Q&AInsight Meditation Society Retreat2 May 2012
Group A 2 — Functions of Mind and Dealing with Defilements
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 1 hr 48 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−1:48:12
Uses compressed audio.
AI-written summary
This group interview explains how to recognize mental processes rather than concepts or projected images. The teacher guides yogis on handling defilements, boredom, and planning thoughts during practice. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining continuous awareness and right view in daily life.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Insight Meditation Society Retreat · 28 talks
- 546 minQ&A Monday morning — Not Focusing Too Much, Seeing Versus Looking, and Being Aware of Thinking30 Apr 2012
- 61 hr 56 minQ&A group D 1 — Working with Pain, Mental Feelings and Asking Questions30 Apr 2012
- 71 hr 47 minQ&A group E 1 — Seeing Everything as an Object and the Role of Wisdom30 Apr 2012
- 81 hr 47 minQ&A group F 1 — Removing Greed from Effort and Awareness1 May 2012
- Viewing91 hr 48 minGroup A 2 — Functions of Mind and Dealing with Defilements2 May 2012
- 101 hr 55 minGroup D 2 — Investigating Strong Objects, Torpor, and Thinking Mind3 May 2012
- 1140 minDhamma everywhere — Object, Awareness, and Right View3 May 2012
- 121 hr 59 minGroup E 2 — Working with Defilements and Nature of Objects4 May 2012
- 131 hr 41 minGroup F 2 — Bringing in Right View and Understanding Dukkha4 May 2012
- 142 hrGroup A 3 — Cause and Effect, Intention, and Metta5 May 2012
Transcript
English
So this is Group A, session number 2, on Wednesday, May 2. That's for the recorder.
English
For those of you who are speaking first, raise your hand.
English
7, 8. Okay.
English
I have a question too. Um, it's about investigation and curiosity. Um, and I'll give you two examples from my practice, um, these last few days. Um, the first happened a few days ago in a very quiet, uh, relaxable meditation, concentrated, and
English
sort of at the end, um, appeared an image of Guan Yin.
English
Guan Yin. Guan Yin, yes. And I just recognized it, I thought, and I thought also, uh, that's an answer to a question I've had, without ever really asking that question, but it was a question in the back of my mind. And then I let it go. Um, and then I thought, well, maybe I should have investigated why, why she appeared.
[Burmese segment]
MY
Yeah. Any image that appears in the mind um appears because of thought.
English
Whether you plan to think about it intentionally or not, um, it's a thought that triggers an image in the mind. Yes? Um, and— And then do I investigate it? You don't investigate the concept. No. Not the concept of Quan Yin. You investigate the function of mind, or the activity of mind, which is thought, which is thought, or thought creating image.
MY
[Burmese speech]
English
He says, I mean, the kind of imagery that arises, he says, differs sometimes generally according to the person's character, like their personality type.
English
So people who are maybe more, um, anger types might see more, uh, scary images and stuff, fear types. Uh, people who are more faith types might see pictures like that of Quan Yin or other gods or things that are, um, soothing, mountains, lakes, that sort of thing.
English
So, um, it's like that. Well, because in, in my meditation, um, I've been meditating now for 10 years. That's a new issue, yeah. Um, I have, um, after, after a while, um, I, my mind becomes very white and vast. It becomes white.
English
So it's your view, like— And then colors come, lots of colors, different, not all at once, just one color and it comes up. . And, and then it goes away. And I don't look at it, I don't, I note the color, but I don't do anything with that. Um, but should I be— and then there may be ideograms, I mean, Chinese or, or Japanese, uh, Chinese or Khmer, ideograms coming, but I don't really know and I don't want to look.
English
But should I be investigating why they come? Not at all. Con All these are concepts. Color, white
English
white, bright, big, um, you know, size, color, shape, all these are, um, concepts. And concepts are not the object of meditation. But then what am I curious about? I need to be curious. You're curious about the function of mind, the, the movement of mind.
English
So you can know mind, the mind is working. If you can see that the mind is projecting these images, or you can understand that these are just thoughts and the mind is projecting images, but that's not what you look at.
English
But knowing functions of mind, it's quite subtle, he says. Maybe you need to, when you see whites and all that, he said, um, try to bring yourself back to more grounded reality.
English
Physical object ? Physical object, physical sensations. Whatever you see with your eyes closed are mental images. They're not things that you really see. They're projections of the mind. They're just images. So they're not real. So an object of meditation is a, a real thing, not an image that the mind projects.
English
Thank you.
English
Yes.
English
I have a question also about, um, curiosity. So, um, I read in Sayadaw's book that one of the— when he talks about persistence, one of the sort of, um, habits that he recommends developing has to do with, um, thinking about practice while practicing.
English
And I understand that to mean really thinking about the processes that one is observing. Um, so the, the motivation underlying this, he also talks about, is a desire to know, a desire to know things as they truly are. Um, and to be honest, often that desire is not actually present.
English
In fact, sometimes there's a stubborn, a stubborn desire not to know, you know, like a stubborn desire for
English
a maintaining of delusion or something like this, because when delusion is maintained, the habits are maintained, the, the seeking of pleasant, the aversion to unpleasant. So really the question has to do with, um, if that desire to just know things as they are, which can be often just, you know, neutral, it's not always a good, it's not always like, "Yay, that, that what I learned is awesome," or something, you know?
English
It's just sometimes just very normal. Um, are there ways to, um, encourage the development of that, you know, strong curiosity just about the nature of, you know, human experience, if it's not one's, you know, real strong motivation to practice?
[Burmese segment]
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Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913–2002). After a career in business and life as a householder, he has become a permanent monk since 1996.…