From Suffering to Peace by Mark Coleman

Author:Mark Coleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New World Library

One suggestion is to regard your personality as a pet. It follows you around anyway, so give it a name and make friends with it. Keep it on a leash when you need to, and let it run free when you feel that is appropriate. Train it as well as you can, and then accept its idiosyncrasies, but always remember that your pet is not you. Your pet has its own life, and just happens to be in an intimate relationship with you, whoever you may be, hiding there behind your personality.

• PRACTICE •

Examining the Nature of Self

In the previous meditation, we explored the changing, transient, insubstantial nature of self. This meditation looks at how we identify with various aspects of our experience so that we can free ourselves from this misidentification, which is a limiting, painful habit that misleads and constricts us.

Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and rest your attention on your breath. Observe how the breath breathes itself. Perhaps you identify the breath as yours, since to a degree you can influence it. Notice how this “I” thought arises and claims the breath as your own, as if you can possess it. As you inhale and exhale, inquire if this is true or if breath is like the breeze on your face or the sound of a bird — felt but not owned by you.

Similarly, turn your attention to sensations in your body, like pressure, pain, tingling, aching, and pleasure. Notice as “I” thoughts arise and claim the experiences, thinking “my” body, “my” knee, and so on. From the perspective of mindfulness, these are not “your” sensations. They are simply phenomena coming and going in the field of awareness. Consider: Does this process of identification of labeling things as “I” or “my” feel real or true? When you can see that physical processes just happen according to causes and conditions, and don’t necessarily belong to you, how does that shift your perception?

Now turn your attention to your thoughts. Observe thoughts as they come and go; see how they have a life of their own. Thoughts think themselves, triggered by a host of conditions, including memory, perception, and sense experience. Can you really claim that all the thoughts pouring through your head belong to you or are “yours”? See how thoughts are like clouds moving across the sky of awareness. Does that allow you to reduce the sense of ownership or identification with them?

Next, attend to the ebb and flow of emotions, which are often triggered by thoughts, conversations, memories, and sensations. Notice the process of identification, where you may observe a sense of ownership of these feelings, as you did with thoughts. See that they occur selflessly, in their own way, in their own time. While you can influence them, you can’t control or own them. Observing your emotional experience with awareness allows a greater sense of space and perspective, and it helps you avoid becoming so caught up in or defined by or painfully identified with your ever-changing moods.

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