Once we are able to detach ourselves from the thought process, if we then choose to allow certain thoughts into our meditation-hall, we must be extremely careful and cautious in our approach.
During meditation, our awareness is heightened and everything is intensified – including the power of thoughts. As Sri Chinmoy has written: “During meditation, if a wrong thought comes, it is like an arrow entering and piercing your inner life.” Yes, positive thoughts can assist and elevate our meditation – but one wrong or negative thought is like releasing rotten egg gas in a perfume shop; it can completely wreck our meditation and leave us in a worse mood than before we started.
So, the guard we post at our door must be extremely vigilant and adept at checking the ID and establishing the credentials of each thought before allowing it access to our meditation.
Thoughts almost never travel alone. They come in “trains of thought”, and these trains can be endless. When one thought appears at our door, inevitably its extended family and friends will be ready to come pouring in the moment our door is slightly ajar. Once we “entertain” one thought, our door is effectively thrown wide open: each thought will summon all its friends, and our party becomes a free-for-all. Among the uninvited guests, some may be disreputable characters who revel in creating disturbance, refuse to leave, trash our home and leave our consciousness a complete mess.
We keep our homes neat and tidy. To allow negative thoughts to run amok during meditation is the same as to have an open sewer running through our lounge room.
In meditation, mind your mind! Treat every thought as an explosive hot potato. Invite only your most trusted, pure, uplifting thoughts – or better, none at all.
As our mind gradually develops a tolerance for inner silence, with practise, we acquire the crucial capacity to detach ourselves from thoughts. In the beginning, this is difficult because we identify ourselves with our thoughts – we feel we are our thoughts. It is impossible to detach ourselves from that we consider to be our very existence, like separating the fragrance from a flower, or blue from the sky.
Once we realise that thoughts are not something we are, but things we have, like clothes from our wardrobe, or tracks selected from a playlist, only then can we imagine existing apart from our thoughts. Once we conceive ourselves as separate to our thoughts, we realise it is not inevitable that thoughts dominate us.
Thoughts do not own us, and cannot be allowed any more to control us.
As our own sovereign consciousness, we must take control of our mind’s immigration policy, and carefully choose, to which thoughts we will issue entry visas to live, study and work in our consciousness-realm.
It is useless to have a policy we cannot enforce. If we are to determine which thoughts we allow to enter, we must know we can exclude those we wish to exclude: we must first develop the enforcement capability to exclude all thoughts.
Detachment is the key, and must be practised. You are here: your mind is there. Imagine your mind is a pristine whiteboard; continually erase each and every thought-mark. Your mind is the sky – keep your mind-sky blue, empty of thought-clouds. Thoughts are projected onto an outdoor screen; remove the screen and the projections are lost into the night. Your mind is a silent, sound-proof room and thoughts are chattering monkeys, helplessly stuck outside with no access.
In detachment, thought-control grows; from detachment, thought-mastery flows.
If we keep our house spotlessly clean, pests will find no food source and cannot make a home there. Whenever we are bothered by thoughts – either in meditation or any other time – the most effective remedy is to make our minds spotlessly pure and sparkling clean by blocking out, flushing away or sweeping aside all thoughts.
For temporary relief from unwanted thoughts, we don’t even need to meditate, we just need distraction – we might engage in strenuous physical activity, sing, read, listen to music, watch a thrilling sports game or phone an engaging friend. Yet all we are accomplishing here, is to swap one costume of thoughts for another.
To free the mind of thoughts completely, we must surgically remove any thoughts that are already inside our mind, and ban any new thoughts from entering.
To treat thoughts already inside the mind, we direct all our attention and channel our focus to a single point of concentration – our chosen object, mantra, music or creative visualisation exercise. Starved of attention, our unwanted thoughts fade and disappear.
To completely clear and then to keep the mind clear, to disallow new thoughts, requires constant vigilance, which cannot be achieved by distraction alone. Here the patient, practised discipline of meditation is indispensable. Our mind is so used to constant activity, constant distraction, that for it to be occupied with only one thought – let alone no thoughts – feels strange at first, disconcerting, even alien and somewhat alarming.
Like a child first entering the water, or a newborn foal on wobbly legs, the mind needs time to adapt to the unfamiliar milieu of thoughtless silence.
To control and detach from thoughts, we must first enrol our mind in the training school to master the art of accepting, welcoming and embracing inner silence.
It’s all very well to say: “Keep out all thoughts!” This is easier said, than done…
It is wise to know one’s enemy. Thoughts in themselves are not our enemy – it is their hold over us, and our helpless attraction to them, which stand as a ruthless barrier to our meditation and inner peace. In our quest to control thoughts, to keep them at bay, it is well to consider the nature of thoughts, and our obsession with them.
