This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Mindfulness of Thinking; Mindfulness of Thinking - Cultivating a Wise Relationship with Thoughts. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Mei Elliott at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome all. We’ll begin with a meditation as noted. This morning I’ll be offering some guidance on mindfulness of thinking. We’ll take a little time to settle on the breath and the body, and then I’ll offer some instructions on mindfulness of thinking. If today what you’re really needing is an unguided meditation and you just need to sit quietly, it’s fine for you to just let the words that I say kind of wash over you like background sound.
As part of mindfulness of thinking, something that I’d like to invite you to do is that if you find yourself lost in thought at any point in the meditation, rather than just immediately letting go of the thought and coming right back to the breath, you might consider pressing a pause button on the thought, almost like it’s freeze-framed in the mind. Take a look at what’s there. See what thought you were lost in without going back down the rabbit hole. It’s almost like you’re catching a firefly in a jar or something like that. You can kind of take a look at it and see what’s there, see what thought is occurring in the mind. So that’s one of the invitations today, and I’ll be offering some instruction and guidance for more ways to do that, more ways to look at thoughts without being lost in them.
So let’s begin. Go ahead and find your meditation posture. Ideally, that’s a posture that is upright, that allows some alertness, and that’s also relaxed. It can be helpful to bring the shoulders back, to bring the ears in line with the shoulders, to feel length in the spine.
Beginning at the top of the head, we can invite some relaxation and soften the forehead and the temples. Release the jaw. Relax the neck and the shoulders. Open the belly, maybe allowing it to hang down and forward. Loosen the hips. Soften the legs, allowing any extra tension to flow out through the feet.
Take some time to land. If you use the breath as your primary anchor, take some time to land with the breath, to sense it, to connect with it. And if you use an alternate anchor, maybe the soundscape, a global sense of the body sitting, you can just translate the instructions for yourself. We’re now just settling and resting.
We’ll now do a shift in attention, letting go of our focus on the breath. And instead, we’ll let our attention be a direct awareness of thinking. The way we’ll do this is by connecting with the space in front of you, maybe imagining a blank screen in the mind. Picture a blank screen in the mind, and soon a thought will unfold on this blank screen in this space before you. See if you can pay attention to what arises. See if you can notice the first thought that arises in this space after I finish this sentence.
Maybe you noticed a thought arise. If so, this is mindfulness of thinking in the present moment. This is a present-moment experience of thinking. Go ahead and return your attention to the breath for a few moments again, settling.
And now again, letting go of your attention on the breath and connecting with this blank screen in the mind. Maybe it’s a white screen. Maybe it feels like a movie screen or a projector screen. And see if you can notice the next two thoughts that arise after I finish this sentence.
Sometimes the thought that arises is a little sneaky, like, “Wow, there aren’t any thoughts arising.” That’s a thought. Or, “I’m pretty good at this,” also a thought. Or, “I can’t do this,” also a thought.
So again, connecting with the breath, landing, taking a few moments again to stabilize and settle.
And one more time now, we’ll let go of our attention on the breath and we’ll open up to this blank screen. It’s almost like we’re perching on the edge of the mind, just watching what comes to visit. So once I stop speaking, see if you can notice every thought that comes to visit for the next 30 seconds or so.
Can you see the thought without getting lost in the content? Can you notice if you think more in images or in words?
And again, when you’re ready, coming back to the breath, back to a simple object. And again, stabilizing the mind with this simple object of the breath.
For the latter part of the meditation today, you can continue to explore mindfulness of thinking. So rather than letting go of thoughts, can you see them clearly? Almost like catching a firefly in a jar and taking a really good look at it. Seeing how it flies, how it lights up. How does a thought function? We’re not getting lost in the content. We’re not thinking about the thought. We’re observing it. And I’ll offer you some ways you can investigate thoughts as we continue the meditation.
So again, are the thoughts in images or words or both? Are some thoughts audible in a sense? If they are, do they come with a certain tone of voice? Some people discover that their thoughts have a particular tone. Maybe it’s the critical voice of a parent or the loving voice of a caretaker.
On a very simple level, are the thoughts pleasant or unpleasant or neither?
What are the physical sensations in the body associated with thinking? When you find that you’re thinking, what do you sense in the body? Maybe a clenching in the jaw, tightness in the chest. What do you notice?
