the mind of itself begins to calm down and get itself more in order because it's been watched it's like children if they're left to themselves they go wild but if they're what being watched then they're more careful and likewise with our mind if we're observing the mind then the mind begins to you know get itself a bit more into order and and not start messing around so much right you watch you'll see the mind does that if we're thinking really stupid thoughts and we become aware that we're thinking these stupid thoughts then we not thinking those stupid thoughts anymore because we're aware much of what we do with our mind during the day is just a waste of time and it causes a lot of fatigue and stress because we don't know how to use the mind skillfully our mind is out of control the mind our ordinary conceptual thinking mind is a brilliant tool but when it thinks it's a master then it is a very tyrannical master it's a good servant hopeless master because it is ignorant so we have to learn how to be the masters of our mind in control of our own mind knowing our own mind is very important and this is why also those of you who have the time and the opportunity to undertake more extended retreats meditation retreats are very encouraged to do so because these with guidance with good guidance an extended period of time to really get to work on the mind understand the mind and learn how to really make the mind more pliable more workable not serviceable so that we can use the mind you possibly instead of being driven here and there by the mind which is out of control like monkey this is what meditation retreats are for there to help us to really become the masters of our own mind and to understand our mind because as I say mostly we live within our mind but we don't even know what the mind is we never look what isn't what I think this in my opinion that but one is a thought where does it come from where's it go to who is thinking and if we say well I am thinking okay Who am I look find this eye okay so first step is how important it is to become the owners of our own mind instead of the slaves of our mind this is very very important then along with that the heart because it is very important to open our heart all of us sitting here would rather feel okay rather than not okay all of us would rather feel happy rather than miserable nobody really wants to be depressed nobody wants to be anxious nobody wants to be angry and moody and just stressed out who chooses that how many people get up in the morning and think I think today I don't know I think today I will feel nice and grumpy and angry and irritated and stressed out and depressed and generally hating the world that's not like a good day and yet that's how many people are living despairing depressed suicide rates are solving so many people on all these you know these kind of points for you know making you feel better maybe not so much in Singapore in so much of the world nowadays people are popping pills the whole time just to get through the day and yet actively their day looks wonderful they're not living in the slums of Calcutta they outwardly have everything all of you actively have so much I live in India so many millions of people living on the streets or in unbelievable slums compared with that all of you living in the god realm in the devil of hmm and when you come to Singapore after being in Delhi I mean it's a good room so King relatively crime free people are well dressed they all have so much to eat they all have so much everything so why are you not all this down why is youth so much into spam stress the reason is what we were saying at the beginning that we do not ultimately live in our homes or even in our bodies we live in our minds and unless our minds are free then we are all enslaved so this is the problem outward situation really impacts very little on our own internal feeling of well-being or not I mean it's there everybody needs to have some you know somewhere to live enough food education for the children and so forth some basic level of security for most people is essential but beyond man 1 why are people not the more they get not happier because they're not they're really not so so we are first taming the mind by learning how to bring the awareness to the forefront of the mind how to be aware because we are all aware you are hearing me you are seeing me so we are aware right it's not like you have to make some magic thing we don't have before we all have awareness otherwise you've been conscious we're all conscious the problem is that we are not aware of being aware and so therefore that awareness gets swept along by our conceptual thinking mind and we are not centered we get lost we get lost in all our thoughts of the past of the future and we don't know how to stay present and be where we are right now so this is why these practices are for not just for when we're sitting nicely but for everyday all the time as much as possible to bring our mind back into the present moment which is in actual fact all we have so we've been doing our practice then we get up open the door and the rest of the day begins so for many of you that means dealing with your family breakfast dealing with your partner's your children your parents whoever is around you in that moment how to make them happy as I said all of us wish for happiness we don't wish to be irritable and depressed but we are irritable and depressed so the important thing is to think how to use our day to try to make others teeth they're not happy recognizing that all beings wish for happiness everybody wishes for happiness not just human beings animals birds fish insects all beings want happiness they want to feel okay they don't want to suffer so just as I would rather be happy than miserable everybody else would rather be happy than miserable the Buddha started by teaching this meditation which many of you will know which is the meditation of Mecca or Maitri which basically is the connotation of a friend so a good friend is someone who makes us feel better and likes us right that's the ideas that we've become friendly kind wishing well and it with a sense about with yourself wish yourself will wish yourself to be happy think how nice it would be if I felt good wouldn't that be nice just now we'd rather feel cheerful and nice then feel miserable