Inner Strength - Access to Insight

Buddha tells us not to go joining in with them. They’re not us, not ours, none ofour business. Sometimes we sit around, with absolutely nothing wrong, and allof a sudden one thing starts leading to another inside the mind. We don’t want itto happen, but the mind seems to take on a mind of its own. That’s a clear case ofthese consciousnesses, these crazy consciousnesses, getting into the act, seepinginto our own consciousness and making us fall in line with them. Theseconsciousnesses that lurk in our bodies without any bodies of their own: Theycan get angry, too, you know. They can get greedy and deluded, they can feellove and hate, just like us. Once they start feeling things like this, and they’reright next to us, our own consciousness follows along with them, without oureven realizing it. This is why there are so many issues in the heart.It’s entirely possible, you know. Suppose, for instance, that two of yourchildren are quarreling right in front of you. That’s enough to put you in a badmood yourself. Even though you didn’t get involved in the quarrel along withthem, there’s a connection, and so you end up with a lot of hurt feelings, too.This is why we’re taught, Yaª ve sevati t›diso: You end up being like the peopleyou hang around with.So we’re taught to analyze things. There are lots of minds in your mind.Some of them are animal minds. It’s not your mind that gets worked up; theirminds are the ones getting worked up, but they’re right next to yours, and as aresult you start tilting in their direction. This is why we’re taught that they’reanatt›, not-self. Consciousness is not-self. So don’t get involved with it. We haveto use effort, persistence, endurance, to keep things under our thumb.As soon as these things disappear, that’s when the heart can be bright and atease. Because actually, when things like this arise in the heart, it’s not our doing.It’s their doing. If it were really our own doing, then when things like this appearin the heart, we should feel happy and content. When they disappear, we shouldfeel happy and content. But actually, when things arise in the heart, there areonly some cases where we’re delighted about what’s happening. There are othercases where, no, we’re not happy at all. There’s a conflict in the mind. Sometimesthere are huge numbers of these other consciousnesses, and they have lots ofagendas of their own. We get outnumbered and start falling in line with them.When this happens we do things wrong and say things wrong and end up sorryafterwards. This is because we act in line with them, and not in line with our owntrue heart.So you have to keep this point in mind if you want to understandconsciousness. The Buddha tells us in really simple terms, but we don’tunderstand him. He says, “Consciousness isn’t our self.” Only four words, andyet we can’t understand them. And how can we expect to understand them? Ourhearts aren’t established in concentration, so everything we hear gets allconfused. All we can think is that consciousness is our mind. That’s all we canthink, so we start aligning ourselves with everything, taking sides: This is us.That’s us. We start siding with everything, which is why we don’t understandconsciousness.Now when we start considering things carefully to see what our own realconsciousness is like, we’ll check to see if there’s anything in there that’s honest90