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Milarepa was a well-known Tibetan meditation practitioner and Buddhist trainer who lived from 1052 to 1135. He stated, “Whenever you run after your ideas, you might be like a canine chasing a stick: each time a stick is thrown, you run after it. As a substitute, be like a lion who, fairly than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One solely throws a stick at a lion as soon as.”
What a beautiful picture!
Your Thoughts Like a Canine
First, the thoughts being like a canine. Isn’t that so acquainted? Canines aren’t very reflective. Neither are we, more often than not. A thought seems in our minds, and our consideration goes chasing after it routinely. Like a canine chasing a stick, we pursue the thought, take it up, and chew it over.
In meditation, ideas come up very often, as a result of regardless that a part of you intends to meditate and quiet the thoughts, different elements of your mind are scanning your expertise to see if there are any threats to your well-being that have to be handled.
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If, as is normally the case, there’s nothing threatening occurring in your rapid expertise, these elements of your mind will comb via recollections of issues that occurred prior to now, or take a look at your future itinerary, and search for issues that is perhaps of concern. And so, for instance, you would possibly dredge up an encounter the place your emotions bought damage, and also you replay the occasions, typically in a number of methods, “workshopping” numerous eventualities. Otherwise you would possibly take into consideration one thing arising that’s possibly a bit scary, and begin imagining all of the issues which may go unsuitable.
You extra from a easy thought — possibly only a snippet of a dialog, or a snapshot picture — to a full-on drama.
Buddhism talks about this as prapañca, or “proliferation.”
Your Thoughts Like a Lion
However then there’s the lion. Your thoughts is sort of a lion when it sees the stick of a thought flying by, and as an alternative of chasing the stick, it turns towards the stick thrower. It lets the thought cross. It acknowledges that an try has been made to distract it. It isn’t taken in by that try. It’s inquisitive about what this entity is that’s attempting to govern it. And so it turns and appears.
The Stick Thrower
Who’s throwing the stick? In Buddhist phrases we’re again to Māra. Māra is a mythological personification of distraction. He’s the psychological trickster who needs us to be distracted and reactive. He needs us to chase the sticks he throws. Māra is that a part of us that’s all the time attempting to throw us off-balance.
Methods to Do This
Possibly turning to face the stick-thrower isn’t one thing you’ve ever completed. So how you can we get began?
It may well assist to really feel the lion high quality of your thoughts. Consider a lion’s regular eyes. Its low growl. Its power. Its fearlessness. Let these qualities fill your thoughts and your physique. Attempt it proper now, as you observe the house of your thoughts. When you’re something like me, it in all probability feels fairly good.
So typically once I’ve seen my thoughts go chasing sticks in my meditation just a few occasions, I’ll flip towards the place the place ideas come from. And I’ll observe it, ready to see what occurs.
However then I am going additional, and dare Māra to tempt me.
Calling Out the Satan
I’ll say one thing like “Come on, Māra. Present me what you bought. Present me what you’re made from.” After which I’ll simply watch, like a lion, and see what he comes up with. The watching is imbued with lion power — a way of power, confidence, and braveness. I really feel this power in my physique as effectively.
I can remind myself that the sticks, or ideas, are actually illusions. They’re not actual occasions that I’ve to take care of. They’re psychological fabrications.
Often after just a few of Māra’s sticks have flown previous me, my interior canine will make an look once more. And so I’ve to maintain on summoning the interior lion, and turning again to face the stick thrower.
And so I’ll say, as soon as once more, “Good one, Māra! Intelligent trick. Your phantasm fooled me that point. For some time. So, what else do you may have?”
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