Is there an underlying emotion related to a thought? Maybe unseen anxiety fueling a thought, or excitement. Maybe there’s underlying craving or a longing, or underlying aversion, a not wanting, some pushing away of experience. So as you think, and especially if you see repeating thoughts, a certain thought that comes back again and again, is there an underlying emotion? Or is there underlying craving or aversion?
And at any point, if you feel a little too lost, too much happening, just settle with the breath.
As we come to the end of our meditation, we can cultivate a particularly wholesome thought. May our practice be of benefit for all. May all beings be happy. May all beings be healthy. May all beings be safe. And may all beings be at ease.
Welcome all. As you’ve been sitting for a little while now, if you just want to stand up and stretch your legs for just a moment, that’s fine. And when you’re ready, sit back down again.
All right. Well, welcome folks. Welcome to those who are just arriving. Welcome to those online again. My name is Mei Elliott, and it’s a pleasure to be here with you. I’d like to start the talk with a poem by an author named John Roedel. I first heard this from one of my first meditation teachers, James Baraz. It goes like this:
My brain and heart divorced a decade ago over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become. Eventually, they couldn’t be in the same room with each other. Now my head and heart share custody of me. I stay with my brain during the week and my heart gets me on the weekends. They never speak to one another. Instead, they give me the same note to pass to each other every week. And their notes they send to one another always say the same thing: “This is all your fault.”
On Sundays, my heart complains about how my head has let me down in the past. And on Wednesday, my head lists all of the times my heart has screwed things up for me in the future. They blame each other for the state of my life. There’s been a lot of yelling and crying. So lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my gut, who serves as my unofficial therapist.
This scenario where the head and heart are at war, head versus heart, is not that uncommon. It’s something that you might even be familiar with. For many of us, we can blame our emotions when things are difficult. And I have found that likewise for many meditators in particular, we can really blame the thinking mind for our problems. There can be this sense of, “If I could just eradicate this obnoxious thinking, then I’d be happy. Then I’d have a good meditation, then I’d be peaceful.”
But really, getting rid of thinking is not actually the goal of meditation. At first, it can seem that way, but it’s not actually the case. The goal of meditation is to be free from suffering, to find a reliable happiness, a true happiness. And in order to be free, it’s not about getting rid of our thoughts. We can’t live in the world without the thinking mind. It’s a really effective tool for us. But rather, it’s about having a wise relationship to our thoughts. So that’s what today’s talk is all about. It’s about practicing with the thinking mind. It’s about mindfulness of thinking and how we can have a wise relationship with our thoughts. So these are my thoughts on thinking.
Part of having a wise or skillful relationship to thinking is accepting that this is a part of the human experience. The mind produces thoughts just in the same way the mouth produces saliva. It’s just one of the functions of this organ. So we don’t need to go to battle with the thinking mind to try to make it stop. This is just how this organ functions. It’s just what it does.
This acceptance of the thinking mind doesn’t mean that we’re complacent with thinking. It doesn’t mean that we let the thoughts run wild. That’s not what this is saying. It just means that we don’t need to relate to them with rejection or hatred or aversion. It’s all about that relationship. How are we relating to our thoughts?
Having a wise relationship also means knowing that we can utilize this incredible tool of the thinking mind, but that we can do it without being possessed by our thoughts, without being hijacked by them. It means that we can see our thoughts clearly without needing to grab a hold of them or to chase them. It means knowing which thoughts to act on and which thoughts not to act on. It means that we don’t mistake our thoughts for reality. So often we relate to our thoughts as the truth, the way things really are, but actually our thoughts, they’re fabrications, right? We don’t actually need to believe everything that they tell us. And so much peace and freedom can become available when we don’t believe our thoughts, when we don’t believe everything they tell us.
I’d like to start by spending a little time talking about the insubstantiality of the thinking mind, the insubstantiality of our thoughts. We could say the emptiness of thoughts. The intention of spending some time on this is that when we can really see the insubstantiality of thoughts, it chips away at our tendency to take them so seriously, to take them so personally, and believe all of them.
The Indian teacher Munindra-ji used to say, “The thought of your mother is not your mother.” For a moment, I’d like to invite you to picture your mother. Go ahead, bring your mom to mind, and maybe you’ll notice an image. Maybe it’s a crisp image, maybe it’s a fuzzy image. Maybe it’s just a general sense of her. Hopefully, it’s clear that this is a thought, that this is not your mother but a thought about your mother. That might seem very obvious, or not. But in daily life, when we have a thought about someone, we usually don’t realize it’s a thought about that person, but rather it is that person.
