19 uc - how to satisfy the MIND that constantly wants to know anything?

[masami]

hmmm… the mind, strange creature,
going wild these days because of a new love relationship in my life.
so i asked:

how to satisfy the MIND that constantly wants to know anything?

answer:
19 unchanging

the hex as an image looks like a pot.
put the mind in the pot?
or the mind is the pot?
i am water…

bruce lee:
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water.
Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle,
it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

but i still don`t know what to do with the mind?
let it ask all the questions till it is bottoming out?
quite annoying to the mind itself...

any ideas in regard to this question and 19 uc are welcome.
thank you and have a nice weekend!
masami

 

[1eleven]

This reminds me of "No water, no moon"? Have you read that? PM me if you can't find it and I'll send it over.

Nice reference to Bruce Lee.

Can you shift from a container that can be drained to a perpetual spring?

Thoughts are thoughts... they'll come and go. Are you ok with letting them arrise and fall away? No need to engage with them. Allow higher level thoughts to replace the weak King.

Hope this helps!

 

[masami]

dear 1eleven,

thank you for the book reference… is it osho? i did not read it.
right now i am very much into adyashanti on youtube and retreats.

to know what you are and to embody it … for me there is still a difference.
my mind is like a wild puppy these days …
and i was just curious how to deal with that.

and yes it helps

any other advises are welcome too.

 

[1eleven]

adyashanti is always fascinating. I love the "Gift of Wanting" and own a few of his audios.

Yes, no water, no moon is by Osho.

"to know what you are and to embody it … for me there is still a difference."

Is there a difference? What are you? That's a question adyashanti often asks. WHAT are you.. not WHO.

Once you realize the answer to that, you'll find the answer to what you need to embody. I'll give you a hint... it's one word.

How much traction does a wild puppy get on a tile or wood floor? That's the same amount of traction you should give to those thoughts. Let them go, and back off. Where is the wild puppy trying to get to? Could there be a better way?

 

[masami]

yes ... but when i am everything, literally, i need to embrace everything.
even the crazy mind.

i just put it in my heart.
i don`t know, man ... or woman, 1eleven.

... and don`t tell me i am nothing... because i was diving there for 3 years.
and now i am quite happy to experience LIFE again.
but overwhelmed often.

 

[1eleven]

Can nothing be everything? Can everything come from nothing?

Again, thoughts are thoughts and your feelings arise from those. Lean into the ones that you want to feel. Drop everything else.

1eleven (man)

 

[sooo]

my mind is like a wild puppy these days …
and i was just curious how to deal with that.

Love the comparison. Exercise, discipline, affection, is how to deal with a pup. Humans are usually more complicated because compulsions vary more widely, but basically we're not much different.

It's traditionally called monkey-mind.

monkey mind, from Chinese xinyuan and Sino-Japanese shin'en 心猿 [lit. "heart-/mind-monkey"], is a Buddhist term meaning "unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable". In addition to Buddhist writings, including Chan or Zen, Consciousness-only, Pure Land, and Shingon, this "mind-monkey" psychological metaphor was adopted in Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, poetry, drama, and literature. "Mind-monkey" occurs in two reversible four-character idioms with yima or iba 意馬 [lit. "thought-/will-horse"], most frequently used in Chinese xinyuanyima 心猿意馬 and Japanese ibashin'en 意馬心猿. The "Monkey King" Sun Wukong in the Journey to the West personifies the mind-monkey. Note that much of the following summarizes Carr (1993).

Wiki

 

[newlife123]

Hex 19 means that you need to use meditation to quiet the mind.

 

[masami]

thank you sooo and newlife123.
i am already meditating every day.
but i do not want to quiet my monkey mind...
its to rude somehow.
i want to BE with it.

 

[anemos]

any ideas in regard to this question and 19 uc are welcome.
thank you and have a nice weekend!
masami

from 19 : so the sage sustains and cares for all people and excludes no part of humanity.

humanely ?

 

[ginnie]

I think hex 19 unchanging is an invitation from the I Ching to Approach the oracle with any questions you might have brewing inside you . . . that there would be benefit in doing so.

 

[sooo]

Exercise, discipline, affection.

Really!

anemos
so the sage sustains and cares for all people and excludes no part of humanity.

The sage may care for all sentient beings, but only the sincere can recognize and receive it. There's no obligation to a sage or anyone else to be an enabler.

 

[anemos]

from 19 : so the sage sustains and cares for all people and excludes no part of humanity.

humanely ?

humanely - to me- means to accept that what happens to the fall-in-love mind -as masami described- is a part of human condition. That maybe is helpful ; instead climbing on the monkeys back and search for answers or chase it and the questions it asks . Accept the fact and just watch the monkey while sitting next to the sage eating pop corn and drinking soda. Watching the situation from that chair/perspective for some seems helpful, it loses its power on ourselves. Most of the times the saying "what you resist it persists" holds truth.

I associate 19 with the word under-stand. Like the Earth stands in that hex. I don't associate Wilhelm's commentaries and specifically what you quoted with anything enabling.

