DLMC - Tue 24 Apr 2007

Be restraint in senses

Ajaan Geoff: If you really exercise restraint over the senses - if you notice when the mind is getting worked up in an unskillful direction and you counter it immediately - that's developing mindfulness and alerness right there.

So what I've been doing count as being mindful. No wonder my mind settles down easily. =)

I have the tendency to fall for greed for food. Got to watch out for this. I want people to see me when I'm being good: doing work, meditating, exercising restraint, and don't want them to see me when I'm being not-so-good: eating without restraint. That counts as subtle hypocrysy, or perhaps blatant one. To counter it: work/ do good privately, and if I have to follow my greed for food, do so in the open.

Meditation: did an almost 1.5 hour of absorption with some wandering thoguhts. Somehow, the wandering thoughts make the mind restless. Or maybe the other way round. But I suppose I did establish some peace in my sitting as it get carried over afterwards. And the mind is so alert that I could read at lightning speed.

Seems like my reading speed depends on the level of alertness in the mind.

Determine to do yoga stretching twice a day, but am happy enough to be able to do it once. The body can be taught, so can the mind. What I can't do two days ago, I can do now.

Covetousness: want to have eyes like Tan. Geoff's: Kindly-and-highly-alert eyes. Holding on to it - wanting to have them as soon as possible - causes some stress in the mind. At the notice of this, the mind immediately released its holding, and focus instead on the causes: Spread thoughts of metta and be mindful at all times. The same applies to meditaiotn. When I want to do absoprtion as quickly as possible, the mind doesn't want to settle down. I have to focus on the present; focus on the causes.

It seems that the way I work with my mind and my meditation agrees with Tan Geoff's way. Many of the articles in the book "Meditation 2" reflect my own practice and how I have dealt with my mind.