Vanessa Zuisei Goddard - Mind Training to Transform Your Thoughts with Meditation

Join Zen teacher Vanessa Zuisei Goddard as she explores effective mind-training techniques inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings. This video delves into the metaphor of the mind as a garden, emphasising the importance of choosing which seeds (thoughts and actions) to nurture and which to let dry up.

Learn practical methods to cultivate positive thoughts and how to address unskillful ones using a simple mnemonic: SWITCH (Switch, Warn, Ignore, Trace, Chop). Discover the power of persistence, patience, and the transformative potential of meditation.

Learn more about Vanessa Zuisei Goddard

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Transcript

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Welcome to Science and wisdom live, where scientists and meditators meet. Late Vietnamese teacher, techno Han, when he was speaking of the yoga Chara, he gave a very, very useful metaphor. He said, You know, so we think of the minus a gardener a garden. And we're the gardener. And we think of the choices, or the actions that we take as the seeds of our actions, then we can understand why it's so important to choose the seeds that we should water, and the seeds that we should let lie fallow, that we should lead dry up. Because those seeds will grow into strong life giving fruit or they will produce poison. And generally speaking, a seed is consistent with its fruit. So my first teacher used to say, imagine that you have two people. And you say to one Oh, and they're and their life conditions are generally similar. And you say to one of them, you are going to wake up every morning, and for a first hour, you're going to bring to mind and express everything that you're grateful for. And then the other person, you're going to wake up every morning, and for the first hour of your day, you're going to bring up and express everything that you are dissatisfied with everything that you're angry about. Everything that you need to complain about. And both of you are going to do this for a year, at the end of the year, who you want to hang out with. But we understand, we understand that what we think becomes how we act becomes who we are. And even though some part of us understands this, we often will choose harmful actions, expecting a good result. And so you could say that at one level this mind training is really it's very simple. It is first identifying the seeds, like what are they? What am I doing what am I choosing moment to moment day to day. And cultivate the ability to choose better to choose actions that benefit us that benefit others that benefit the earth. Because we cannot control what happens to us, when we cannot control the circumstances, we grow up in largely perhaps the colour of our skin, our gender, we're born with an ability a disability with a disability with an illness. But we can most certainly choose how to respond. This is the power of the human mind that we can understand that the more we nurture those helpful, skillful lifegiving seeds, the easier it becomes to do so. Right, if every moment I get up every morning, I get up meditate, it makes it that much more likely that the next day I will be able to do it. And the opposite is also true. The more days I skip just like if I let a plant dry up. The harder the longer we go, the harder it becomes to bring it back to life. Now the other thing about this analogy is that that the seeds also mature in their own time. Right, you can just go to a little sapling and pull it so that it will grow faster. It will mature in its time when it's ready for it to ripen. And so when I teach meditation to different groups, I say you know you need five things. In order to practice meditation. You need persistence, and you need patience. Patience, patience, patience. Because the fruit of those seeds that you're nurturing will ripen in their time. And all you can do is nurture them. All you can do is give them light, give them food, give them water. And so that seems simple, straightforward. But then of course, the question that should come up is, how do you work with those seeds that are not skillful, that are less than helpful? They're there. You know, you don't decide to become angry, something happens and anger arises. You don't decide to think to yourself every day, I'm worthless. know if that is what you have been told, if that is what you have learned. How do you shift? How do you work? How do you cultivate the seeds that will give you life because it's not enough to think positive, and is certainly not enough that the world and that our minds are not difficult places to live in. I think all of us who practice understand the first noble truth that life is suffering, that it is very challenging, to live as a human being to live well, and to live well with others. But this is what I love about the Buddhist teachings. Because they can show us that everything. Everything is workable, given enough time and enough care. And so there is a sutra, NaVi taka Santana SUTA relaxation of thoughts, in which the Buddha offers five different ways to work with what he called unskillful signs and unskillful signs and unskillful thought, and by thought, think also feelings, emotions, and even sensations. And these, although they're somewhat chronological, in terms of each one takes