How many times have you had the experience of replaying an argument in your mind or anticipating an argument, and the whole body gets worked up about it? You’re thinking about what you’re going to say and what the other person’s going to say and how it’s going to go. Typically, that feels very real. There’s not a lot of awareness that these are just thoughts. Just thoughts.
There’s a phrase that came to me on retreat many years ago, and it’s similar to Munindra’s. Often I find that it’s kind of a refrain that I’ll repeat to myself from time to time: “The thought is not the thing.” We typically mistake our concepts of things, our thoughts about them, as the actual things, right? The concept is not the actual experience though. The thought about the promotion or the new gadget or the romantic interest or the terrible surgery or the vacation is not the actual experience or object, nor will it ever be. We can have this picture of what the future is going to look like, and that picture will never match what the actual future is.
The thought is not the thing. We can begin to let go of our obsession with thoughts when we realize how frequently they act as false prophets. We begin to disentangle from them when we see how insubstantial they are. And when I say insubstantial, you can really see this when you look at them in certain ways. Gil Fronsdal, founder of this center, says, “Seeing a thought is a little like touching a cloud or a hologram.” They’re just these words and pictures in the mind, really quite flimsy. There’s nothing there. They’re weightless, just these energy wisps. We could think of them as evanescent images or ethereal holograms. And yet, we give them so much power, right?
Joseph Goldstein used to say, “If we’re not aware, thoughts are like little dictators saying, ‘Get married, get divorced,’ and we do what they tell us to do.” We really allow thoughts to dictate our behavior, and we let them control our moods. We allow them to tell us who we are and whether we’re worthy of love.
Everything we remember about the past—just a thought. Everything you’ve planned for your future—just a thought. Everything you’re anxious about—just a thought. Your biggest fear, your greatest regret—all thoughts.
When we can see them for what they are, when we can see that they’re these insubstantial words and pictures in the mind, we learn that we don’t have to be bossed around by them. This is very, very freeing, to realize that we don’t have to live by our limiting fears. We don’t have to believe our judgments about ourselves or others. We don’t need to be enticed by our addictions. We don’t have to be repelled by our dislikes.
Knowing that our thoughts are so diaphanous, so ethereal, we can really regain a tremendous amount of power and agency. I really don’t think there could be any form of external power as gratifying or as fulfilling as when a thought loses its power over us.
I can think of so many times where I personally was wrapped up in some thought package, some story, some narrative. I would be so anxious or worried about a particular situation. Maybe I was suffering over self-judgment or doubt. Maybe I was concerned whether I was going to get what I wanted or whether it would all turn out okay. Often on meditation retreats, when I would see this happening, when the mind would become very stable and settled and clear, mindfulness of thinking would unveil how this whole narrative that I was caught in was just made up of these weightless, insubstantial images in the mind. This whole world that I had created was just made up of these little energy wisps, just words and pictures. I could see so clearly that this whole prison that I had been trapped in was just a hologram. Nothing really there.
It’s like the whole house of cards would collapse on itself. Seeing this, the whole package, that whole narrative package, could lose its power over me. And for some of these stories, after being seen so clearly with mindfulness of thinking, some of them never returned. This is what can become possible with this practice, where we can be really freed from the prison the mind builds for us. We can really see clearly that we’re being held or pinned by something that’s not so powerful to begin with.
Sometimes seeing our thoughts can be very ordinary, and sometimes seeing the emptiness of thoughts can be extraordinary. Sometimes we can have these moments that are really liberating, where insight into thinking can be incredibly freeing.
So let’s spend some time talking about how to practice this. How do we actually practice mindfulness of thinking? And what are the conditions that lead to this sort of insight?
One interesting aspect of thinking that I want to start with is that thoughts themselves occur in the present moment. The content is often in the past or in the future, but the thoughts themselves are happening in the present. They take place in the now. So knowing this, we can learn to be mindful of thinking in the same exact way we can be mindful of hearing or seeing or smelling or sensing in the body. It’s just another present moment experience to know. As this practice of mindfulness of thinking matures, seeing thoughts just becomes an additional present moment phenomenon to know, nothing special.