As we require oxygen, so thoughts depend utterly on our attention, for their food and fuel. The more we focus or dwell on a thought, the greater its power and influence. When we ignore a thought completely, it starves and withers, and might as well never have existed for us. It is we who make each thought powerful, or not – indeed, we are the power source for the entire thought industry, a Frankenstein of our own creation.
When we speak of controlling thoughts, it is not thoughts in themselves we seek to control: it is our attention on and attachment to thoughts that we can and must rein in.
As long as we identify ourselves primarily with our thinking minds, we imagine and even believe that we are our thoughts, that without them, we could not exist – when actually it is thoughts which rely on us, not the other way around. If we were only our minds, we might indeed need thoughts – but we are not, and can never be, our mere mind.
Pests only inhabit a welcoming environment. We have gone out of our way to make ourselves an attractive home to thoughts, putting out the ‘Welcome!’ mat and offering free board and lodging.
The first step in pest control, is to clean up our house…
Some inspiring thoughts are good and helpful to our meditation practise. Ultimately, we will allow and even welcome such divine thoughts as our friends and supporters.
The problem is, that until a thought has entered our mind and presented itself, we cannot know in advance whether it will be a good thought or a bad thought, helpful or harmful.
We simply cannot take the risk to allow in harmful, negative thoughts, for easily they can destroy our entire meditation and wreck everything we have so carefully built.
So, the best policy is to strive to allow no thought whatsoever during our meditation. Close the mind’s door firmly, put out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and post a guard at the door.
Thoughts have their own pride. When a thought comes with the intention of disturbing our meditation, if it finds our door is locked, it may knock and try to get our attention. After a while of being ignored and shunned, it will feel unvalued and beneath its dignity to persist wasting its time on such a rude and ungrateful fellow. As it departs in a huff, we are free to meditate in peace.
What about the good thoughts though? By locking them out, won’t we miss the benefit of their helpful guidance? Not at all – when a friendly thought sees our ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, it knows and respects we are doing something important. A good thought has our best interests at heart, and waits patiently until we are free to welcome it.
Never fear that by keeping out all thoughts, you will miss out and be the loser: like panning for gold, we sift out the silt of negative and destructive thoughts, to be left ultimately with only the golden, inspiring and aspiring thoughts.
“Threaten idle thoughts.
Chase idle thoughts.
Strangle idle thoughts.
Happiness and satisfaction
Will immediately befriend you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Following Ramakrishna’s advice, to use a second thorn to remove the thorn embedded in our foot – to focus our mind on one thing, by which to keep unwanted thoughts and unwelcome distractions at bay – how to find the right ‘thorn’ for our purpose?
To help extricate ourselves from thoughts, we need to depart from the negative in favour of the positive; to shift the home base of our consciousness from our mind into our heart. So, whatever we choose to focus on must be positive, and imbued with the qualities of our spiritual heart.
To keep thoughts and distractions at bay, the object of our focus must be more attractive, charming, lovable, inspiring and fulfilling than all the queue of thoughts demanding our attention.
Whether we choose an object, sound, image, visualisation, mantra or music, let it be simple, pure, beautiful, humble and light. Simplicity disarms the complexity of thoughts; purity removes the stain of thoughts; beauty out-charms the allure of thoughts; humility tames the pride of thoughts; light lifts the weight and illumines the gloom of thoughts. By any and all these weapons of the heart, the power of thoughts is neutered, their dominion nullified, their spell over us dispelled.
Whether we gaze at a flower or candle flame; chant our favourite mantra; imagine ourselves on a remote beach or mountain top; or fly on the wings of the music-bird – ultimately, it is not what we choose to focus on that will determine our success: it is how fervently and wholeheartedly we offer ourselves to our task.
The more eagerness, love and joy we bring to our endeavour, the faster, surer, more lasting will be our success.
All our lives, we have been thought-bound, thought-defined and mind-confined. How then can we possibly do without thinking and thoughts? The notion is almost inconceivable, for our thoughts are as much our identity as our own skin.
As Sri Ramakrishna observed, sometimes to remove a thorn from our foot, we must use another thorn. If we are to transcend thoughts, we have to use the powers and capacities in our arsenal: to employ the mind against itself, and thoughts to conquer thought.
To clear the mind of thoughts, we need to concentrate the mind. We associate concentration very closely with thought itself. ‘Thinking’ is generally regarded as concentrated or organised thought. So, if we set about to use concentration to clear the mind of thoughts, on what shall we concentrate? Since it is virtually impossible for us to concentrate on ‘nothing’, we must concentrate on something we know how to concentrate on – a thought!
