Clearing the mental clutter

Imagine that you are having your best moments: Listening to your favorite song, sipping cappuccino or lemonade, and it’s raining outside. You feel at ease, forgetting the constant chatter of your mind for a while. You wish this moment could last forever. But the truth of existence is impermanence, and this moment will also pass. 

In Buddhist teachings, the desire for things to stay the same forever is a mistaken view, as everything is constantly changing on both obvious and subtle levels. When something is pleasant and gives us fleeting joy, we consider it a good change. However, when something goes against our preferences, we don’t appreciate it. We become attached to people, images and things, wanting them to stay with us forever. 

However, the truth is that everything is part of a continuum. If we think back to when we were seven years old, many changes have occurred physically and psychologically since then. Are we the same person or a different one? We are neither the same nor different. Our cells are constantly changing, being born and dying, and our thoughts and feelings change in intensity and texture. The moment that happened yesterday will never happen again, making it like a past lifetime. The more we become aware of these inevitable truths, the easier it becomes to accept the ebbs and flows of life. 

The joy of mindfulness 

Mindfulness is the gentle, attentive knowing of the present moment. We needn’t make an incessant effort or feel pressure to be mindful, but a sense of delicate, relaxed state of mind is important. When our minds are calm, we have experienced that mindfulness becomes easier, but if we try with rigidity, it can cause discomfort or even hallucinations. 

Be here now 

We are in one place, and our minds are wildly wandering beyond our comprehension; it often becomes an unfathomable riddle, a tapestry of confusions, polarizations, and kleshas. We are haunted by the past and future, but the past has already happened, and the karma we do now determines the future. Buddha advises us to maintain awareness of the present moment. 

The cause of suffering 

Klesha is a Sanskrit word meaning defilements, an emotional affliction. Our samsaric confusions, attachments, and ignorance contribute to the defilements, and the karmic seeds can intensify due to it. Buddha’s followers focus on the inside; they don’t see any point in blaming the external world. But they work on their own conceptual mind (Sem in Tibetan)—which is dualistic and causes polarizations—their own klesha. Once we begin to work on our own klesha, we experience gradual transformation in our perspectives, the way we think, feel and act. Buddhism considers the mind more significant than the body. As Trungpa Rinpoche calls it, ‘Nostalgia for samsara’, which refers to the ruminations of fleeting experiences, and we grasp at them. But we all have basic goodness. As Mingyur Rinpoche says, we have love, compassion, wisdom and awareness all the time; we just have to recognize them. 

Just as it is 

We have a habitual tendency to label and impute phenomena or inner dimensions. We hardly can accept things as they are and as we are. Things are neither good nor bad; they are just as they are. We can practice letting our thoughts, feelings and mental patterns be as they are, giving them space and reversing them, making friends with our beautiful monsters. Our antidote must be ‘Just As It Is’. We can practice open awareness meditation formally and informally as well. We allow everything to be as it is, leaving the mind as it is without any fabrication or adaptation. If it’s good, we let it be as it is; if unpleasant, we let it be as it is. Pema Chodron, a renowned Buddhist nun, says it’s a practice that can burn the karmic seeds. 

Relative and absolute truths

On the relative level, whatever we experience with our senses is true, and they have incredible power to keep us stuck in a vicious cycle of dissatisfaction. iPhone, Rolex, BMW are relative truths, and we may have attachments, cravings, or sometimes aversion to these things. Ultimately, things don't exist as they appear, the way we think. They are empty of any reality that our conceptual mind imposes on them; yet they aren’t nothing. Even though they are like illusions, they trouble us, they make us cry, as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse puts it correctly. They are very powerful illusions. It’s like what the great Buddhist master Shantideva uses as an analogy: A woman has a child in a dream and begins a great attachment toward the child, and unfortunately, the child dies. Then the woman gets depressed, nostalgic and anxious. However, having a child and its death are both creations of the mind, a dream, an illusion. Our sufferings have this quality of being dreamlike, so we can simply let it go; they are like a rainbow or a shadow. If we apply wisdom, they don’t trouble us much. We can suffer, but the suffering will also be a beautiful experience in itself. Thich Nhat Hanh says that if we know how to suffer, we suffer much less. 

Daily reminders 

Each practice of a Buddhist practitioner comes down to the inescapable truths of impermanence, dukkha, non-self, and at a deeper level, emptiness. We can begin with the contemplation of impermanence and suffering at the beginning. How is everything changing? Being aware of it can deepen our pursuit of truth. We just need to pause, slow down, or take a few long breaths and notice what thoughts, feelings, or sensations are present. And don’t hurry to judge them as good or bad. And don't expect to find any result in just one day—it’s a sustained, long-term practice. From a Buddhist standpoint, we are working on the karmic stock of innumerable lifetimes, which isn’t so easy to clear. Otherwise, we could become enlightened in no time. It needs the accumulation of merits, practicing the paramitas, bodhichitta, compassion, wisdom, skillful means, and so forth. The Buddha advises us to practice virtues. Our mind produces our sufferings, so the Buddha advises us to know our mind. We can start by taking note of our mind with the help of everyday activities. So let’s try bringing mindfulness into drinking water, walking, or browsing social media, and so on. It can engage us in the now-ness. We can constantly remind ourselves that everything is dependent on other things and is bound to change. An important practice is to become grateful to this present moment because it is unique, and is solely available to us if we really care.

The writer is a Buddhist practitioner, teacher and student