Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind
Wisdom NOTES | A Conversation with Shaila Catherine
Welcome to Wisdom NOTES: A short transcript summary capturing insights from my conversations on In Search of Wisdom. This edition comes from my interview with Shaila Catherine, the author of Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind.
Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind
In this episode, my guest is Shaila Catherine, the author of Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind. Shaila is a renowned meditation teacher and author of three books on concentration and insight meditation. She teaches meditation retreats worldwide and founded Bodhi Courses, an online dharma classroom. Shaila is the principal teacher for Insight Meditation South Bay, a center for mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom in Silicon Valley, California. You can learn more about Shaila’s work at shailacatherine.com.
In the conversation, we discuss:
Focus and concentration
Content of thoughts and the process of thinking
We explore five practical ways to work with your mind
The wisdom of contemplation and much more
Content of Thought and Process of Thinking
Wisdom Note #1: What is the difference between the content of our thoughts and the process of thinking?
Catherine explained: This is actually really important, and even just understanding this resolves issues with most thoughts, there are only a few pesky ones that have to that where we actually need the full arsenal of five strategies. Many thoughts we get entangled in because we don't recognize that there are thought, were so enamored with the story it's like being caught up in a movie or some kind of drama. And we take it to be reality.
So the first major step forward in this process is to be mindful of a thought as a thought. And the thought is not a static thing. It's a process, a dynamic process of thinking. It's a mental activity. So instead of getting lost in the content or the story, we now become mindful of the activity that is occurring, thinking is happening. And this changes the entire framework of how we work with the mind. If we're looking at the story, there's much that we can learn and grow from by unpacking some of the assumptions and the biases around the content, clarifying some things that are maybe memories that may or may not be accurate, because you know, they're always changing over time, each time we think something, it's a whole new event.
And it's never exactly the same as the previous time we thought it. So you can imagine having a thought or a memory arise, you know, 100 times is the last time you thought it exactly the same as the first time? No, usually not. It's a dynamic process. So we first need to really recognize the distinction between the content of the thoughts and the process. And though there can be some insight into, you know, basically why we react that way, or what actually happened, or who actually said, what and what was going on, there can be some understanding that's important around the content. So we don't need to entirely ignore the content. But the main orientation of meditative investigation is to look at our relationship to thinking and what are the underlying forces that keep fueling that thought. […]
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