If there are no direct flights to our chosen destination, we will proceed via one or more stopover destinations along the way. If our goal is to reach a state of “no thoughts” – an empty mind – and we have no means of reaching that goal directly, let us aim first at an intermediary goal. In this case, let us narrow our focus down from numberless thoughts to just one thought: once we have reached that goal, from our new vantage point we will seek a way to our ultimate goal of zero thoughts.
This is the power of concentration in action: focusing exclusively on one chosen thought, we employ that thought as a shield to protect us, to ward off and filter out the multitudes of unnecessary, distracting thoughts. Thus, one thought can save and liberate us from the scourge of thoughts.
Contemplation
is beyond
the thought-mind.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We meditate to enter into, bring forward and enjoy the spiritual qualities of our heart – peace, love, light, joy, oneness. To gain access to our spiritual heart, we have first to calm and quieten our mind. To calm our mind, we must reduce our flow of thoughts. To enter the deepest meditation, we must go beyond the mind’s domain altogether, where no thought can reach.
Our observing, analysing, reasoning, deducing mind sets us above and beyond, and liberates us from the largely instinctive animal consciousness. Our mental capacities and achievements, especially through sciences and technology have helped mankind achieve considerable mastery of our finite universe. The rational, organising mind is mankind’s greatest accomplishment in the finite realms – until rising spiritual aspiration suggests the possibilities of transcending the finite and embracing the infinite – thenceforth, our mighty asset becomes our limiting liability.
Until we have transcended our mind and thought-attachment, we follow René Descartes – “I think, therefore I am.” We feel we are our thoughts and thinking process, our ideas, conclusions, beliefs, ideals and prejudices. To go beyond the mind and relinquish thoughts, requires letting go of our very concept of who and what we are. This is not easy, and cannot be achieved overnight.
There are two approaches to subduing thoughts in meditation:
a) – challenge thoughts and chase them away; or
b) – ignore thoughts altogether, taking refuge in the spiritual heart where thoughts have no existence and no purchase.
In coming episodes of “Meditation Matters”, we will explore ways and means to pursue both these pathways: concentration exercises to challenge and expel thoughts from the mind, alongside ways to enter directly those rarer atmospheres wherein thoughts are rendered redundant and simply expire.
“If we cannot control
Each and every thought,
We are forced to become
The perfect slaves of thought.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We are familiar with the consequences of not being able to control our thoughts: our thoughts instead, control us. Most of us, most of the time, are guided by our thoughts or emotions, rather than our heart and soul. Our thoughts and emotions mostly arise from and are focused on limited and limiting realities; hence our infinite heart and free soul suffocate under the constricting blanket of the confined finite. Estranged from our soul – our perennial source of happiness, love, light and freedom – our life experience is captive to frustration, tension, insecurity and unhappiness.
We are forced to play the roles of characters alien to our true nature. Eternally infinite, pure, free beings of light and delight, we masquerade as confused, hesitant, fearful, cramped, petty creatures of uncertain obscurity.
Like desires, thoughts per se do not pose a threat to us: our mortal peril lies in our attachment to thoughts. It is the chains and bonds of attachment which render us helpless, imprison us and forbid our happiness.
Our predicament is stark: unless and until we can control our thoughts and thought process, we remain forever a slave. We might glimpse occasional happiness or catch an echo of partial satisfaction, but any chance of reaching our potential or fulfilling our soul’s purpose is a remote and forlorn dream.
The only way we can consciously gain mastery over our own thought process is through meditation. Yet to effectively meditate, we must gain mastery over our thoughts. This seeming “Catch 22” can only be resolved through sustained, dedicated, determined, patient commitment to our daily meditation practise.
Practise really does make perfect; slow and steady truly wins the race.
“Sometimes I wonder
Whether thoughts are made of misery
Or misery is made of thoughts.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Every level of our existence below the mind – body and vital – and every level above the mind – heart and soul – exist and operate without thoughts. Thoughts are exclusive to the thinking mind: they are its food, bricks, language, currency, secret service and armed forces.
As a spider spins its web out of its own body, so the mind constructs its own universe out of itself, from its limited and binding thoughts. Designed to capture its prey, the web imprisons its maker. So, in seeking to impose meaning on the chaos of the universe, the mind is entrapped and imprisoned by its own thoughts, fears, pride and prejudice.
A thinking mind acts as a black hole in our spiritual life, actively devouring light, peace and joy from its surrounding inner galaxies. Peace, light and joy are all native to our soul – infinitely free and ever expansive. The moment they are grabbed by the thinking mind, light is obscured, peace ruffled, and joy retreats into misery.
Thoughts and misery are interdependent. Thoughts enmesh us in the material and tether us to the temporal; while misery accrues from the combined tyrannies of finite time and space.
Thoughts constrict and restrict, as they are limited and limiting. In limitation, we are bound, and bound to suffer. Thoughts are misery’s oxygen – no thoughts, no misery; in the heart’s bliss, thoughts are utterly redundant. Misery begets thoughts, as thoughts nurture misery.
