Checking the Mind

36. 한 마음 잘 챙기소

Checking the Mind

Woo was a friend of mine from university, a member of the incoming class of 1988. A long time ago, when he was being pursued by the police for his political activism, he took refuge in a Buddhist temple.

For Woo, the brief time that he then spent as a monk with his head shaved may have represented an imagined future that he had long since buried away. He had studied Confucianism in graduate school and was very interested in ascetic practice.

One day, I was meeting some old university friends at a bar in Seoul, and I was sitting there—the only one with just a soda in front of me—I saw Woo walking up to me, face already flushed from drinking.

“Listen, I’ve been reading The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga) these days, and I wanted to talk about it with you,” he said, before going on a sort of ramble.

“Oh, I forgot! This isn’t the kind of question I should ask when I get drunk, isn’t it? Sorry for that.” he said, slightly abashed.

He sheepishly headed back to his seat. I don’t merely feel sad that we didn’t get to talk about it that day—it feels like a debt weighing on my mind. Sŏn practice is not only for monks. What connects the start and end of the cultivation is the practice of mindfulness, or the “checking” of the mind.

When we practice seated meditation, we develop the muscles of our mind so that we can stop and observe rather than being drawn by our likes and dislikes. We can apply the same skill formed in meditation when we are standing, walking.

In this way the checking of the mind connects together our moments of standing and sitting into a single line of practice. Checking the mind simply means deciding what to do and what not to do and making sure not to lose sight of this goal. It is something that anyone can do when at rest; all you have to do is do it.

I asked two students at the New York temple to establish “what to do” and “what not to do.” One of them named “getting up early” as something to do, while another named “getting up too late” as something not to do.

If the two of them focus on simply tending to these actions, diligently practicing what they each chose to do or not to do, they will gain control over their bodies and correct their bad habits. But for us to reach the deeper realm of “checking,” we must govern not only the words and actions that we can see and hear, but also the thoughts that we cannot.

The reason a healthy person might be unable to get out of bed at the proper time is either because they are lured by the sweetness of a morning slumber or because their life is so difficult that it makes them not want to open their eyes.

The former is a case of being drawn by what we like; the latter is a case of avoiding what we do not like. But what becomes of us when we are both drawn to things we like and repelled by things we dislike?

For a student, this might lead to arriving late to class and being chewed out by their teacher. For a worker, it could result in a loss of trust or even disciplinary action. A practitioner might blame themselves for failing to keep to their daily routine. In other words, when we are bound by what we like and flee what we dislike, we suffer as a result.

Checking the mind means that when we are drawn to that sweet morning sleep, we notice and clear away the self that fixates on what we like. When things are so difficult that we do not want to face a new day, it means we must recognize and clear away the self that wishes to flee what it dislikes.

Checking the mind also means accepting that the pain that “I” am suffering now is the result of what “I” have created.

In Buddhism, greed is the term used to refer to the fixation on what one likes, and anger is the term for repulsion to what we dislike. Foolishness means that we are unaware that the self is caught up in this greed and anger or that the suffering that we are experiencing today is the result of what we have sowed in the past.

Together, these three states are known as the “three poisons.” As these poisons course through our bodies, our anguish deepens until death comes. The self that is tainted with greed, anger, and foolishness is a self that suffers and struggles.

The practice of checking the mind means noticing when our mind is drawn toward the things we like and turning away from this greed toward wholeness; it means noticing when our mind shuns what we dislike and turning away from that anger toward wholeness; and it means maintaining mindfulness at all times, whether we are standing or seated, accepting the consequences of our actions and turning away from foolishness toward wholeness.

Only when we resist the three poisons through mindfulness and reveal our whole mind can we escape the pain that has us in its grip. Once we have practiced mindfulness long enough that we are able to rid ourselves of fixation and achieve thoughts, words, and deeds that are just and full of grace, we can be said to have mastered the practice of no-thought—the practice of letting go of the mind.

Death inevitably awaits everything that is born. What teachings might the most skilled practitioner offer a frail human being who stands before the two extremes: attachment to life and fear of death? As his wife was on her deathbed, Ven. Seungsan of Mandeoksan Mountain is said to have held her hand and said, “Check the one mind well.”