wish ourselves that how nice if I felt nice may I'd be so nice and mix things because wherever we go we take ourselves with us so we might as well take a good friend why take an enemy and then from that we sent a good feelings to people that we love our family our good friends and then two people were indifferent towards people we see every day but don't think one way or the other if they would want to be happy knowing they would want to be happy and then two people we have problems with maybe a work or our neighbors or politicians or whoever people that we find difficult that we blame I would be okay if it wasn't for so-and-so wish them happy maybe they will not be may they be free from suffering why not and then the whole world and all the beings in the world may they all be happy you're sitting in a bus then fill that bus full of light imagining it going in to all the beings in that bus including the driver or plane or train or a traffic every single being you look at would rather be happy than be sad wish them well smiled even the people who are not important to you me they're important to themselves the Buddha said that to each one his own self is most precious so who is to say who is high who is love we're all each one of us wishing that we each one of us should feel well unhappy so wish not for everybody if we did that during the day that would also lighten you're sitting in your office surrounded by all these other people in the office just send out light and wish them all well and happy and be kind the Buddha also taught the six para matar these six especially exalted qualities of which the first is generosity and then ethics you know all Buddhist ethics are based on not harming any being in bodies which are mind and patience patience living when people are lawyers is further being angry Bank we recognize that patience is a very important quality for us to develop so therefore these people who are annoying us upsetting us our opportunity for developing this quality of patience if everyone is nice to us we are can think we're very nice people because everybody's nice but it's when people are not nice when people don't say what we want them to say don't do what we want them to do that's when we can practice and instead of getting all upset we can be more forbearing we can be more tolerant and we can be grateful oh you're so horrible thank you for being so difficult now I can really cultivate this important quality needed in order to fulfill our human potential the first parameter is generosity Donna generosity doesn't just mean giving things Asian people are very generous it's one of the main differences in a way I mean it's not that Western people are not generous but Asians are beyond generous in a way that Westerners are not and so this is very beautiful quality and and I I respect very very much that people are so generous generous with that their money with their possessions with their time it's a beautiful quality of the heart and the hands but also we can be generous with our being there for people even if we don't have anything to give materially we can be there for people if they need help we can listen if you have a friend who is having problems then we can be there for them listening to them hearing them giving them a hard time this is also very important quality of generosity just that we're there for people and so during the day as you go through your day every single person that you meet is the most important person in the world at that moment because they are the person we are with do you understand so therefore they should have awful attention in the lord's own teachings it says that we should put all others as superior to ourselves and ourselves as inferior but this doesn't mean that we have to cultivate an inferiority complex what it means is that we should recognize that whoever we are with that person at that moment is the most important person and we are not important I mean some people when they meet people they're just thinking oh I wonder what he's thinking about me I wonder if he thinks I'm attractive I wonder I wonder if she's feeling jealous of how nice I look and it's all about what are they thinking about me right but that's nonsense total nonsense because first of all we don't know what the other person is thinking they're probably not thinking about us at all or else they're thinking oh I wonder if she's thinking I'm attractive or I wonder if but she's nonsense right so therefore the other person is of supreme importance we are not of importance so when we meet anyone our interest is in then not in ourselves do you understand it's very important each other person is most dear to themselves so we also treat them as most dear so we go through the whole day with our family at our workplace in our social situation being aware being present we inside out I mean you know that there is a inner space we are there centered in this inner space of attention of awareness present knowing and within that in whatever the situation we try to be helpful kind generous patient and so forth we use others as a means to cultivate these qualities of the heart and when negative feelings arise we notice them oh we're getting irritated annoyed somebody you know goes in front of us in the traffic or you know somebody I know this is ne Singapore you never do this but in India people push in front of you in queues and so forth and people do say things and do things which make us very upset and we react in our mind by being angry we notice that we train our mind to be aware of what is happening inside us when we know what is happening inside us we can change in this way we transform if we are not aware then by the time with Lotus we're angry we're way down the road very difficult we've already said bad things and gotten all upset and they are saying bad things back again and next thing you know we shouting at each other it's too late but if we are aware if we are conscious then as soon as a feeling of upset anger arises we recognize it and when we recognize it then we are still in control and we can deal with it there are many different ways of dealing with our negative emotions we don't have time to go into it all but the important thing is first to know it like anger we recognize that we're angry as soon as possible then we accept that yeah right