Peaceful Abiding
By Sakyong Mipham

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Author of Turning the Mind into an Ally

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“Peaceful abiding” describes the mind as it naturally is. The word peace tells the whole story. The human mind is by nature joyous, calm, and very clear. In shamatha meditation we aren’t creating a peaceful state — we’re letting our mind be as it is to begin with. This doesn’t mean that we’re peacefully ignoring things. It means that the mind is able to be in itself without constantly leaving.

From a Buddhist point of view, human beings aren’t intrinsically aggressive; we are inherently peaceful. This is sometimes hard to believe. When we’re angry or upset, our untrained mind becomes belligerent and we routinely strike out at others. We imagine that reacting aggressively to the object of our emotion will resolve our pain. Throughout history we have used this approach over and over again. Striking out when we’re in pain is clearly one way we perpetuate misery. With a trained mind, a stable mind, a mind with a larger motivation than its own comfort, we find another way to work with the difficulties of daily life. When we’re in a difficult situation, we maintain our seat. Instead of perpetuating misery by acting out aggression, we learn to use the rough spots to spark the courage to proceed on our journey. Eventually we may actually be able to turn the mind of anger into the energy of love and compassion.

We’re accustomed to living a life based on running after our wild mind, a mind that is continually giving birth to thoughts and emotions. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with thoughts and emotions — in fact, the point of making our mind an ally is that we can begin to direct them for benefit. Through peacefully abiding we begin to see our emotions at work. We begin to see that we have to work with these intense emotions because if we don’t, they’ll grow. Once they grow, we act on them. When we act on them, they create our environment.

Meditation shows us how discursive thoughts lead to emotions — irritation, anxiety, passion, aggression, jealousy, pride, greed — which lead to suffering. Reacting to emotion creates further reactions later. Being discursive might feel good, just as food we’re allergic to tastes good, but after we eat it, we suffer.

Meditation is a very personal journey. Simply by being conscious of the present moment so we can ground ourselves in it, we relax our sense of self and begin to tune in to reality as it is. We begin to realize what we don’t know, and we become curious: “What is truly valid? What is the truth of my experience?” If we lived in the wilderness, we’d observe nature’s patterns around us: the activity of the birds and animals, the behavior of the weather, and changes in the plant life. After a while, we’d be intimate with the environment. We might be able to predict when winter is coming and whether it would be long or short. Similarly, in peaceful abiding we can begin to observe and understand our thought patterns. We can watch how our mind weaves from one idea to another, one emotion to another. We can see how it fabricates a comfort zone. We can see how it wants to take action. We can begin to understand its course without judging it. We just notice the internal environment and become familiar with it.

After we’ve spent some time watching thoughts and emotions come and go, we begin to see them clearly. They no longer have the power to destabilize us, because we see how ephemeral they are. Then we can actually begin to change our patterns, and in doing so, change our whole environment. But to reap this benefit requires consistent practice.

Once we establish a regular practice, our life can feel like it’s undergoing a major upheaval. Meditating is a new way of looking at things. We have to be willing to change. When we begin to tame the movement of our mind, it affects everything else. It’s like renovating: once you start, it’s hard to stop. For example, at Shambhala Mountain Center, where I teach every summer, our meditation hall was getting old and funky, so we built a new one. Then by contrast, the kitchen looked small and old, so we needed to build a new kitchen, too.

In beginning to meditate, you might see things about yourself that you don’t like, so it’s important to ask yourself if you’re willing to change. Before you consider entering a spiritual path, you have to begin by looking at the basic ground. Before you even sit down, ask yourself these questions: Do I actually want to become a better person? Do I really want to work with my mind? We’re not talking about becoming a goody-goody. We’re saying that we can choose to become stronger, kinder, wiser, and more focused. We can become more in tune with how things are. Do we really want to do that?

The notion of meditation is very simple. We slow down and begin to look at the pattern of our life. We have to start with the mind, then the body follows. This is not to say that once we start meditating, everything will work out and we’ll have no problems. We’ll still have disagreements with friends and family, we’ll still get parking tickets, we’ll still miss flights, we’ll still burn the toast on occasion. Meditation doesn't take us to the end of the rainbow — it opens the possibility of completely embodying our enlightened qualities by making our mind an ally. When we meditate, we’re training ourselves to see our weak points and strengthen our positive ones. We’re altering our basic perception. We’re beginning to change how we relate to the world — but not forcefully.

