The “Letting-Go” Method for Quieting the Mind

A quiet mind is a mind that is not simply without verbal thinking, although that is a big part of it. Without verbal thinking means to stop talking in our heads about something irrelevant to the situation or repeating stories. It means not making comments about the other person or ourselves and not engaging in verbal worrying and complaining. It also means we have to quiet the mind of non-verbal irrelevancies. We have to stop running mental movies in our head, imagining all sorts of things that we would like to do with other people, as well as the mental movies about our previous interactions with them. 

Also, we need to quiet our minds of disturbing emotions that may come up. We are talking specifically about things like nervousness, anxiety, fear, insecurity, and so on that often interfere in how we pay attention to somebody and how we respond. These all need to be quieted down.

Of course, to quiet nervousness and anxiety is very difficult and requires, on the most effective level, very sophisticated methods. Here in the very beginning, we are going to use some very gentle methods. The sophisticated methods come later in the training. For now, we just want to be able to get started. 

In addition, we need to quiet the mind of things like sleepiness, dullness, boredom with whoever we are with, not feeling like being there, and so on. We need to try to let go of that while quieting our minds although the development of the caring heart will deal with that more specifically. This quiet mind is just one side of what we need, and it is very important to realize that it is only half. We are not in any way suggesting that a quiet mind alone is sufficient for developing sensitivity. It’s not. If we only have the “quiet mind,” we tend to be quite removed and uninvolved and that is not at all a sensitive response. 

The second half of what we need is a caring heart. In many languages, such as Spanish, we don’t have an exact equivalent of the English word “caring.” Therefore, this requires a bit of explanation. We are not talking about, as in Spanish, using the term for a “warm heart.” That is something else. This is also not an “open heart” and not about being worried about someone else, like the word preoccupado in Spanish. We are not talking about taking care of somebody like a nurse or a mother taking care of a child. Rather we are talking about taking care of ourselves and others and taking the effect of our actions seriously. When we take it seriously, we are interested, but not just like a scientist interested in a bug underneath a microscope. It is important to us and thus we are interested. This doesn’t necessarily entail a loving feeling. That is too strong. We are talking about the basis of love, not love itself. That is why the term “warm heart” is not appropriate here. 

An example will help clarify this. Someone comes up to us in the street and asks for directions. If we have the caring heart, we take them seriously and will answer. Without a caring heart, we just ignore them. However, once we take it seriously that this person has feelings just like we do, that this person is lost, we respond because we have respect for them. This is a human being; they are lost and they need directions. It is not even that we consider the person important or that we love the person or that we are worried about the person. I am not so sure of the connotation of the Spanish word for “seriously.” To take someone seriously in German, if we say that, it means something heavy. There is no humor there and it is very serious. Even if there is no precise Spanish word, that doesn’t matter. The important thing is to understand what we are talking about and then use whatever word comes closest. 

Because we have this caring heart, we don’t just observe what is going on with a quiet mind. We actually think about it and even if the correct action would be to leave the other person alone, which may be appropriate in some situations, this caring heart overcomes the fault of just looking at everybody around us like a movie going on that it is not real, or thinking that these aren’t real people with real feelings. Why don’t we think about this for a moment? Although we might be so extreme and consciously think that everything around is a movie, unconsciously how do we actually regard others? Do we regard them as real, in terms of having feelings just like we do or do we treat others like moving furniture around us? 

Although we are not doing the first exercise in the training, the exercise when we try to identify the imbalances that we have, still this is just sort of a little bit of a taste of that. The point is not to feel guilty about any of these imbalances. If we recognize that we have insensitivity or are oversensitive, then we will regard the training as relevant to ourselves. We won’t see it as just a little something we can learn because it is nice and pleasant, like learning how to weave baskets. 

For most of us, it is quite obvious that we don’t have a quiet mind. The fact that we don’t really have a caring heart or there is some imbalance is not so obvious. 

