Resistance

I'd like you for a moment just to picture a scene. I'd like you to imagine that there's a car passing in front of you, and it's going incredibly slow. So I mean, slower than walking pace. You could safely step out into the road. It's not gonna hit you. You could just walk. Go right past it, not gonna cause you a problem. Now, say you stepped out in front of the car and you see the car coming towards you. And I don't know. Maybe you don't like the type of car it is, maybe you don't like the color of the car. It doesn't really matter what the reason is, but for some reason you decide you're not gonna let that car pass. Now the car inches kind of closer and closer towards you until eventually you have your hands on the bonnet and you're pushing now against this car. It might be moving slowly, but the car is probably quite a bit sort of heavier than you. (laughs) Probably got a bit stronger. The more the car sort of edges forward, the more the tension starts to increase. You're pushing harder and harder and all of a sudden, kind of there is this, I don't know, feeling that it is just too much. There's no way you can push anymore. If we think about how this applies to the mind and how it applies to resistance. So, everything has its own momentum. Sometimes it's a very slow car like that. Sometimes the car's flying past. It doesn't matter whether it's a thought or a feeling. Everything has its own momentum. And the moment we step in the way, we get in the way, we create some degree of resistance or tension or conflict. Whatever you want to call it. And sometimes we can hold out for just a short while and it's when we just get exhausted (laughs) and other times people kind of engage in resistance and pushing thoughts away for not just years, but for decades and lifetime. So, as much as possible, I think if we can remember that idea of pushing against the car, really resistance is quite futile. The car's gonna move past us. Now if we imagine, instead of pushing against the car, we simply just step out of the way of it. The car passes by and before long it's out of sight. We don't even see it anymore. Essentially we've let go of it. So, if we work with the mind in the same way, we may not like every thought and feeling that arises in the mind, but that's not the point of doing this practice. The point of this practice is to see the mind clearly. Is not to try and sort of in a prescriptive way project what we want it to be or what we think it should be or what others think it should be. That's not what this is about. This is...