Befriending Your Mind

Phakchok Rinpoche offered a public talk in October 2024, in Bangkok, Thailand. In this short session, Rinpoche shared key points about befriending and understanding our minds. He began by explaining that if we want our heart to have peace, we have to have peace in the mind. We have to cure our own minds. Fixing the mind fixes everything.

How do we fix the mind? It is not enough, Rinpoche points out, to learn some information. That alone won’t do the job. Instead, we need to commit to practicing the methods that bring about transformation. And this is often difficult for us because we don’t like to commit to practice. Rinpoche admits that all of us have this tendency. He uses the example of his own dislike for physical exercise. But if we can make a rule for ourselves that we will definitely commit to practicing for 30 minutes a day for one or two years, then we will have developed a habit that we can continue easily.

In this talk, Rinpoche discusses three major points:

1. Dealing with Feelings
2. Dealing with Emotion
3. Dealing with Mind

We can deal with our feelings by learning to cultivate a sense of contentment. Instead of taking our feelings so seriously, we can remind ourselves repeatedly that we are happy and content with what we have.

The cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion ( Pali terms: metta and karuna) helps us to deal with emotions. Here, Rinpoche introduces a method of uniting our words and our minds with a physical gesture of giving and taking. This process derives from traditional teachings but allows us to feel our hearts opening in a more immediate way.

When we work with our minds, we practice meditation by uniting the breathing with the mind. Focus on the breath is common to all Buddhist traditions as a useful method for calming the mind. Here, Rinpoche uses the Pali term Anapanasati which means mindfulness of the breath. We can begin practicing meditation by using these breath-focused meditation methods to bring calmness to our mind. And calmness allows us to eventually rest easily without meditation. With time, we can learn to trust our mind, our heart, and our practice wholly and decisively.

Rinpoche reminds us that this process is not really complicated at all. But we still need to develop the habit. We need to practice, to non-judgmentally observe our mind and our behavior, and to trust that we can transform. Our biggest problem is that we don’t do the practice.

Rinpoche concludes the session by answering audience questions. Many of these questions are common to other practitioners, so we believe you can benefit from hearing the answers.

Additional Teachings

Phakchok Rinpoche also taught for two days in Bangkok on key elements from Gampopa Sonam Rinchen, or Dakpo Rinpoche’s key text. In English, this text is most frequently translated as The Jewel Ornament of Liberation. These teachings will soon be available to Samye Institute patrons.

Other introductory teachings from Phakchok Rinpoche are available at Samye Institute. Please follow this link to teachings on the Path of Dignity. If you are interested in following a structured approach to meditation, based on the classical Indian and Tibetan Mahamudra teachings, you may wish to investigate Phakchok Rinpoche’s recently released Mahamudra Level One course.