So how do we do this? Let’s zoom out for a second. In this school of Buddhist practice, there are two general forms of meditation that we’ll do. One is samādhi1 practice, or concentration practice, and the other is vipassanā2 practice, a clear seeing practice we could say. I typically don’t like to silo these two practices as totally separate; they’re not. But it can be helpful to talk about what makes each of them unique.
Samādhi practice, concentration practice, is what supports the mind to collect, to stabilize, to unify, to settle. We typically do it by focusing on a simple object, continuing to bring the mind back to the breath. Mindfulness of breathing is a great samādhi practice. Returning to that simple object over and over again helps settle and stabilize the mind. When we do that, we typically follow the instruction to let go of our thoughts. You’ve probably heard that many times: “Let go of your thoughts and return to the breath.”
So you may wonder, how does letting go of thoughts support us to see our thoughts more clearly? You can think of the samādhi practice as a preliminary step. It’s the letting go of thoughts that allows the mind to settle enough that when it’s nice and settled, then we can look at the thoughts and see them clearly without being whisked away by them. When there’s no samādhi in the mind, when the mind isn’t stable and settled, the mind can really be a zoo. The thoughts have so much gravitational force that we just get sucked right into the black hole. So it’s the samādhi that allows us to settle, to stabilize enough that we can see them.
Here’s an analogy. Let’s say I am writing you a handwritten letter while sitting on a bus traveling at 70 miles an hour, and the bus is bouncing all over the place. Chances are the words that I write aren’t going to be so legible. However, if I were to get off the bus and sit down at a nice, stable, still desk, I could write that letter and you’d be able to read every word. That’s because of the stability, the settledness, the stillness. In the same way, when we stabilize the mind, when we become still and settled, we can see the words and pictures in the mind much more easily.
In Tibetan Buddhism, they say that when we’re really able to be aware of thoughts, the thoughts can be like writing on water because it leaves no impression. No impact. You just see it come and go. They also say thoughts can be like a thief entering an empty house. They don’t steal us away.
Here’s another excerpt from the poem by John Roedel. I’ll pick up where I left off:
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my gut, who serves as my unofficial therapist. Most nights, I sneak out of the window in my rib cage and slide down my spine and collapse on my gut’s plush leather chair that’s always open for me. And I just sit, sit, sit until the sun comes up. Last evening, my gut asked me if I was having a hard time being caught between my heart and my head. I nodded. I said, “I didn’t know if I could live with either of them anymore. My heart is always sad about something that happened yesterday, while my head is always worried about something that may happen tomorrow,” I lamented. My gut squeezed my hand. “I just can’t live with my mistakes of the past or my anxiety about the future,” I sighed. My gut smiled and said, “In that case, you should go stay with your lungs for a while.” I was confused. The look on my face gave it away. “If you’re exhausted about your heart’s obsession with the fixed past and your mind’s focus on the uncertain future, your lungs are the perfect place for you. There is no yesterday in your lungs. There is no tomorrow there either. There is only now. There is only inhale. There’s only exhale. There is only this moment. There is only this breath.”
Being with the breath, letting go of thoughts, stabilizes the mind enough to keep us from getting lost in the push and pull of longing and regret. It keeps us from being lost in obsessions about the past and fixation on the future, and it allows us to see the thoughts. It’s that condition that supports the clear seeing of thinking.
So how do we do this clear seeing once we’re settled? This is where we shift to vipassanā. In vipassanā, we can bring our curiosity to the thinking mind, where we can begin to investigate thoughts, really look at them, get to know them. This is what we did a little of in our meditation. I offered some different things that you could investigate: Do you think more in images or words? Do your thoughts have a tone of voice? Is the thought pleasant or unpleasant or neither? How compelling are the thoughts? Do they have a really strong hook? Is there a lot of gripping to them, a wish not to put the thought down? Or is the thought very lightweight, just floating through the mind like a bird flying through an empty sky?
All of this can be very interesting and useful. There are a few things that I find particularly helpful to investigate. Most importantly, what does the thought feel like in the body? Often if we find that we’re lost in thoughts, when we come back, there’s been a cost to that adventure. Often there’s tightness in the jaw, a clenching in the temples, a contraction in the chest or the belly, a lump in the throat. Different thoughts will have very different physical signatures.
