Ending a Racing Mind and Getting Free of Harmful Desires

 

                We often fight with our desires or wants.  We say to ourselves “I want to eat some French fries but I know it is bad for me and I shouldn’t.”   Sometimes the craving is strong and I eat them and feel bad afterward.  Other times my will power is strong and I don’t do it and I feel wonderful.  Whether I give in or not, it is always a constant struggle and puts me in inner turmoil.  This happens with many things:  wanting to hurt someone that we think has hurt us, wanting a new car that would wreck our finances, wanting to smoke a cigarette. 

                The fact that most of us have minds that are racing almost all of the time(going a 100 miles an hour in several directions at the same time) prevents us from seeing how to end being taken over by harmful desires and feeling we  have to fight against them.  When our minds are racing, we are always planning something later in the week, endlessly replaying an unpleasant conversation with a difficult friend, worrying about the future, and on and on.  You can actually watch your mind do this.

                One time when I was at home meditating, I was sitting beneath a clock that chimed a short song every quarter hour.  The chimes were loud enough to be heard upstairs.  At some point I looked at the clock and it was a few minutes past five.  I realized that I had not heard any of the chimes for the 5 o’clock hour:  not the song, and not the five loud chimes that followed it.  And this while sitting right under the clock!  I had been so lost in thinking about various issues in my life that I simply had completely missed the loud chimes of the clock.  This is what a racing mind does to us.  It blinds us to what is going on right around us and inside of us.

                The first step in changing this (yes, change really is possible) is to slow the mind down.  Meditation can help us learn to do this.  Meditation can also help us gain the ability to notice a racing mind when we are not meditating and then slow it down.  When the mind is racing we fail to see things that are right in front of us or going on inside us.   Once the mind has slowed down, we can begin to see how desire/wanting actually works, and that we can just learn to be with desire (like sitting on a park bench and desire is sitting on the bench next to us).  When we are just being there with a desire, we can just observe with curiosity how it feels in the body and mind.  We can get comfortable and relaxed with wanting.  

                When I do this, I discover that I can just be there with it and choose not to act on it.  Once we get come skill at doing this, we become free of harmful desires being able to take us over.  We become free of the struggle against harmful desires.  The desires still come up, but we have learned that we don’t have to do anything about them, that we are free to choose whether to act on a desire or not.  There is no longer any need for will power.  We also will discover that harmful desires that are not acted on become weaker and weaker over time, and don’t arise nearly as often and can even drop away completely.  This is a real game changer!

Everything begins with slowing down the mind, getting calmer and beginning to see clearly what is going on in and around me.  This is the beginning of freedom from the tyranny of harmful desires (and many other things as well). 

                Another benefit of slowing the mind down is an increased awareness of how we ourselves are the cause of most of our suffering.  A little story I like to use is very useful here. 

                Imagine that you are walking down a street near where you live, and a man comes up to you in a very agitated condition.  He says to you “Please, please help me!  I have this terrible, searing pain in my right hand.  I don’t know how I can endure this for another moment.  Please help me! Tell me what to do.”  You look down, and you notice that the man is gripping a red hot coal very tightly in his right hand.  What do you say to him?

                I think anyone would tell the man to simply release the coal from his hand.  The only reason the man has not already released the coal is that he has not yet seen the connection between what he is doing and his own suffering.  Once he sees clearly that his own behavior—gripping the hot coal—is the cause of his suffering, he no longer wants to grip the hot coal.  Releasing the coal does not require thirty years of prior meditation practice, or some special technique, or a superhuman amount of will power.  When the connection between the behavior and the suffering is seen clearly, the desire to continue with the behavior evaporates and the pain caused by his own behaviors stops.

                This is our situation precisely in regard to our own behaviors that we continue to engage in even though we are suffering greatly because of them:  we simply have not seen the connection yet.  This is where slowing down the mind and becoming calm comes in.  As we become more aware of our behavior and our internal states, we start to see clearly the connections between the two things.

                We begin to see, for example, how our lifestyle choices are causing us to suffer, and when we see this very clearly, we no longer want to make those choices anymore.    Seeing clearly totally transforms our situation.  Here’s a personal example.  

                A number of years ago, each time I sold my house and moved on I bought a bigger and more expensive house with the proceeds.  For years, all I saw was that the amount of equity I had in my house kept going up, and I saw that as a good thing.   Eventually, I began to see that as I got more and more expensive houses, my mortgage debt was also going up.  I saw that my housing cost increases were causing me to work more hours than I wanted to just to support my house.  If I got a smaller and less expensive house, I could actually afford to work about half as many hours and have time to pursue some of the other things I loved besides teaching.  At the same time, I also saw clearly that even if I love something—like teaching—there can still be too much of it and life becomes out of balance.  This was a revelation to me.  I immediately put my big expensive house up for sale!  All it took was seeing the connection between what I was doing and my suffering.  When we are able to see what we are doing in its entirety, we simply do not want to do it anymore. A slower, calmer mind enables us to finally see things that were there all along that can be complete life changers.

                When this level of clear seeing is achieved, will power simply becomes irrelevant.

           Here’s a simple example.  Suppose I am standing at the curb of a very busy street in a busy city, and decide that I want to cross the street.  A bus is approaching at high speed in the lane nearest the curb.  Do I need to debate in my mind whether to step out in front of the bus?  Of course not.  Debating the issue never even occurs to me.  Do I need strong will power in order not to step in front of the bus?  No.   This is a very easy decision because I see very clearly the connection between the behavior being considered—stepping in front of the bus—and the great suffering that will come as a result. There is no desire to step in front of the bus to cross the street, therefore no will power is required at all. 

                All that is needed is seeing clearly the connection between what I am about to do and the suffering that will be experienced as a result.  With the bus, this is an easy connection to see.  In more subtle situations, a racing mind may block me from seeing what I am doing and how it brings about suffering.

 

 

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