STICKING WITH AN INTENTION

STICKING WITH AN INTENTION

"One of the purposes of meditation is to see exactly what's happening, why you can suddenly veer off at right angles, exactly what the mind does to itself in order to drop a perfectly good intention and go someplace totally different. In this way the meditation is like an experiment. 

You set up some conditions and then watch how they play out.

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In other words, you start by focusing on something you know is good: the breath. After all, the breath is the force of life and it's very immediate. It's not far off or dubious. It's right here, right now. You can see that sticking with the breath and allowing it to be comfortable is bound to have a good effect on the body and the mind. So there's no doubt there.

After setting up the breath as the object of your intention, the next step is to be aware of any other vagrant intentions that will pull you off in other directions. For the time being, the rule in your mind is: If a thought doesn't have anything to do with the breath, you don't want to get involved. So as soon as you find yourself veering off, you don't have to ask a lot of questions. If you're getting pulled away from the breath, just drop that thought-formation and come back to the breath, no matter how interesting, intriguing, or important that thought may be. Just let it go. Leave it in mid-sentence. You don't have to tie up any loose ends. You don't have to make a little note to come back there and check it out later. Just totally drop it and come back.

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Now, the after-echo of that thought-formation may continue for a while. That's okay; you don't have to listen to it. Your job right now is to train the mind to be more and more consistent in sticking with an intention. And — sure enough — a second thought will come up, or a third, or a fourth, a tenth, or a hundredth, but no matter how many, you're not going to follow them. That's the promise you make yourself when you sit down. And the important thing is not to get discouraged when you find yourself breaking that promise. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to the breath.

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Remember: This is a deeply ingrained habit we're fighting here, so it's going to take effort and time. If you think training a dog is difficult, the human mind is even more devious, even more resistant to new tricks. 

It's difficult to train the human mind in this way, but it can be done…"

❀❀❀

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Excerpt from "Sticking with an Intention"

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You can read the complete talk here:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/meditations3.html#sticking

25 May 2023