The world is in your mind

REFRAMING EXPERIENCE

When we experience the ordinary flow of activity – walking from one place to another, talking with a colleague, checking the time – we can notice and reframe experience. Instead of, ‘I am walking. I am talking. I am checking the time,’ we can change the framework to, ‘There is walking. There is talking.

There is checking the time.’ In a sense, we can retrain the mind to see the experience of the world in a different way. As we sit down for lunch, lunch is happening in our mind. We might think, ‘I’m putting food in my mouth,’ but our mouth is ‘in’ our mind. We might think, ‘I am sitting in a room,’ but the room is in the mind.

Our inner world includes thoughts and emotions, liking and disliking, approval and disapproval. Rather than getting caught up in these experiences, there can be the bare awareness: ‘This is a perception of liking,’ ‘This is a perception of disliking.’ This reframed perception can be applied to seeing, tasting, feeling, hearing ... the whole gamut of experiences: ‘This is hearing. This is seeing. This is ref l ecting. This is what’s going on.’ We also habitually perceive what we experience as ‘wanted/unwanted’, ‘liked/ disliked’, ‘good/bad.’ Instead, we can take a step back and cultivate a different framework. For example, when we get something we want, we can ref l ect: ‘I was anticipating this. Now I’ve got it.’ We can notice anticipation changing to gratif i cation. Then we can notice the experience of change itself rather than getting lost in the experience of, ‘Hey, I got what I wanted! Hooray!’

The world is happening in our mind. This is not just a mind game; it is a reframing of experience. So, what is the effect of that? How does that change the way the world is felt? How does that change the way the world is appreciated?

This reframing is not just a matter of learning behaviours or obeying instructions. The whole point of following instructions or advice is the internal effect it might have. What really matters is the change of heart. When there is this shift of view, this change of perspective, how is it felt? 

Let that really soak in – the world is happening here, in the mind. We recognize the world as patterns of perception. Arising and passing. What is the felt sense of that in the heart? Is there a quality of freedom? A quality of ease? Is there a way that the sense of stress (dukkha) ends? 

Experiment with this and see if it can be sustained. Of course, we may forget or become distracted. It is natural to get lost. We may realize that an hour has gone by and that we were completely absorbed in our own projections, our loves and hates and dramas. But then there is the reframing: ‘Oh yes, this is the experience of getting lost in a drama. It feels like this. This is the mind getting lost in stories. Aha!’

NOBODY GOING ANYWHERE

Ajahn Sumedho used to talk about this theme frequently. He would say, ‘The world is in your mind.’ While on one level it is true that the world is ‘out there’ and we’re moving around in it, on another level the world is experienced only in our minds. Similarly, as Ajahn Sumedho reminded me when I’d once become caught up in planning a tudong walk: ‘In actual fact, there is nobody going anywhere, there are just conditions changing.’9 That was a really wonderful ref l ection for me. On my journey, I noticed a series of perceptions: a perception of putting on a rucksack, a perception of waving goodbye, a perception of the rain falling down, a perception of walking along the country lanes. And, when I remembered, I saw that all of those perceptions happened ‘here’.

Whenever we are travelling or moving from one place to another, it’s just a perception happening in the moment: a perception of the car, a perception of the motorway, a perception of the towns passing by, or a perception of arriving somewhere. But wherever we go, it is always ‘here’. Have any of us ever been in a place that was not ‘here’? Wherever we’ve been during our entire life, it has always been exactly ‘here’.

Therefore, when we remember that there is really nobody going anywhere – that there are only changing conditions of mind – it shifts our perspective on life. Even though we may be moving vigorously, driving or walking or running, when the mind remembers that it’s all just happening ‘here’, there is a profound restfulness within the movement. A peacefulness. A sense of ‘nobody going anywhere.’ The heart is freed from urgency. This spaciousness is what we call ‘freedom from becoming’.

Ajahn Sumedho also frequently pointed out that if we start out with the view that we are an unenlightened person who has to do something now in order to become enlightened in the future, then we are starting out with ignorance (avijjā) and will end up with suffering (dukkha). But if we begin with awareness (vijjā), then we will end up with peacefulness (Nibbāna).

Of course, we might think, ‘But I am an unenlightened person! And I do want to take action to reach enlightenment. After all, isn’t Buddhism about doing spiritual practices to make ourselves better?’ But we must pay close attention to the phrasing ‘I am an unenlightened person who has to do something now in order to become enlightened in the future.’ In that phrasing, in the forming of that attitude, a ‘person’ is being created and ‘time’ is being created. We are unconsciously approaching the practice of Dhamma from the position of self-view: ‘I am a person.’ Right there the mind is grasping self (attā).

