"A Mind without Divisions" with Benjamin Hohl this Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion

This Sunday Benjamin Hohl will lead an exploration of “A Mind Without Divisions” based on Rodney Smith’s book, Touching the Infinite: A New Perspective on the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness. All are welcome! Registration and Zoom information available here.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 10, "The Third Foundation: Crossing the Divide:"

Thinking of ourselves as separate from reality, we set off to correct whatever errors the perceived reality is imposing. As we do, a firm division between reality and ourselves is created, all of it contained within our brain. In fact the sense-of-self is derived from the mind splitting into two. The sense-of-I is a mental idea formed out of the reaction that one part of the mind has with another part, and a mind divided against itself suffers. This contentiousness is an internal affair, but not seeing this internal argument, we project our struggle onto external conditions.

One of the consequences of this fact is that when we attempt to get out of duality we further trap ourselves within it. The very person trying to escape is being created in the escape attempt. By surrendering the person back into the whole of the mind, the division ends, and so does the need to escape. We can now begin to understand why meditation instructions on working with the mind do not involve quarrelsome solutions. “Awareness without judgment,” “let it be,” “add nothing to this moment,” and “nonresistance” are often posed as the best possible way through mental difficulties, since these are the paths of least resistance and do not contest the experience.

A unified mind is a mind without divisions, where the sense-of-self is folded into the normal workings of the brain. There are no stand-alone bystanders, no boundaries, and no discrete formations, since the forms of the world are perceived as intrinsically empty rather than laden with the burden of our mental responses…

The Buddha is suggesting we cease all arguments with the mind regardless of how it manifests.

With metta (loving-kindness),
Minneapolis Insight