To bury misery and bask in eternal joy, we must master our thoughts once and for all. While ultimate victory may be a distant dream, let our goal be daily progress, lessening thoughts gradually and inexorably as, step by step, we approach our goal.
The spiritual heart and soul perceive reality directly through their love-power and the identification of oneness. One with infinite Light, immortal Bliss and eternal Truth, they have no need of speculation.
Sitting below the heart and soul in the confines of the finite, the mind has no direct perception of the infinite Real. It bears the curse of the finite and the separate: ignorance and insecurity. To mask its inherent weakness, insecurity craves power and control. The insecure needs to assert its superiority, which it can only do by first establishing its difference, its individuality.
Desperately yearning the comfort and power of knowledge, yet having set itself apart from the infinite Real, and unready humbly to accept the heart’s light as its own, the mind wants to know and possess truth as an observer. It seeks to objectify reality, to section the infinite and define the indefinable, to ‘figure out’ Truth.
Frustrated with its incapacity to grasp Truth directly, and wanting to assert its own hegemony independent of the heart, the mind creates figures or models of truth and sets them up as real – it ‘figures out’ reality.
Because the mind is limited, the universe it perceives or ‘figures’ is inevitably bound by its own limitations: the mind projects itself and labels this projection ‘reality’, a reality radiant with the mind’s brilliance, while crippled with its division, doubt, fear, jealousy, suspicion, pride and insecurity.
Each mind is its own perpetual fake news factory, where ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ are constructs to serve the particular mind’s myth of self-importance and relevance. No matter how grand or convincing, a mind-born ‘reality’ is ultimately an unstable, brittle and volatile phantasm.
What all-purpose tool does the mind use to understand, control, bind, dazzle, distract and create its worlds of make-believe?
“I know, beyond the mind
I must go
To conquer the mind.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We identify as “mankind.” The root word “man” derives from the Sanskrit “manas”, meaning: “mind.” Our mind is the principal executive force of our present conscious awareness. We are the “mind-kind.”
The mind sits in a unique position. Superior to, cognisant of, and largely able to control the body and vital, our mind is king of the finite, master of the material world; yet our mind is also the final frontier of the finite, for just next door is the spiritual heart, opening to all the possibilities of the infinite…
Up till now, our mind has been focussed primarily on the finite, on what it can know and control. Yet it also has the potential to open its door and invite in the light, love, peace and power of the heart, to turn itself outwards and upwards, to receive the unknown and unknowable of the Beyond. Herein lies our great hope of liberation and potential for perfection.
There are various levels and aspects of mind: the “manas” with which we so identify, the mind we inhabit most of our waking day, is the thinking mind, the mind of thoughts. It is in this mind that every problem of humanity is born; in this mind, every evil of the world is nurtured; in this mind, all suffering, ignorance, death and destruction flourish.
Yet Sri Chinmoy urges us:
“Do not blame the mind –
Tame the mind.
You will be supremely happy.”
– Sri Chinmoy
How to tame the unruly, wild horse of the mind? Sri Chinmoy offers a disarmingly simple solution:
“First simplify your mind,
Then clarify your mind,
Then purify your mind,
Then electrify your mind,
Then beautify your mind.
That’s all!”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Let nothing perturb us. Let our body’s impurity remind us of our heart’s spontaneous purity. Let our outer finite thoughts remind us of our inner infinite will. Let our mind’s teeming imperfections remind us of our soul’s limitless perfection.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The Infinite is the canvas on which the finite is multifariously portrayed; the Eternal, the stage on which time’s dramas are played; the Immortal, the energising current of which our life-breath is made. Without the Infinite, nothing finite can come into being; without Eternity, time is inconceivable; without Immortality, life cannot draw breath.
The Source of all is Light, Truth, Love and Peace. Darkness exists only as an absence of light; falsehood only in the corruption of truth; hatred in the perversion of love; war as an interruption of peace.
Let us therefore always and only focus on the positive, the Source: the infinite, eternal, immortal Divine within us. When we identify with our divine Source, we see that we embody everything divine, as well as all that has its source in divinity – all ignorance, darkness, division, weakness and limitation.
Stationed in the divine, we can no longer be threatened by the undivine, for we trace it always back to its source, which is our own.
Darkness persists as long as light and darkness stay apart, fearful of each other. When we perceive ignorance, weakness and limitations as included in our own greater being – not as external foes – we accept responsibility to care for and illumine them, as our thumb helps our fingers.
When our inner darkness and light embrace one another, there remains only light. When illumination stands eagerly waiting to catch its fall, ignorance can threaten us no more: rather, each faltering failure offers a beckoning gateway to our faster progress and fuller transformation.
