Guarding the mind

Good evening everyone. 
So, last week I talked about holding on and letting go. How holding on and letting go can have an impact on our sense of suffering, or discomfort or uneasiness. If we keep holding on to something, we inevitably somehow create a sort of tension, a sort of tightness. Letting go means opening up to what is – what simply is – rather than closing ourselves up in some sense of identification with something. It means seeing our fixations and letting go of them, and the tension and the directness instantly disappear.
So, what is our practice, and how can we, if you like, protect it? How can we look after it? Well, I guess that if we want to protect, if we want to look after our practice, we need to guard our mind. The practice is somehow threatened if we don’t guard our unsteady mind, which last week I compared to the unstable behaviour of monkeys: jumpy, temperamental, often on something else rather than present with things as they are right here and now. However, if we can keep the mind in check, if you like, with a quality of mindfulness, then we are giving us that wellbeing of a mind which doesn’t hold onto things, doesn’t identify with things, that somehow allow things to arise and pass. Somehow it remains clear: uncluttered, if you like. 
Everything arises from the mind: all the suffering, all the fears, all the anxieties, all our identifications and so on. These are elements which arise from the mind. Therefore, I believe understanding the mind is one of the fundamental goals of our practice. However, what are we challenged by? Last week I talked about becoming aware of the habits, or patterns of the mind. When we are first introduced to zen, or better zazen, our sitting formal practice, we are invited to bring our attention to our breath, and noticing the wandering mind, letting go of what is going on there and simply return to our breath. That is a very fundamental part of our practice, whether we are new to this practice or not. However, again you might have noticed how difficult that can be. It seems that we are really struggling with letting go of thoughts, ideas, concepts, likes and dislikes. We can set the strongest intentions, but I’m guessing here, we can still find it challenging to the point of getting even a little bit frustrated, and annoyed. Why is it so difficult?
I guess that we can even get to think that there could be something wrong with us. Well, that is actually what I thought myself many times at least. In my own experience, in my own exploration, there is one thing that has really become apparent: that I can’t say and do in this practice without somehow sharpening my attention, my awareness, my mindfulness. I really need to guard my mind. The mind is complex, its, its inner workings are just fabulous and can create all kinds of scenarios that can take me away from what is just simply here. And if I’m not aware of that, if I’m not mindful of that, that is actually what happens. We really can’t practice without that, without that quality of awareness. 
So, again, delusion, greed, jealousy arise from the mind, and mindfulness, awareness, focus, concentration, joyfulness also arise from the mind. So, I guess becoming, let’s call it a guardian of our own mind, means really guarding the mind, bringing a quality of focus, calm stability that can help us see more clearly what is going on without reacting impulsively. I remember that last week I talked about having created mental patterns throughout my life, and I guess that that is what has been happening with all of us. Just guessing, but I sense that that might actually be the case. So our mind seems to be, seems to be working, seems to be creating patterns without us being aware of it, and one thing leads to the next one, one event triggers the usual response, or reaction, one person causes unwanted emotions, and so on. But now we have our practice, now we are bringing awareness, we are bringing an intention to see, and we begin to sort of see into what has been going on all along. We can start slowing things down and seeing a bit more clearly these patterns. All these patterns that we have, and that, as I was saying earlier, I’m guessing have been developing throughout our whole life.
So, later, we are going to do some meditation together. Of course, we can think of that as a moment in which we gather our mind, we collect our mind, we quiet our mind. That is what zazen is, in my own guessed experience with this practice. We, in a way, if you like, we enter the ground of our own mind. In a way, we study the mind, we study what comes and what goes. We study what we hold on to, and perhaps we get to understand, having a clearer idea why we are holding on to things. When I say we study, I guess I want to say we observe, we have a total open awareness on what is happening. We don’t have to work anything out, in fact we can just clearly see without having to give an explanation.
The fundamental goal of our Zen practice is to find out what we really are, and from that knowing, actualise our discovery. And that of course implies letting go of our delusions, letting go of our identifying with forms, identifying with feelings, identifying with thoughts, perceptions and so on. If we keep identifying with our mental patterns, I guess, I believe and am convinced of that, we are not really practicing mindfulness, we are, we are simply caught by the images which appear in what we could call our inner world. And that is not it. When I say, when I said at the beginning that we need to guard our mind, I mean we want to explore that possibility of letting go of that mental experience, noticing it, bringing a quality of awareness, and simply starting letting go of what is arising. I guess that the risk we run if we don’t let go of what is arising in us, is that, and that is the case with me, is starts proliferating and multiply in all kinds of other thought, emotions, feelings, likes, dislikes, which can have a very unhealthy impact on us. What are we really? Are we those thoughts, are we those mental patterns, are we those desires we try to hold on to?
To practice, to me, is to interrupt the identification with these patterns. At times, it might feel like that we are helpless, the identification is just too strong. Afterall, when we think of that, as I said earlier, it has developed a pattern for many, many, many, many years. And now that pattern seems to be difficult to interrupt. However, that is our practice, really, our intention to remain mindful, our intention to be aware of our ‘holdings’, that is our powerful way to interrupt the cycle of self-delusion. And so our practice, both, I believe, on the cushion and off the cushion, we bring our strongest intention to, to untie the knot of identification. There is not much else we can rely on, but our own very intention to be, to be vigilant, to guard our mind.
And we are very lucky, I feel myself, as we are part of this community, where every time we meet, everything is done with that purpose of remaining mindful and vigilant. At the beginning we had our chanting, that was actually an opportunity to bring that quality of mindfulness, of awareness, to our chanting. Our walking meditation later, our sitting meditation, holding our body in an upright posture for example, that is another, another opportunity to bring that quality of awareness into what is going on right here and right now. We will sit in meditation, gathering the mind to what is going on. And then, hopefully, we bring this quality of attention into, into our daily activities, we just try our very best to remain vigilant, aware, not identifying all the time with our inner world, if you like.
So, again, we are soon going to do some walking and some sitting meditation together, and we could bring that intention to simply, to simply experience, not deny anything, not avoid anything. Of course, not suppressing anything, not labelling. Simply guarding the mind without, without getting involved.
Well, thank you very much for listening, and enjoy your practice.