Yogi: I was happy to be aware of the nature of thinking mind, and that relaxes me a bit. And, I could be aware of walking; then the thoughts and agitation would come back again and again. It feels like I’m going in circles.
Sayadaw: It’s not again and again – it’s new, new.
The thinking process is always new. The thoughts, the concepts, are old, but the reality, the process, is new.
Yogi: If it’s new, I could be curious about it.
Sayadaw: Life is always new – there’s really nothing old.
Everything you know in the present moment is something that you have never known before.
You’re struggling with it because you think that it’s happening again and again. If you’re interested in the nature of what is happening now – this is happening now and this is happening now – then it’ll be different.
If you think about concept versus nature, the mind is arising now, the story which sounds the same is a concept, but this mind is new every moment.
Our memories – we have memories when we were children – are concepts, that is why they feel old, but the mind that is having the memories is new and is only happening now.
Yogi: How can we use this information for increasing wisdom?
Sayadaw: There’s no magic bullet – I’m telling you things that sound interesting because I have done the work and the work is the 3 yogi jobs of having right view, being mindful and continuing to be mindful with right view.
It’s so simple and you just have to keep doing that.