Cutting New Paths in the Mind
October 10, 2011
When we’re taught to meditate, there’s so much emphasis placed on being in the present moment, not wandering off to the past and not wandering off to the future, that we tend to neglect a very important part of right effort, which is to prevent unskillful qualities from arising. To prevent these things, we have to anticipate them. We have to recognize that there are certain patterns of behavior that we tend to fall into, ways in which we’re really quick to stab ourselves: thoughts of shame, thoughts of inadequacy, fear, feeling threatened very easily. There are lots of ways in which we bring unnecessary suffering onto ourselves, and they tend to be very quick. They’re like paths in the mind over which we’ve walked back and forth many, many times. There’s nothing in the way, we’ve killed all the grass, we’ve cut back all the bushes. We’ve been back and forth so many times that now we can just run right down those paths, find the arrows at the end of the path and stab ourselves with them.