The Sixth Sense: Mind and Thought in Buddhist Practice

• This is the sixth and final episode in our investigation of the senses and perceptions as taught by Buddhism. In the past, we've looked at feeling, hearing, smelling and seeing. We are skipping taste but I strongly encourage you to explore that at your next meal.
• As we've discussed, Buddhism divides the sense experiences into the sense organ and the sense organ consciousness. In the west, we have five senses, but Buddhist thinking has six... the thoughts in the mind are considered phenomena that we can perceive, and the mind consciousness is the part of our mind that perceives the thoughts.
• Underlying the 12 sense organs and sense consciousnesses, there is two aspects of mind that Trungpa, Rinpoche translates as the subconscious and the unconscious. In this formulation, those are the 14 aspects of mind.
• Interestingly, there's no part of mind that generates the "awareness" that we experience. Awareness is not separate from mind either. It's actually more of a ground for everything, permeating the world. Awareness is a quality of existence, of the universe. But that's another topic.
• This session is about thoughts, the mind consciousness that perceives those thoughts, the subconscious, the unconscious, and awareness throughout it all. So take your seat....
• Deep body breaths
• Remember your motivation.
• Usually in meditation practices, we have an object of mediation. When we meditated on hearing, it was the sounds and our perception of them. In this session, our object of meditation is our thoughts, and the mind that perceives them.
• [I ad libbed this part about seeing thoughts like we see objects, and noticing the reactions we have to them. Can we just see the thoughts and let them be? Can we leave them alone in their shimmering selves and then watch them fade away?]

The Meditator as Lion: Working with Thoughts

• There's a wonderful analogy between the non-meditator and the meditator. The person who doesn't meditate is like a dog. When someone throws a stick for a dog, the dog runs after the stick, chases it down, totally absorbed on the stick. The meditator is like a lion. When someone throws a stick for a lion, the lion just looks at them. In this session, we are the lion.
• Be the lion.
• Who is throwing the stick?
• Be the lion.
• Drop the technique. Rest and relax. Just be.
• Dedicate the merit.