Once we start really looking at the mind, we see some elements of how it works. For one, the mind is always placing itself on something. It has to do this in order to know what's going on. Generally we ingrain the tendency to follow distractions — which is the opposite of stabilizing the mind. Maybe the mind places itself on the idea of dinner. Then we think about what's in the refrigerator. Then we think about a restaurant. Then we think about what we'd wear to the restaurant. Then we think about buying new clothes. The mind is continually placing itself, usually for only a few seconds at a time. That is the case even when we're thinking systematically about something, such as a plan.

For instance, if I'm going from New York to Paris, I think about how I am going to do that. What day will I fly, at what time? Will I get frequent-flier miles? How long will it take? Then where will I go? And who will I see when I get there? If we look at our mind as it's planning, we'll see that between all those planning thoughts, other thoughts are arising. Although it may seem as if we're having a stream of thoughts about our vacation, if we look closely, we'll see that the mind is continuously bouncing back and forth between many thoughts — 'It feels warm in here; shall I open a window? I wonder what's for lunch. Is there time to pick something up at the grocery store before the meeting this afternoon?” But since most of the thoughts are about the trip, we say, “Oh, I am planning my vacation.”

Something else we'll see when we begin to look at our mind carefully is that we don't really perceive several things at once; we can only perceive one thing at a time. Try it out. It feels as if we hear the bird and see the sunshine at the same time, but in terms of the actual experience, the mind is moving from one perception to another. If we're thinking about what we are cooking for dinner, we'll have consecutive thoughts about it; in between, our mind places itself on other things many times over. The memory of a pleasant telephone encounter earlier in the day pops up; we notice that someone has washed the breakfast dishes; we like this track on the CD and we wonder who's singing. If we look closely at our mind, we see that it always behaves this way.

If we have enough similar thoughts, we call it a stream of consciousness, a stream of thought. However, the current of the mind is always fluctuating. The mind weaves an illusion of solidity by putting things together; it's actually going back and forth. At the beginning of peaceful abiding we discover what the mind is by drawing it in. We do this by sitting still and training in holding it to something for more than a few seconds. Repeatedly bringing it back to the breath may feel unnatural at the beginning, like having to hold a child to keep him from squirming. But if we keep doing it, at some point we begin to see that underneath the distraction and bewilderment, something else is going on. We begin to see the mind's underlying stillness. There is intelligence; there's some kind of stability; there's some kind of strength. We begin to see how the discursiveness of thoughts and emotions keeps us from experiencing these natural qualities of the mind.

In peaceful abiding we use the present moment as a reference point for relating to our mind and overcoming its wildness and discursiveness. When we sit down to meditate, there's so much going on in our mind that it’s easy to get lost. We wander around in this dense jungle, not knowing where we are going. The present moment and the breath are like a hilltop in the distance. We keep our eyes on it as we walk toward it. We need to get to the hilltop, climb it, and look around so that we can figure out where we are.

Returning our mind to the breath is how we learn to be mindful and aware. Its like giving a child a pet: caring for a living creature teaches us responsibility and loving-kindness. When we grow up, we can express what we have learned to others. In the same way, we are using the breath as a vehicle to bring us into the present moment.

When we experience a moment of peacefully abiding, it seems so far-out. Our mind is no longer drifting, thinking about a million things. The sun comes up or a beautiful breeze comes along — and all of a sudden we feel the breeze and we are completely in tune. We think, “That's a very spiritual experience. It's a religious experience. At least worth a poem, or a letter home.” But all that's happening is that for a moment we're in tune with our mind. Our mind is present and harmonious. Before, we were so busy and bewildered that we didn't even notice the breeze. Our mind couldn't even stay put long enough to watch the sun come up, which takes two and a half minutes. Now we can keep it in one place long enough to acknowledge and appreciate our surroundings. Now we are really here. In fact, being in the present moment is ordinary; it's the point of being human.

Learning to be present for the moment is the beginning of the spiritual path. By sitting still and training our mind to be with the breath, we begin to relax our discursiveness. We see how the mind creates our solid sense of self and begin to discover the mind's natural state of being. With this experience, we can cultivate our garden. The flowers of love, compassion, and wisdom gradually take over, and the weeds of anger, jealousy, and self-involvement have less and less room to grow. In peaceful abiding we become familiar with the ground of basic goodness. This is how we turn the mind into an ally.

Excerpted from Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham. Published by Riverhead Books, New York, 2003. Used by arrangement with the publisher. For more information, see www.mipham.com or www.shambhala.org.

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