Let us focus on the first half of these two necessary legs, the quiet mind. Although Buddhism teaches many methods for quieting the mind as part of concentration teachings, we will focus on training on only three. We are not just using self-control. Instead, this is when we notice that our mind is wandering and we just bring it back. That requires quite a lot of background and maturity, but we are going to use three methods, the first of which is personally suggested by the Gelug/Kagyu tradition of mahamudra. The second is suggested by the dzogchen method and the third is suggested by the Karma Kagyu method of mahamudra. If those names are unfamiliar, fine. If they do mean something, then it’s good to have a context or an idea of where these methods are coming from.

The first method is the Gelug/Kagyu tradition of mahamudra. It describes the mind as being like the sky or space, and the various thoughts, verbal thoughts and images and so on to be like passing clouds in the sky. A cloud or a thought is not a fixed and permanent feature of the sky. All clouds pass. Rather than trying to hold on to the cloud, we need to let it go and let it pass. 

This can be done in many ways, but one way is to do this in conjunction with breathing. When we exhale, we imagine that various thoughts and so on leave us with the exhalation. We are breathing normally; it is not that there is a gale force or hurricane wind forcefully throwing the thought. It is not as if a little bug has flown up our nose and we want to get rid of it. Rather, our breath just leaves us very gently like a gentle breeze. In this traditional method, we notice that there is some distraction, and we breathe out. There is a slight pause and then we breathe back in. When there are no distractions, no verbal thoughts, or so on going on in our minds, then we just focus on another person, trying to do that with a quiet mind. We don’t focus on the breath at this point. We just breathe through this normal cycle of out-breath, pause, and in-breath, while focusing on somebody. If we notice a distraction, then we breathe it out with this cycle. Okay? 

First, with a “quiet mind,” we will practice by focusing on another person and then we will practice focusing on ourselves. When focusing on other people, first we will utilize pictures or thoughts of somebody, and then we will focus on a live person. Please bear in mind before we begin this that quieting the mind is not an easy task and it requires a tremendous amount of training. What we are using here with the first method is the gentlest method, and it may not be effective in certain situations. If it is not effective, then we would go to a stronger method, the second method. In any situation, we always try the gentlest method first. We don’t take antibiotics for a headache, for example. 

We have passed out a photocopied image of a woman. We are going to do all of our exercises in steps. Like using the computer, we have to follow a certain procedure to get into a program and a certain procedure to exit. Here our entry and exit procedure is to focus on the breath either while looking down at the floor or with eyes closed. 

• We start by focusing on the breath. We can just focus on the breath coming in and out of the nose, breathing normally without holding the breath on the in-breath, but following the method that is suggested in Western breathing therapy. This method is to have a slight pause on the out-breath, so we naturally breathe in more deeply without being forced. Naturally, we breathe in more strongly and more deeply, but we don’t do it in a forced way.  
• Then, we look at the picture of the woman. Hold it up, do not have it on the floor because then the head is looking down and can cause a bit of dizziness. 
• Any type of verbal thoughts or mental pictures that we might have such as imagining a whole scene of meeting this woman on the street and so on, just let them go. Breathe them out. Any type of verbal thoughts that we might have such as “Oh I wonder what kind of family she has,” that sort of thing, also let it go. 
• Likewise, any thoughts we might have about something totally unrelated to this woman like “I’m hungry” or whatever, let them go. 
• Just look at the woman with a quiet, open mind. To help us with this, as we need to remind ourselves, we can use the words “let go.” Don’t repeat it like a mantra but just occasionally as a reminder to let go.  
• Finally, we put the picture down and let the experience settle.   
• After the experience settles for a few minutes, we focus on the breath.

Do you have any comments or questions? Often what happens the first time we try an exercise like this is that we get a little bit of a shock that we have so much mental chattering and noise going on in our heads. This is not unusual; it is just we never noticed it or paid much attention to it before. I guess if we live on a busy street, if we never really paid attention to the number of cars that went by, then one day when we actually sat there and counted, we might think that there were more than usual. It isn’t that there are more; it’s just that we never looked at it before.