a little bit more energy a little bit more investment, it doesn't mean that you have to run every single unskillful sign through all five no symptoms, you know, the best antidote for a particular thought or stream of thoughts or particular habit of mind that you've learned to recognise in yourself. And in order to make it easier for me to remember this, I created a an acronym is called Switch. So the first is actually switch itself to switch an unskilful. One, and the sutra says this is like a carpenter who takes a peg to wedge out. It takes a smaller a finer peg to wedge out a course or one grosser one. And so if you are in the habit of thinking to yourself, self deprecating flaws, thoughts of self doubt or of of questioning your own worth, you would replace the practice would be to replace that unskillful fog with a skillful one. So every time you think I'm worthless, I can't do this. You notice the sign arising, and you're very deliberately, mindfully with awareness, say to yourself, I'm worth it. This is not fake it till you make it. It is a practice. It is a practice of, you know, if you've been marking a groove for 1020 3040 50 years, you're first switching and creating starting to create a different groove until you can see those groups don't actually exist. Fundamentally, they're empty of self nature. They're like fog. They have no power other than the power that we give them. But until you realise that for yourself, you switch from an unskillful thought to a skillful one. If that doesn't work, you warn yourself of the danger of such thoughts. And the the metaphor here is very graphic. The Buddha said is that as if you had a look courts have a dog, or have a person hanging around your neck. In this happen, you would be horrified, you would do everything that you could to pull it off. So this is where you actually you, you actually talk to yourself. And people are surprised because they think, Oh, I thought I was supposed to be quiet during meditation. But remember, here, you're actually very actively training your mind, you're engaging with your thoughts. And so you talk to yourself, you remind yourself, if every day I strengthen this seed of self doubt, I make it that much harder. To let it die out. I need to, to summon up my courage to begin to do something to try something else. Even if I don't feel like it, I can't yet relate to the thought that I am worth it. It doesn't matter that will come with time. So it's it morning myself away from continuing what harms me. The third is to ignore the unskillful thought it's, and it's simply to not give it airtime. So this is like the instruction of you see the thought you let it go and you come back to your breath. It doesn't mean to pretend that it's not there. It doesn't mean denying it. It simply means I will not feed this with my attention. And so if a thought is recurring, I will gather all my energy, I will gather all my focus my strength in I will bring it back perhaps to my breath, perhaps to a mantra, perhaps to a visualisation, something that anchors my attention. So it doesn't have the opportunity to feed the seed. The fourth is to trace the thought to its route. And this one takes a little bit of Oh, and I didn't say the simile for for the one before ignoring. It's basically the Buddha says, if somebody who didn't want to see a particular site, they just covered their eyes. Right? You know, you pass by a very gory accident on the road and you avert your eyes. And here, you know, as I said, it just needs to be applied carefully so that it doesn't become bypassing, it doesn't become denial. Then tracing the thought to its root, it's tracing it to its fundamental root. So it's not this happened because when I was a child, I was always told that it's it's, it's, as the simile says, if a person is walking, they suddenly think to themselves what why am I walking right now? What if I just stopped for a moment? And then when they're standing, they think, why am I standing? What if I just sit down and then from sitting down they went to lying down. So one sense they're going from, from a grocer posture to a more subtle one. And that as your your feeling more and more into the root of the thought, what do you find is that at its core, at its heart, there is nothing like which is what I mentioned before that at its root. This thought is empty and when you really see this, when you see it really see this directly in it says there's nothing else you need to do. Because the thought it just loses all its power. Because it has no substance. There's nothing there to believe nothing there to hold on to. So that's trace, and then the last one to chop the cut the thought at its root. This is the the pulling out all the stops. This is chopping off the phone with a sword of wisdom, the sword of Manjushri. And the summary here is a little unfortunate, but what it says is like is like a big guy knocking out a little guy, a weaker one. So I tend to not dwell on it. Excuse me out Am I really think of it more as the thing that will save my life? This is like the alcoholic thinking, what if I just have one drink? Chop at its root? You don't even argue. You don't try to negotiate with yourself. You don't try to convince yourself or anything. Immediately recognising the nature of this thought. You cut it. You cut it at its root, right? So switch, switch, warn, ignore, trace and chop