Relatedly, when we’re thinking, often there’s an underlying emotion. This can be really fruitful to investigate, particularly if you find that you have a “number one hit.” Jack Kornfield referred to repeat thoughts as our “top 10 hits.” If you have some top radio hits, you might ask, “What am I feeling right now?” What emotion is underlying this thought? Often if we can give that emotion the attention it’s asking for, that thought ceases to be a top 10 hit. The thinking mind is no longer trying to think its way out of the emotion because you’ve given the emotion the attention it’s asking for.
Similarly, it can be really useful to ask, “Is there underlying craving or aversion present?” Is there an underlying wanting or not wanting that’s fueling the thought?
The insight teacher Guy Armstrong said:
The deeper purpose of meditation is not simply to enjoy moments of calm, as rewarding and meaningful as they are, but to understand deeply how our minds lead us into unhappiness so that we can stop the activities that lead to those states. To reach this understanding, we have to learn to observe thoughts with as much presence and discernment as we bring to seeing the breath.
This is what we’re learning to do. We’re learning to meet our thoughts with the same presence and discernment that we bring to the breath, so that we can really understand our thinking.
So you might be wondering, when do I do which practice? If you find that you go to look at a thought and in the blink of an eye you’re just lost down the rabbit hole, it may be that you need to cultivate a little more samādhi. It might be helpful at that point to just be with the breath for a while, letting go of thoughts until the mind has stabilized enough, and then turn to look at the thoughts.
Now I’d like to focus in on one of those areas of investigation: checking for underlying craving or aversion. A few months ago, I was on a walk at Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz. It was a lovely day, one of those “everything is right in the world” sort of days. A few minutes into the walk, I had a very innocuous, ordinary thought, and yet I found it quite noteworthy because when I had the thought, I went from very relaxed and content to feeling discontent. The thought was, “I wish it was a little warmer.” That’s it. A teeny tiny thought. But suddenly, the walk wasn’t enjoyable anymore. I was just a little too cold. The temperature hadn’t significantly changed, but one moment I was content and the next I wasn’t. What happened?
In this example, what the Buddha would have called the “untrained worldling” (a non-practitioner) would have blamed the weather for the dukkha3, for the suffering. The new practitioner might have blamed the thought for the suffering. But with right understanding, we see that the suffering is not from the weather and it’s not from the thought. The suffering comes from the underlying aversion, the underlying craving for it to be otherwise. That’s the source of the suffering.
Why is craving suffering? When craving or aversion are present, they inherently say, “This moment is not enough. I need more or less or different or better in order to be okay.” They carry this inherent dissatisfaction. What’s amazing about craving and aversion is that they come in a thousand different costumes. They masquerade as a new car, a new spouse, a promotion, a new toy. Desire will masquerade in all of these different costumes, but your job is to see who is behind the costume. Your job is to see the craving or aversion behind the thought, behind the object of our craving or dislike. If you can see the desire and the aversion as they really are, then you can learn to let go. And letting go is a lot easier, a lot more powerful, a lot more effective than needing to spend our entire life rearranging the universal furniture, trying to get what we want and get rid of what we don’t want. There’s a wiser path to happiness.
Our thoughts are not the problem. Our thoughts can do wonderful things. We can have loving thoughts, generous thoughts, wise thoughts. The teaching on the Four Noble Truths couldn’t be transmitted without thoughts. It’s often necessary that we think deliberately in order to do our jobs, to make decisions, to care for ourselves and others. Thoughts are not the enemy.
So what’s the practice instruction here? If you notice yourself thinking, and particularly if it’s one of those top hits, you might just ask, “Is there underlying desire or aversion here?” Maybe it’s a frequent complaint: “My partner never takes out the trash.” If you ask, “Is there underlying desire or aversion here?” chances are you’ll find that there is. “I really don’t like that they don’t take out the trash. I really want this to be otherwise.”
When we notice that there’s craving or aversion present, our task is to let go of the fixation on the object—the trash, the roommate—and turn 180 degrees to recognize that craving or aversion itself. When we recognize it, feel it in the body. What’s it feel like? Is there a tightness in the chest or an aching in the belly? One of the things you’ll likely notice is that it’s very unpleasant. Craving and aversion are very unpleasant. When we’re really mindful of that, wisdom grows and goes, “Oh, when the mind-heart generates craving and aversion, this hurts. This doesn’t feel good.” Over time, the citta4, the mind-heart, stops producing craving and aversion because it realizes it doesn’t work. It’s no longer deluded into thinking that getting what we want and avoiding what we don’t want is a reliable path to happiness. There’s something better.