It seems that for a moment while trying to breathe out it is like I am watching my mind but suddenly realized I am supposed to look at the picture. For a moment it is just sharper and then it vanishes away. It is very confusing, like a lot of fuzz in my mind and I am very worried about breathing out. I focus on the breath and suddenly when I look at the picture, it is sharper. This is my experience.

That is natural. If we are thinking about something, then our attention isn’t fully on the person. Once we let go of that thought, then naturally we’re paying more attention, so it is more brilliant or clearer. While we are working on this, as we get further and further into this exercise, what we also have to let go of is paranoia about any extraneous thoughts that come up. One needs to let go of that as well, because if we have that paranoia, we are not paying attention to the other person. This is very delicate. How do we pay attention to what is going on? How can we be introspective without being paranoid? The main point is to focus on the other person. We are talking about when we are with somebody, and they are talking to us. The aim is to focus on what they are saying without having our minds thinking about something else and without just spacing out. The main focus is holding on to what we are hearing or what we are seeing. Then, of course, if something comes up, another thought, we notice that and let it go.

I found that it is very difficult not to judge any situation. The moment I saw the picture of the woman, I thought that she could be my mom. Thoughts came like “Where did she have her hair done? Where does she live?” or whatever. Focusing my attention only on the person is very difficult. I think if I could just focus on the person without all of those thoughts, this is what is meant by this exercise. I found it very hard.

This is exactly true. It is very difficult even with practicing the easiest situation of encountering someone we don’t know. We have this situation all the time. When we are in line waiting to check out and see other people, what is going on in our heads? Are we judging them, making up all sorts of stories and so on? Are we complaining in our minds about there being so many people in the line, wishing we could get our turn first and so on? Without being sensitive to other people or caring about others, we are not being open to quieting down.

What happened to me is that while I was looking at this woman, suddenly I felt tenderness towards her. I felt it like I could calm my mind, and then naturally this tender feeling arose. It was not little by little but very sudden.

Actually, this is something we work with in later exercises. As we calm down and quiet down, the natural talents and qualities of the mind and heart come forth and we can access them. One of them is this warmth and tenderness, but that comes later. This exercise of quieting down and letting go is just the basis that can lead to this type of access.

What was very interesting during this exercise is how my mind always finds ways of doing what it wants. For example, no matter what is going on, it always finds a way to take over. At this present moment in my life, I have a preoccupation with somebody and as I was looking at this woman I could not very easily stay there. For example, as I observed this woman’s face, some thoughts came up. Within several moments I was very distracted by the main preoccupation that is occupying my mind these last days. 

This is something which is a very important thing to try to notice and correct in our interactions and relations with others. Often somebody is going to remind us of somebody else. Then, the gross aspect would be that we start thinking of the other person. A more subtle one is that we project onto this person someone else and we expect that they will interact and respond in the same way as the other person. For example, the other person let us down and disappointed us, so this person is going to let us down and disappoint us as well. This is a projection. That is why we need to deconstruct all of this, as we will learn in later exercises. The first and simplest method is to let go. 

While doing the exercise, as soon as I started looking at this woman, I immediately started a description of her, such as “what a nice smile,” etc. I found it almost impossible not to do that. I was worried about how to stop that and wondered if I were able to see somebody and not describe the person, if it would be almost like viewing someone not like a human. How can we come to terms with not describing the person by appearance?  

The problem here is the confusion that to understand something we have to verbalize it. If I see you, I know that you are a woman. I don’t have to say in my head and describe how you are a woman. I don’t need to mentally verbalize, “This is a woman.” You can look at me and know that I am a man. You don’t have to say that in your head to know that, do you? Of course, this introduces a very profound and deep philosophical point. It is touching the surface of this problem which is to think that if we put it into words, if we verbalize it, it makes it “real.” We think that the verbalization itself makes it real. 

In Buddhist training, this is a point that we go very deeply into. We have to examine, does really make it real or not? It is the same issue if we can see ourselves in the mirror, does it make us real. Well, does it? People would have to constantly look at themselves. If someone touches us, if we can feel human physical contact, does that make us real? All this is also something that one has to investigate. However, that comes much later in the training.