Categories: Maintaining Mindfulness
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!
Through these spiritual teachings, you are learning to practically train your own mind, exploring its many facets. We guide you on how to observe, how to maintain mindfulness, and what practices to engage in. As you develop your mindfulness and your mental state, you will encounter parts of your own mind that are unfamiliar.
There are aspects of our inner world that we are not used to, and when life presents us with new experiences, different challenges, or new stages of life, these unfamiliar territories can stir up fear within our hearts. This is a common experience for every one of us. The root cause is this very unfamiliarity, the lack of being accustomed to a situation.
A Parable for the Mind: The Bitter Gourd in a Time of Scarcity
To help you understand how to build mental resilience in the face of this fear, I want to share a practical teaching, perhaps in a different way than before. Our minds are often untrained for certain things, and we have a natural aversion to facing them. We believe that if we confront these situations, we will have to endure great pressure and pain.
Let’s consider a simple example: a type of food. Imagine a bitter gourd, known in Sri Lanka as karawila. Some people may enjoy eating it, while many others strongly dislike its bitter taste. Now, imagine yourself in a situation where you have no other food available. Perhaps there is a famine or a time of great scarcity.
In this moment, you have no other options for sustenance. The only meal is rice and bitter gourd. Nothing else. You dislike this food, but you are also very hungry, and you know you must eat to sustain your life. In a moment like this, how do we train our minds?
How do we face this challenge?
The Mindfulness Practice: Observing the Mind’s Resistance
Many people have already faced situations like this and, even with reluctance, have trained their minds out of necessity and a deep, intuitive understanding. But for us, in this practice, when the only solution is something we resist, the first step is to gently, slowly begin training the mind.
From the moment before you even take the food, begin to observe your mind’s aversion. Watch your thoughts with clear mindfulness. How are they forming? You will notice your mind rejecting the food before it even touches your tongue. Thoughts might arise like: ‘My stomach can’t handle this.
‘ ‘My mind rejects this.’ ‘Isn’t there anything else to eat?’ ‘What terrible karma is this?’ These kinds of thoughts will surface. Your job is simply to watch them with steady mindfulness.
Then, follow the process step-by-step. Observe your mind as you serve the food onto your plate. Observe it as you bring the first bite towards your mouth. And when the taste finally touches your tongue, mindfully watch the thoughts that are generated. What kind of thoughts are they? You don’t need to do anything about them. Simply be aware of the thoughts that arise in that moment.
Witnessing the Ebb and Flow of Thought
As you continue to watch, a fascinating process unfolds. Even as the food is on your tongue and the feeling of rejection is present, another stream of thought emerges. You remember: ‘If I don’t eat this food during this famine, I won’t be able to survive. How will I live?’ ‘I feel the pangs of hunger.’
These thoughts about survival will inevitably arise. Your task is to simply keep watching. There is no need to act on them. All you need to do is observe these thoughts that your own mind is generating.
As you watch and watch, you will begin to see them clearly: thoughts arise, they persist for a moment, and then they disappear. This is all that is happening. A thought is generated, it stays for a short while, it expresses an idea, and then it vanishes. This is the natural state of the mind.
You will see conflicting thoughts: thoughts of aversion, ‘What is this I’m eating? It has no taste, it’s just bitter!’, colliding with thoughts of acceptance born from necessity, ‘I must survive. I will eat this to live.’ Look closely at how your mind operates in this way.
From Resistance to Resilience: How the Mind Adapts
After some time of this mindful observation, something changes. You’ve never eaten just bitter gourd and rice for so long. But you realize that eating this meal doesn’t create any negative karmic result, nor does it create any special positive one.
It simply sustains your physical body and allows your life to continue. With this understanding, you start to feel that you can, in fact, eat this food. Your mind begins to acclimate. We could say it becomes accustomed to the reality of the situation.
Try this for yourself. At first, the unfamiliarity will make it feel difficult, and the aversion will be strong. But because you have no other choice, you practice with clear mindfulness. Slowly, a sense of familiarity will develop. The mind will start to get used to it. If you had to eat only this for three months, eventually you could do it without any issue. It would become just like any other food. This is how you train your mind, building your inner mental resilience.
Applying the Practice to Life’s Greatest Challenges
This principle extends far beyond food. It applies to every experience in life, from childhood to old age. We all face experiences we like and dislike. When you are confronted with such an event, you can face it using this method, starting even before the event begins. By doing so, your mental resilience grows stronger.
To put it simply, imagine someone comes to kill you. Even in that extreme moment, you have the capacity to face it with clear mindfulness. You may die in that attack, but you can die with a mind that is trained and clear, because you have practiced preparing it for the best and worst things in life.
In every task you undertake, remember to silently watch your mind. See how it functions. Face both what you like and what you dislike with this same steady mindfulness. This is a form of what is known in Buddhism as Marananussati, or mindfulness of death. By contemplating the realities of life in this way, your fear of death itself begins to fade.
The Compounding Strength of a Trained Mind
When you train your mind in this way, your mental resilience compounds. The first time you faced the ‘bitter gourd‘ situation, it might have taken you, say, ten days to fully adapt. But the next time a completely new and difficult experience arises, your mind will recognize the pattern. It will think, ‘Ah, this is just like that bitter gourd incident.‘
Because you have already built a foundation of mental resilience, what once took ten days of struggle may now only take five. You become able to adapt to new challenges much more quickly. This is the special advantage of this practice.
The Path to True Freedom and Unshakeable Inner Strength
If you practice diligently with the basic methods I have shared, you will develop the ability to live with equanimity through any circumstance. Whether you face a famine, have no money, no food, no clothes, no friends, or are without family or parents,if you have trained your mind, you can live through these things with a sense of normalcy and peace. Your mind and your mental resilience will become that strong. Use this method to face moments of shame, moments of fear, and every challenge in between.
I offer this simple teaching so that you may gain the ability to train your mind in its many different aspects. I believe this is sufficient for today’s reflection. As you engage with these ideas, reflect on your own experiences and how this practice might help you cultivate greater understanding and mental resilience.
In closing, I offer this blessing: may you all receive the strength and energy of the Triple Gem, the Buddha, the Dhamma (the teachings), and the Sangha (the community),to put these teachings into practice.
We invite you to walk this path with us. Read our teachings, and most importantly, apply them practically in your own life. as you practice, questions will naturally arise. Please feel free to share your experiences and questions in the comments below, via email or contact form. I will do my best to offer guidance in future talks based on your progress. For now, begin this practice with an open heart and a mind free from expectation. Cultivate it correctly, and may you find the clarity and peace you seek.
Thank you for joining us. We hope this blog will be of great benefit to your spiritual journey.
May you all be well and happy.
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!
