Hugh Byrne on April 13
Live Session Summary, Sunday, April 13, 2025: It was good to be with you for our live session today. The focus of the session was on working skillfully with our thoughts, rather than being lost in them.
Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from today’s Live session:
A focus of today’s talk was on how we work with mental proliferation—getting caught up in thoughts and mental narratives and suffering as a result. The term in the Pali language for this kind of ‘lost in thought’ mind is papanca and it is a lack of awareness wherein we are being led along by our thoughts.
The Buddha said, ‘What you frequently think about and ponder on becomes the inclination of your mind.’ So, when we get swept up in angry, fearful, or judgmental thoughts, this becomes the tendency or inclination of the mind when repeated often enough.
A saying attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson states, ‘Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.’ Repeated often enough, certain ways of thinking—and acting—become a default for us and we ‘become’ an angry or fearful person and we tend to create our destiny through what we repeatedly think and do.
It is not that we are inherently or inevitably an angry or fearful person, but rather that we have formed that character through repetition over time—we have trained our mind in these unhelpful habits and they become the inclination of our mind.
The way of turning these habits around and moving towards freedom is to simply observe the thoughts without judgment, and to choose not to follow them wherever they lead. In meditation we can come back to the breath and the body and open to what is present here and now—and when we become aware that the mind has moved into thought we return kindly and gently to the breath and body and begin again.
In these turbulent times we are living in it is easy to get swept up in worried, anxious, and fearful thoughts—What will happen if…? We can create fearful scenarios that cause us suffering but bear little connection with what is happening right here and now—they are usually tied to the future and things that ‘could’ or ‘might’ happen. A wise response is to notice this proliferation of thinking and to choose not to fuel it, not to follow the thoughts wherever they go, but to break the cycle by opening to what is alive and present here and now in the body, heart, and mind.
Viktor Frankl spoke of finding a space between stimulus and response and the freedom that comes from choosing our response wisely: ‘Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our ability to choose. In our ability to choose lies our growth and freedom.’ Connecting with that ‘space’ or gap we can consciously choose our response—and in choosing our response we have an opportunity to choose a response that leads to greater freedom and happiness rather than leading to more suffering.
I shared Dorothy Hunt’s lines: ‘Peace is this moment without judgment // This moment in the heartspace where everything that is is welcome’; The poem ‘Lost’, which is based on an American Indian elder story and rendered into English by David Waggoner; and Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi’s poem ‘There was a time when I would reject those who were not of my religion.’
Wishing you a good week ahead and I look forward to seeing you next Sunday, April 20 at 9am eastern for our next live session. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
