What is mind? Mind consists of various thoughts, generated by our conditioned existence.
At the beginning, meditation, to an extent, is conceptualization. Sitting with closed eyes, trying hard to not to think of anything in particular – all those things that novice practitioners go through. What is crucial to remember is that the mind has brilliance. It has the potential to reveal itself when we continue on in our practice with perseverance.
What is mind? Mind consists of various thoughts, generated by our conditioned existence. Consider cinema as an example. A series of images run through the projector gate, and we are captivated by the live action on the screen. We are horrified, saddened, or overjoyed. The screen seems to dictate what we feel, yet the screen is just a screen, with light playing across its surface. Similarly in life, under certain conditions we are sad, and in others happy.
Our mind projects these emotions onto our environments and the people around us, so they seem to be pleasant, annoying, cruel, or kind, distorted by our own projections.
The mind has no specific association with any fleeting emotion. Just like the celluloid frames running through the projector, thoughts seem to dictate what we feel, but if we look closely, our experiences are constantly changing, and our emotional drama becomes believable only when we grasp to the fleeting emotional projections as real.