Understanding why happens might be a cure for the cause; what the monkey does , it seems to be the symptoms. In a previous thread the 19 person as curator (wikipedia : from Latin: curare meaning "take care") has been discussed and personally I liked it.

 

[sooo]

How to satisfy this monkey mind was the nature of the question. I'm saying a monkey mind can not be satisfied. Therefore to satisfy it means to exercise it (use it in constructive ways, not always something to be cured or done away with), by disciplining it, so you control the monkey and not vice verse, and finally to show affection, so that there can be a working symbiosis between monkey mind and the overseer of the monkey mind. But it's a mistake to think the monkey mind can progress on its own, chasing after satisfaction. Hindu tales are replete with havoc and defeats, led by the Monkey King.

The earth embraces the lake, sets boundaries, and determines its landscape. A lake is always lower than the earth, and by physics must obey her laws, as a young daughter follows her mother's leadership. (I do not see 19 as a male type god looking down, but as a mother (earth) caring for her youngest daughter (lake).

Curiosity is a wonderful thing, but timing is what 19 relies on. If the work to be done goes ignored, there will be no harvest, regardless how rambunctious the monkey is.

 

[masami]

ahhh sooo
thats really beautifully said.

like anemos put it:
it is OK to be human... mothering this old senile lady of a mind is probably the best thing to do.

big thanks to all!

 

[qafinaf]

Hi Masami,

This is a charming question and a charming answer for me.

I think what you mean by your question is that your mind is eager to know so many things and maybe you're overwhelmed because it seems like there's an endless number of things to learn. How to satisfy a mind that is so eager? Is that your question?

19. Approach

Outwardly there is earth, receptivity, devotion.
Inwardly there openness, sharing, pleasure, the joy of sharing ideas.

The hexagram describes a great one who is endlessly willing to teach.

Are you the one who approaches the teacher? Or are the teachings approaching you?

I love the idea of the universe as a great teacher who will teach us whatever we want to learn. Just approach with a willingness to learn and an openness to the lessons. Lately, I've wondered if the I Ching works because of this quality of the universe. That it's intelligent and interactive. And that a question sent out will be answered if you find a common language. (What is the universal language?)

But in the 8th month, the good fortune of approach moves onward. I wonder if this means that knowledge is pleasing to acquire but it's only good up to a point. Then maybe we outgrow it. Or we get interested in something else. Or we forget it. So we seek something else to learn.

There's always more to learn until we give up our questions and searching.

Good luck!

John

 

[peter2610]

I would suggest that the first step is to recognize that the mind can be our strongest asset but also our weakest danger. Clearly, a sustained thought-process can be extremely beneficial if it is carefully monitored, especially at the incipient stage, however if it is not monitored, but pursued in error, fervently and impatiently then the results can be disastrous. This is why the I Ching has given you Hexagram 19, Overseeing, as your answer. It has not given you a moving line which means that it wants you to contemplate this hexagram as a general principle, rather than any specific aspect.

This hexagram represents the restoration and growth of positive yang energy. In order to accomplish this the yang energy has to carefully negotiate the yin energy, knowing when to advance, when to abide, when to seek firmly, when to await the proper time. If you allow the mind to attempt to forcibly dominate regardless of appropriate timing or measure it will surely fail. It is important to know how to not-know, how to abide in a situation that you regard as incomplete. If you allow the mind to constantly insist on knowing everything, that will instill within you a sense of inadequacy which will eventually transmit to the other person. Similarly, it is important not to allow your thoughts to move towards any false assumptions such as the view that you know every aspect of this person or the situation, such an approach would be indicated by hexagram nineteen’s third yin.

If you can thus oversee and begin to control the mind to some degree you should eventually begin to witness a growing sense of inner clarity, as the consummate/complete relationship between fourth yin and first yang becomes increasingly emergent. The balanced wholeness of one’s mind-path becomes more and more established. This does not mean that you suddenly know everything, it simply means that you become increasingly aware that it is not necessary to know everything. The sincere acceptance of emptiness produces abundant fulness.

At fifth yin one’s awareness of the entire process becomes firmly consolidated. True yin and yang converge, producing essence. By accepting emptiness (not-knowing) the mind loses its dependence upon the relative and receives the clarity of essence - by not clamoring for every dependent factor, one receives the wisdom of the whole - the very essence of overseeing. The Zhi Gua for fifth yin is Hexagram 60, Limitation, the primary process in fulfilling fifth yin, and the hexagram as a whole.

Top Yin: Attentive overseeing is good and blameless. Having no relationship of correspondence with third yin, one might expect top yin to simply fade away, without any impact upon the situation, but, in keeping with the meaning of the hexagram as a whole, it turns its focus inwardly and is attentive to maintaining the process taking place within the lower lines. One aspect of the lower, internal trigram, Tui, is that of disintegration but if a moving line is received at top yin it produces the resultant hexagram, the Zhi Gua, Hexagram 41, Sun, representing a decrease or restriction of any disintegration and the sustained maintenance of the Overseeing Process.

 

[masami]

dear peter2610,

at first that was quite technically to me... but after a few times it makes sense.
thank you

masami