We need to remind ourselves that the mind that we bring to meditation – the mind that is being aware – is not deluded, not greedy and not averse.
And all we need to do is check – we don’t have to correct it. We need to check to see how the mind that is being aware is doing its work. And it depends on whether we see what’s happening in our mind – sometimes we don’t notice and sometimes we do.
If we check often, we will begin to notice more and perhaps more often, if there are any spies in our mindfulness.
And it depends on where we are at any moment – our minds go from skillful to unskillful in various modes during the day; and in moments of skillfulness we might find it quite easy to detect these defilements in our minds; and just detecting it might correct it. But sometimes we can be in a state where we’re so zoned in to what we’re trying to observe that we don’t notice how we’re observing it – anything is possible.
This noticing of how we’re being mindful is important because when we start becoming blinkered, we’re becoming too invested in what we’re trying to observe – that’s greed; or we become averse or judgmental about our experience. We can become so blinkered because we think that we need to fix it. And when we don’t notice that that’s how we’re doing it, we keep on doing it; and we can go a whole day, sometimes days, just in that mode. So, please check.
And the other thing that can happen in these modes is that we use too much effort; so, just check whether we’re efforting and that will help us relax; relaxing the powers of those greed and aversion.
Not just greed and aversion, but delusion as well. When we don’t know something, and we start trying too hard to find out what’s going on, when we want something too much, we keep thinking we should be doing something. All these are signs that we’re beginning to try too hard; and the trying too hard means that greed, aversion or delusion is in there.