What is one of the biggest obstacles that one can face in achieving personal mastery?
The mind and thoughts. Master them to master oneself. Then there is little one cannot do over time. Happiness, character, external success all begin in the mind, as the famous saying goes – “As within, so without.”
The moment we begin paying attention to our thoughts we discover how unruly they are. We don’t really beat our heart, it beats itself. Neither do we control our thinking – we are being thought. Estimates place the number of thoughts we have each day at 40 to 60 thousand, and we don’t have more than the most basic control over them. Increasing this control – mental labour – is often said to be the hardest work of all. But the good news is that even the slightest increase is well worth the effort.
The relevant sutra, commonly translated as the ‘Discourse on Removing Distracting Thoughts’, reads like a psychology manual if you take away the flowery language. In this sutra, the Buddha offers techniques as to depict how unruly our thoughts are.
Reflect on the positive counterpart
Negative thoughts stem from negative emotions. They feed off each other in a vicious cycle. Therefore, changing one part of the cycle – the emotions – allow thoughts to slowly change. What is the positive counterpart to the emotion in our cycle? Hatred has Love. Cruelty has Compassion. Desire has Non-clinging. Agitation has Harmony.
How do we create these emotions? We drench ourself with it. Fill our body, our being, and entire consciousness and thoughts with harmony. This step is difficult at first, but you can do whatever that is nurturing to your cycle to clear out as much of the negative emotions first in preparation for the next step.
Reflecting on the Misery
If the thoughts persist after an earnest effort at the preceding level, reflect on how much misery these thoughts cause us. The Buddha uses the metaphor of a well-dressed young person, who finds him or herself with the carcass of a snake around their neck. The disgust is sometimes enough to make them throw the dead animal off them. What does this mean? We know that these thoughts upset or affect us in ways we don’t want, but we never focus our attention directly on the misery.
Reflect on how much misery these thoughts are causing us. Surge into the thinking and feeling of the negative. Go as deep inside yourself as possible–letting our hearts answer, not our minds. Beyond the feelings, there is also the practical level where the mind comes back in when one must ask, who are we without these thoughts? Then imagine yourself without the thought on both levels and the feeling of peace will return.
While our system is getting to know how it feels to be with and without the thoughts, everything we do or think is meant to help us in a certain way, however misguided it might be. Once our system feels the difference on the intellectual level, our mind no longer quests for mental control.
The mind and thoughts. Master them to master oneself. Then there is little one cannot do over time. Happiness, character, external success all begin in the mind, as the famous saying goes – “As within, so without.”
The moment we begin paying attention to our thoughts we discover how unruly they are. We don’t really beat our heart, it beats itself. Neither do we control our thinking – we are being thought. Estimates place the number of thoughts we have each day at 40 to 60 thousand, and we don’t have more than the most basic control over them. Increasing this control – mental labour – is often said to be the hardest work of all. But the good news is that even the slightest increase is well worth the effort.
The relevant sutra, commonly translated as the ‘Discourse on Removing Distracting Thoughts’, reads like a psychology manual if you take away the flowery language. In this sutra, the Buddha offers techniques as to depict how unruly our thoughts are.
Reflect on the positive counterpart
Negative thoughts stem from negative emotions. They feed off each other in a vicious cycle. Therefore, changing one part of the cycle – the emotions – allow thoughts to slowly change. What is the positive counterpart to the emotion in our cycle? Hatred has Love. Cruelty has Compassion. Desire has Non-clinging. Agitation has Harmony.
How do we create these emotions? We drench ourself with it. Fill our body, our being, and entire consciousness and thoughts with harmony. This step is difficult at first, but you can do whatever that is nurturing to your cycle to clear out as much of the negative emotions first in preparation for the next step.
Reflecting on the Misery
If the thoughts persist after an earnest effort at the preceding level, reflect on how much misery these thoughts cause us. The Buddha uses the metaphor of a well-dressed young person, who finds him or herself with the carcass of a snake around their neck. The disgust is sometimes enough to make them throw the dead animal off them. What does this mean? We know that these thoughts upset or affect us in ways we don’t want, but we never focus our attention directly on the misery.
Reflect on how much misery these thoughts are causing us. Surge into the thinking and feeling of the negative. Go as deep inside yourself as possible–letting our hearts answer, not our minds. Beyond the feelings, there is also the practical level where the mind comes back in when one must ask, who are we without these thoughts? Then imagine yourself without the thought on both levels and the feeling of peace will return.
While our system is getting to know how it feels to be with and without the thoughts, everything we do or think is meant to help us in a certain way, however misguided it might be. Once our system feels the difference on the intellectual level, our mind no longer quests for mental control.
hilitehead 
elaborate?