So what I’d recommend is to start with stabilizing the mind with a samādhi practice. Allow yourself to settle. Then, once you’re a little more settled, investigate what’s happening in the mind. You will get lost in thoughts anyway. That’s fine. This is a challenging practice. Don’t be hard on yourselves. As part of that investigation, you might ask, “Is there underlying craving or aversion here?” And if you find it, just recognize it and feel it in the body. Allow it to be there. And wisdom will grow in its own time.
I lived as a Zen monk for a number of years at Tassajara Zen Monastery5 down in Big Sur. Each month, the community would gather for a full moon ceremony, a time for people to renew their vows. Perhaps the most prominent vow in Zen is the bodhisattva6 vow, which is the vow to save all beings, to free all beings from suffering. One of my teachers at Tassajara, Leslie James, who stayed there for decades, had a playful twist on the bodhisattva vow. She used to alter it to say, “I vow to save all beings from what I think of them.” [Laughter]
While this is a little cheeky, it’s also right on target. Our thoughts about others can cause a lot of harm. Acts of killing or stealing or lying all begin with thoughts. Pleasant thoughts can lead to craving, which can lead to theft or lying to get what we want. Unpleasant thoughts can lead to hatred, to violence, to all sorts of great harm. And this all starts with just pleasant and unpleasant thoughts.
If we can get to know the mind and the insubstantial nature of thinking, we have so much more agency in choosing which thoughts to act on and which not to. If we have thoughts about killing, stealing, and lying—red light, don’t act on those thoughts. If we have thoughts about shaming, blaming, or judging—red light. But if we have thoughts about kindness, compassion, renunciation—green light, those are great thoughts to act on. Our level of agency is equal to our level of awareness. If we’re aware of our thoughts, we have greater agency.
I’ll close by reminding you that the thought is not the thing. Don’t mistake your ideas of others for who they really are. If you want to help others, practice mindfulness of thinking. If you want to help yourself, practice mindfulness of thinking.
May all beings be free of what we think of them. Thank you.
Let’s sit quietly for just a moment.
Question: Thank you so much. The poem was so… I love that poem. How can we find that?
Answer: The poem is by John Roedel. I actually didn’t see a title for it, but if you search “John Roedel head and heart poem,” you’ll find it. I’m going to put the link to the poem in the Audio Dharma entry for this talk. The last name is spelled R-O-E-D-E-L.
Question: In your example about being cold, how do you determine when putting on the sweater is okay?
Answer: Great question. Often when we hear the teaching that craving leads to suffering, we can think, “Oh, well if I want to put on my sweater, then that’s unwholesome.” But that’s an oversimplification. The word the Buddha used in the Four Noble Truths for this kind of suffering was taṇhā7, which means “thirst.” That’s a particular form of craving. He also used a different word, chanda8, to talk about a wholesome form of desire, for example, the desire to be generous, to be kind, the desire to walk the path of the dharma.
So these are two different versions: an unwholesome craving versus a wholesome craving. I mention this because there can be something very wholesome about having the desire to take very good care of this body. So if you’re freezing and you think, “I’d like to put on a sweater,” you can do that from a place of kindness and generosity. That’s really wholesome. When you decide to put on the sweater, you can connect with that generosity or that kindness for yourself. Or it could have a sense of craving. It can be interesting just to see what you are acting from. What’s the impulse there?
Samādhi: A Pāli word for concentration or a state of meditative absorption. ↩
Vipassanā: A Pāli word meaning “insight” or “clear-seeing.” It refers to meditation practices that aim to develop insight into the true nature of reality. ↩
Dukkha: A Pāli word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a central concept in Buddhism. ↩
Citta: A Pāli word that is often translated as “mind-heart,” encompassing both the cognitive and emotional aspects of the mind. ↩
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center: A Sōtō Zen monastery located in a remote area of the Ventana Wilderness in California. ↩
Bodhisattva: In Mahayana Buddhism, an enlightened being who forgoes their own nirvana in order to save all sentient beings. ↩
Taṇhā: A Pāli word that translates to “thirst,” “craving,” or “desire.” It is identified as the root cause of suffering (dukkha) in the Four Noble Truths. ↩
Chanda: A Pāli word for a wholesome and skillful form of desire or intention, such as the desire to practice the Dharma or to act with kindness. It is distinguished from unwholesome craving (taṇhā). ↩