Tuere Sala, a seasoned Dharma teacher and former prosecutor, shares her insights on managing overthinking through meditation. She emphasizes that thoughts aren't our enemies but rather natural occurrences to navigate. Sala offers practical strategies to redirect attention from negativity and underscores how recognizing thoughts as sensory experiences can enhance mindfulness. The conversation explores the relationship between identity and thoughts, advocating for self-compassion and living in the present to free ourselves from habitual patterns.
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insights INSIGHT
Thoughts in Meditation
Thoughts are not the enemy in meditation, they're natural and will always arise.
The goal is to change your relationship with thoughts, not eliminate them.
insights INSIGHT
Thinking as a Sense Door
Thinking is a sense door, like seeing or hearing, a way to receive data.
We get caught obsessing over thoughts, unlike other senses.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Awareness of Thinking
The key is to be aware of your thinking, not to stop it.
Shift your attention from thoughts to other senses, like seeing or tasting.
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Thoughts are not your enemy in meditation. If you’re getting distracted while you meditate, that’s not necessarily a problem. Thoughts are natural. They’re always going to come. The point is not to clear the mind and to magically eradicate all thinking, the point is to have a different relationship to your thoughts.
When we’re not mindful of our thoughts, they march into the room, tell us what to do, and we act them out, reflexively, habitually and automatically— like puppets on a string. Our guest today, Dharma teacher Tuere Sala, is going to talk about how to cut the strings of what can often be a malevolent puppeteer.
Sala is a Guiding Teacher at Seattle Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Retreat Center. She’s a former prosecutor who has practiced Vipassana meditation for over 30 years and is especially focused on bringing the dharma to nontraditional places. She is a strong advocate for practitioners living with high stress, past trauma and difficulties sitting still.
In this episode we talk about:
Why we get caught in our thinking
Understanding that our thoughts are not who we are
How to direct our attention away from negative thoughts
How the idea of permanency causes suffering
Using thinking itself as the object of our meditation
Noticing mind states
Relative reality vs. ultimate reality
The eight states of mind and their felt sense in the body