I’d like to say some more about the pratyaya that the mind is conditioned by its object and I’d like to say something about how this relates to spiritual practice, therapy, and spiritual cultivation.
Mind is conditioned by its object – so it is important what object you have there. If you have a wholesome object, then you are more likely to have a wholesome mind. This is the basic principle of meditation. Meditation, fundamentally, is to keep a wholesome object in mind. It is also the original meaning of mindfulness is that, if you keep good things in mind, you have a good mind, you have a good heart, you have a good life.
So, it’s important what objects you feed the mind with, what kind of mental diet you arrange for yourself, and also for the other people that you influence: your children, your clients, your friends, your colleagues. What kind of world do you set up for them? This matters because it will influence them.
One of the first things that you notice when you go to a Buddhist temple is perhaps the garden. The garden has been arranged in a certain way to bring a sense of calm, a sense of peace. It may just be bushes and streams and little bridges or whatever, but it is designed to convey the Dharma. The object conveys the Dharma, because the object implies a world, and it implies a world of Dharma. So, having a wholesome object is very important.
In Buddhism we talk about meditation, we talk about the jhanas. The first jhana is described in the texts as applied and sustained thought. If you take an object and you hold it in mind, not just flip on from one object to another, to another, to another, as we commonly do in conversation, but hold a single object in mind, then, as you go over it – you go over it this way, you go over it that way – applied and sustained thought. It is described in the texts as like holding a vase with one hand and polishing it with the other. When you polish a vase, with one hand you hold the vase and with the other hand you hold the duster and you polish the vase. If you do that, then the vase comes up with a shine. The same thing: you have something in mind, and you hold it in mind, then as you go over it and go over it, you see new depth in that object. It starts to shine, new things come out from that object.
This is true in therapy for instance. If I hold the client’s mind on a significant other, they will tell me more and more about that person. And more and more of the facts and evidence and experience that they have in relation to that person or the thing will surface; and they’ll start to see that person in a new light. The object will start to shine as they polish it and this produces what we call a shift: the object is seen in a new way and, as we saw in the previous talk, once the object is seen in a new way, once the object is construed in a new way, this implies a change of world and a change of identity. So, working with an object in this way is – whether its in psychotherapy or whether its sitting on you meditation cushion – it is the application of the principle of the first jhana, the first stage of meditation, the fundamental foundation of meditation: to apply the mind to an object in a sustained way and bring out the shine. In this way, one’s world, one’s self, one’s identity shifts and it can make your whole life shine.
Thank you very much
Namo Amida Bu
Dharmavidya
David
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