An Episode for Overthinkers | Tuere Sala

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2022

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thoughts are not your enemy in meditation. If you’re getting distracted while you meditate, that’s not necessarily a problem. Thoughts are natural. They’re always going to come. The point is not to clear the mind and to magically eradicate all thinking, the point is to have a different relationship to your thoughts.

When we’re not mindful of our thoughts, they march into the room, tell us what to do, and we act them out, reflexively, habitually and automatically— like puppets on a string. Our guest today, Dharma teacher Tuere Sala, is going to talk about how to cut the strings of what can often be a malevolent puppeteer.

Sala is a Guiding Teacher at Seattle Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Retreat Center. She’s a former prosecutor who has practiced Vipassana meditation for over 30 years and is especially focused on bringing the dharma to nontraditional places. She is a strong advocate for practitioners living with high stress, past trauma and difficulties sitting still.

In this episode we talk about:

Why we get caught in our thinking
Understanding that our thoughts are not who we are
How to direct our attention away from negative thoughts
How the idea of permanency causes suffering
Using thinking itself as the object of our meditation
Noticing mind states
Relative reality vs. ultimate reality
The eight states of mind and their felt sense in the body
And Sala’s definition of true liberation

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/tuere-sala-507

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast.
0:06.8	I'm Dan Harris.
0:08.6	Hey, hey, everybody.
0:12.0	I am about to say something that I have said many, many, many times.
0:16.3	However, it is the kind of thing you actually need to hear many, many, many times because
0:21.5	we seem to be programmed to forget it.
0:24.9	Here it is.
0:27.4	Are not your enemy in meditation.
0:30.2	If you get distracted when you meditate, that is not necessarily a problem.
0:33.6	Thoughts are natural.
0:35.1	They're always going to come.
0:36.9	The point is not to clear your mind to magically eradicate all thinking that's impossible,
0:42.6	although I guess it might happen for some of us in rarefied states of meditation.
0:47.8	But for most of us mortals, the point is not to stop thinking it's to have a different
0:51.2	relationship to the thinking.
0:54.6	The great meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, has a fantastic wrap about how we usually relate
0:58.6	to our thoughts when we are in our normal, mindless state.
1:02.4	They're like tiny dictators, he says, when we're not mindful of our thoughts, they march
1:06.0	into the room, tell us what to do, and we act out the thoughts reflexively, habitually,
1:10.1	automatically.
1:11.1	We're like puppets on a string.
1:12.8	Today, we're going to talk about how to cut the strings of what can often be a malevolent
	...

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