now I am angry then that already has given a gap in which we then can decide what to do shanti devi who was a great indian philosopher of the eighth century he says that if we cannot deal with anger when you to rise it by you know transforming it or by cultivating patience then we should be like a block of wood we should be like a log in other words if we cannot transform our anger into mirror like wisdom or into these patients we can at least not react at all we stay like a log of wood and gives us a chance to get back into we haven't done any harm we've not said angry words we've not you know jumped up and down we just and that gives us space for us to come back into a state of awareness and deal with the situation more skillfully because we are trying to use our daily life skillfully so everything which happens to us is the opportunity to practice walking down the road walking down a corridor climbing up and down stairs either we are aware or we are not aware normally when we are walking we are walking and the mind is thinking ten thousand different things that we can also walk and be conscious that we're walking not thinking of anything except the act of walking anything we do we can do it either with mindfulness with awareness of not ordinary things mindfulness is not just something we do when we're sitting the Buddha said we should be mindful when we're standing sitting walking lying down at all times we should know what's going on be present in our bodies and then with the mind knowing what's going on so that we are at the center instead of being angry asleep distracted our minds are stressed out not because we're so efficient but because we are not I read an article in The Economist which is not a Buddhist magazine it's a British publication for Business & Economics as it says The Economist and it was an article about neuro scientists and their latest finds dealing with stress and they said that they have found that people one of the cause of the main causes of stress in the business world is multitasking trying to do too many things at the same time and they said the problem is that the the brain is not wired to multitask and when it does so what happens is that it gets very stressed it is less efficient it makes mistakes and it is superficial it doesn't go down to deeper levels of creativity because it's juggling too many balls in the air at the same time and so they said that it made much more sense was much more efficient and also at the same time saved on stress levels they said people get stressed not because they are more efficient but because it's all become too distracted and the mind can't cope so they get exhausted but they haven't done more work it's just that they're they're just not focused and at the end of the article he was asking well this is the Economist what is the solution to this and he said the solution was to take a course in mindfulness and do a meditation retreat so I quote my sources here right as many of you know nowadays mindfulness of course has become a new buzzword in in both psychological circles and psychiatric circles but also in business circles I have friends who are teaching mindfulness courses to the army in prisons and of course in big businesses because people recognize that our minds are going crazy and it doesn't help anybody or anything of course businesses want it so that people can not get so stressed out and don't take so much time off and I'm more efficient and therefore get more profits for the for their company but and so then Buddhists get the very upset and say this is not right this is you know this is a misuse of mindfulness but I think anyway who cares if people are learning how to become more aware more conscious does it really matter that it doesn't come under you know the the Buddhist flag it doesn't matter I mean we don't have a copyright on on mindfulness mind you I saw an advertisement a full-page advertisement in Time magazine for a new book put out by Time magazine called mindfulness the new science of the mind America has discovered it so it's new but good good people who read Time magazine and buy that book they will never buy a Buddhist magazine but they will learn how to be mindful so that's good so the key is that the key is the mind to learn how to be aware there are deeper levels of awareness than this dualistic observer observed but even just to get to the point of being able to observe the mind and know what is happening at the time it is happening without comment is already an enormous step forward and can bring very deep inner peace because we recognize that we are not our mind the mind is very useful the mind is a brilliant tool but it is not who we are but we can only recognize that through practice and that practice is not just when we are sitting formally but throughout the day as much as we can to remember to be present to be aware just just know you're where you are feel the body look at the mind just be here doesn't take time the word for mindfulness in sanskrit and also in tibetan is the word to remember and it's a usual ordinary tibetan word for remember and also in in sanskrit because we direct enemy is that we forget we forget to remember remember what remember who and how and where to be present I don't rom who I'm sure you've all heard of coined a very nice word to join together the idea of mindfulness and at the same time being kind he caused a kind fulness and so all of us should spend our day being kind full made not just mindful and aware but also recognizing everyone wants happiness may all beings be happy and especially the one that I am with loving awareness say that to yourself I am loving awareness whenever we get frazzled and frustrated upset I am loving awareness so take that to our day that tames the monkey mind trains the monkey mind transforms the monkey mind ready to transcend altogether the monkey mind so may all each one be very unhappy thank you

Channel: Sangha

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Keywords: meditation, mindfulness, buddhism, jetsunma, tenzin, palmo, buddha, loving kindness, metta, drukpa, tibetan buddhism, how to meditate, tenzin palmo, jetsunma tenzin, calm abiding, guided meditation, stress relief, buddhist teaching

Id: ArbJSmgf-y8

Length: 82min 0sec (4920 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020