If we change our view from ‘I am an unenlightened person who needs to do something now to become enlightened in the future’ to ‘Be awake now,’ then we use the capacity of the mind to be aware and awake without creating any position of self-view, without establishing notions of ‘I, Me and Mine’. The more the mind is awake, the more we then recognize that awareness is not a person, the mind is not a person. We also see that the personal qualities being a woman or man, old or young, healthy or sick – arise and pass away. Those qualities are known by awareness, which is not itself male or female, old or young, tall or short. It has no nationality, no shape, no age.

That which is true with respect to ‘time’ and ‘self’ is also true for ‘location’ – awareness is unlocated – so when Ajahn Sumedho said, ‘In actual fact there is nobody going anywhere, there are just conditions changing,’ it punctured the self-based attitude of ‘me going somewhere.’ Furthermore, even though what we experience is ‘this mind’s version of the world,’ it is never truly ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘mine’. When fi gures of speech are used, such as ‘The world that we experience is our version of the world,’ (as above) they should always be understood in the light of this insight into ‘not-self’ (anattā).

IDENTITY , TIME AND LOCATION

The mind creates images of past and future, perceptions of ‘me’ passing through time and space. I have been ‘here’ for the past week; I will go ‘there’ in the future. Past, present, and future – the sense of ‘I’, the sense of place or location – the more we reflect on the nature of experience, of the arising and passing of the world as it happens (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, thoughts, imaginings), the more clearly we see that it all happens HERE and NOW.

Where is the past? Where is the present? Where is the future? Where is ‘here’? They all take shape within the space of awareness. Wherever we have been throughout our whole life, it has always been exactly ‘here’ – whether it was Malaysia, Sri Lanka, America, England, Thailand. Wherever we have been, whatever the date was on the calendar, it was always ‘now’ as it was being experienced. This mind is the nexus, the centre of experience. The universe is known in the mind; this mind is intrinsically the centre of the universe. There are perceptions of a ‘me’ passing through time and space but those perceptions arise, take shape, and are known here and now.

Memories, ideas, emotions, decisions – they are all known here and now. But, most of the time, we don’t realize that all our everyday assumptions, all our ideas about where we are and where we are going, are based upon habits of perception, self-view, attachment to experience, identif i cation with the body and personality: with identity, time and location.

Ajahn Chah used to present people with the riddle: ‘If you can’t go forward, can’t go back, and can’t stand still, where can you go?’ People would be a bit bewildered, their thinking minds frustrated: ‘What a weird question!’ As long as the mind identif i es with the body, with the personality, with time and space as absolute realities, there is no solution to the puzzle. But when the mind lets go of identif i cation with individuality, with time, with place, then the puzzle solves itself. When the mind awakens to its own quality of self l ess, timeless, unlocated awareness, then that knowing – the awakened awareness – is clarif i ed. The conundrum is solved as the mind stops identifying with time, individual identity and three-dimensional space – it is simply awakened knowing, buddho. As Ajahn Chah would explain:

The Buddha-Dhamma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This … is your place of non-abiding.

AJAHN CHAH, QUOTED IN THE ISLAND, P 164, (2020)

In the collection of Suttas called the Udāna, the Buddha likewise says:

There is that āyatana, that sphere of being, where there is … neither a moving forwards, nor a moving backwards, nor a standing still. Neither an arising, nor a disappearance .... This, indeed, is the end of suffering.

(UD 8.1)10

This is the principle Ajahn Chah was pointing to.

The mind is present, it is awake, it knows. This knowing is profound, immeasurable, unfathomable, and aware, but it is not a person, not within a realm of time, not situated in a location. This awake, aware quality is an attribute of Dhamma. As is recounted in the daily reflections on Dhamma:

Sabbe dhamma anattā (Both the created and the Uncreated are not-self); the Dhamma is sandiṭṭhiko (apparent here now), and akāliko (timeless).

