Understanding the Mind: Characteristics and Defilements : หน้า 42/164

the third is thought or conceptualization, and the fourth is wisdom, or merging this new awareness into our pool of accumulated knowledge we already have stored. “War and conflict, of course, are wrong states to be in, in every one of these spheres: perception, memorization, thinking, and knowing. But how do we change this? By keeping our mind pure at all times! But in order to keep our mind pure, we have to meditate, and in order to receive the most benefit from meditation, we have to know with what we are dealing. What is the mind? “What are the characteristics of the mind, so that we know how to keep it pure? There are thirteen general characteristics: (1) The mind does not have a physical form like our human body, but is a more subtle and refined form of a bright sphere, (2) It can think only one thought at a time and perceive only one feeling at a time (unlike brain thinking where we can simultaneously recognize two or more thoughts at the same time), (3) It is born with a body and must reside in a body because once the mind leaves the body, the body will die, (4) It likes to travel fast and far [Note: Here Luang Por referred to the speed of light traveling so far and fast, but our mind is even faster, which is incredible!], (5) the mind is very difficult to see and behold, but it can still be done, (6) it can switch from thinking and non-thinking faster than one finger snap; in fact, over one million times per second, (7) If the mind wanders, it is very difficult to get it back on track again, so it is best to keep it from wandering, (8) the mind tends to want to think of the very thing that it is not supposed to be thinking of – like sensual pleasures, (9) it is difficult to control, like a monkey jumping from one branch to another, (10) it is difficult to maintain in goodness, because it is easily distracted and habituated to negativity, (11) It is difficult to stop thinking thoughts, (12) it is self-illuminating but it tends to lose this as we grow and age, and (13) it can be trained endlessly … indefinitely. “But there is a missing piece to the puzzle – A big caution! The mind is under the influence of what we have called kilesa, or defilement, and that means, that we tend to think what we should not be thinking. This causes us to switch from one thought to another very quickly, rarely finishing the previous thought. And, we tend to allow our mind to become more dark and more coarse as we age. “So what, you may ask, is defilement? Well, defilement is a kind of refined filthy element. It is manifested in the mind since our birth, just like sediment as it settles in the water bowl. The more defilement we have, the darker our mind will become. It is like an eternal enemy of the mind, just like rust is to steel, or disease is to the body. The threats