The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Stabilizing the Mind”
If you can get to a place of natural awareness, you can remain mindful in a way that isn’t really describable in words. You can begin to sense a little bit of space between the calm, natural awareness and the reaction that you have quite automatically, instantaneously. It’s really necessary to develop the skill of sensing that little bit of space, because your tendency is to run off and react to every thought that you have. Just look at what you’re doing in your mind right now. What are your thoughts? You’re reacting. Everything is a reaction, and you’re floating on it. You’re up and down with it all the time.
If you can just begin to sense a little bit of space between that natural awareness and the reaction, you can begin to have the skill to not be so at the mercy of the conceptual proliferations of your mind. That little bit of space is exactly what you need to begin to disengage the ego, to begin to disengage desire. You need space in your mind to meditate even on the problems that desire brings up for you. You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on true nature. You have to have some space in your mind to meditate on emptiness. That kind of space can be developed all the time. If you practice in that way constantly, or at least as often as you are able, to remain mindful, and increase that mindfulness and increase that kind of practice, you’ll find yourself doing it more and more naturally.
But don’t try to keep yourself locked up. That’ll make you crazy. That is not a solution. You make yourself crazy when you say, “I’m not going to be happy now. I’m not going to be unhappy now. I’m not going to follow my mind around the block. I’m not going to do that.” Really, that is not a good solution. If you practice the spaciousness in your mind in the gentle way I have just described, you’ll begin to be able to be more mindful and more aware of the validity of the Buddha’s teaching.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
Thank u for creating this Jetsunma! You guide us daily through these posts and provide basic sanity in a crazy mixed up world. There must be a Tibetan word that could express gratitude w deep conviction as that is what I feel. Love u!