The mind, in its essence, is Dhamma. It is not a person, although it knows personality, and all personal qualities, as they arise and pass. It is not female or male, although it knows femininity and masculinity. It is neither agitated nor calm, although it knows those feelings. It is not outside or inside, liking or disliking, but it knows those perceptions. The mind is Dhamma, aware, awake.
The Buddha arises from the Dhamma. If Dhamma is the substance of mind then Buddha, awakened awareness, is its function. Ajahn Chah also described the relationship thus:

At present, the Buddha, the real Buddha, is still living, for he is the Dhamma itself, the ‘saccadhamma’. And ‘saccadhamma’, that which enables one to become Buddha, still exists. It hasn’t fled anywhere! It gives rise to two Buddhas: one in body and the other in mind.

‘The real Dhamma,’ the Buddha told Ānanda, ‘can only be realized through practice.’ Whoever sees the Buddha, sees the Dhamma. And how is this? Previously, no Buddha existed; it was only when Siddhattha Gotama realized the Dhamma that he became the Buddha, if we explain it in this way, then he is the same as us. If we realize the Dhamma, then we will likewise be the Buddha. This is called the Buddha in mind or ‘nāma dhamma’.11

THE INTERSECTION OF TIMELESSNESS AND TIME

When the mind, the heart, awakens and embodies its own nature, then there is a profound peace. This peace does not arise from ‘something’ that has been agitated and then stops being agitated. This peace is of a whole different order – a peace based on self l essness, timelessness, freedom from location. The Buddha taught, ‘Bhavanirodho nibbānaṃ’ (A 10.7), which means, ‘The cessation of becoming is Nibbāna.’ Or as Hui Neng said:

In this moment, there is nothing that comes to be.
In this moment, there is nothing that ceases to be.
Thus, in this moment, there is no birth and death to be brought to an end.12

‘Cessation of becoming’ doesn’t mean stopping in our tracks. It doesn’t mean that we stop breathing or that we freeze while moving, as if we were playing ‘grandmother’s footsteps’. This ‘cessation’ doesn’t mean the ceasing of something that exists in time. Rather, it is the recognition of the timeless presence, the suchness (tathatā), that underlies the flow of perceptions, the recognition of the space within which all perception, feeling, thought, choice and action take place.

Even as the body breathes, that which knows the breath is not moving. Even as the body moves, that which knows the body is ever-present, totally ‘here’, outside of the world of movement and time. The ‘cessation of becoming’ is the heart attuning to the ever-present, selfless, timeless, non-located quality of Dhamma. In his Four Quartets, TS Eliot called it ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time.’13 This is what the Buddhist meditator is doing, attending to the point of intersection of the timeless with time.

As the body moves, there is a stillness.
As thoughts and words arise and pass, there is a stillness.
As sounds are heard, there is a silence behind them.
As forms arise and pass away, there is a space in which those forms appear.

That said, it should be understood that this kind of stillness is not just referring to a moving thing that has frozen in its tracks; this silence is not merely an absence of noise; this spaciousness is not simply a gap between objects – rather these are figures of speech to indicate qualities of the Dhamma, which is Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed.14 It is the noumenal, transcendent reality that is the integrative principle underpinning the experience of all phenomena. Dipping back into the realm of theoretical physics for a moment, I feel this timeless, measureless reality is exactly what David Bohm is referring to when he spoke of ‘the implicate order’ and when he wrote: (...)

Conversely, the unawake mind chases after likes and dislikes. It identifies with self and other, gets caught up in wanting, fearing, hating, hoping. The degree to which the mind is unawake is the degree to which peace is obscured and inaccessible to the heart. The unawake mind ties itself to the agitated, the turbulent, the divisive.

So we’re invited to open our heart to the world and realize the quality of awakened awareness and timeless presence. Even as we go places, take on personæ, engage in activities, and make choices, the mind, the heart, doesn’t need to be doing these things in order to be fulfilled, complete or actualized.

Fulfilment comes from the mind knowing its own nature. The heart is already the Dhamma, so what more is there to get or to do in order to complete the Dhamma? The only truly desirable thing is to be what we are already.

During each day, as the minutes tick by and the sun rises, peaks and descends, the moon comes and goes, we can explore the feelings of becoming someone, going somewhere, doing something. We can awaken to the stillness within which all movement occurs, hear the silence that permeates all sound, be aware of the space within which all forms take shape. There is movement but nobody going anywhere. There is action, but no ‘thing’ being done, no ‘one’ who is doing it. There are choices and decisions, but no person who is deciding. There is the heart, responsive to time, place, situation; there is the ease of peacefulness embodied in awareness.

Mind Is What Matters
The Phenomenological Approach of the Buddha
Ajahn Amaro