When meditating, is it okay for the mind to move from thing to thing as long as you're mindful of and note each different thing?
Yeah, except it has the tendency to, if it's proactive, where one, you know, it has a tendency to become proactive, where one is looking for the next thing, waiting for the next thing, and then it becomes a cause for distraction and diffusion of one's concentration.
So we try to encourage a structured approach where you have your response, like if you look at it as a computer program, right?
When X arises, you deal with it.
In this case, you're mindful of it.
And then once it's finished, return to the rising and the falling, for example.
Our structure tends to be return to the rising and falling.
When something is finished, rather than allowing the mind to go to the next thing or choosing, if it becomes a choice, take the choice to come back to the rising and falling.
Don't wait for the next thing to come up.
If by the time you acknowledge one thing and it's gone,
something else is already there, then by all means you're welcome to, you know, it's not magic where if you do it right you're going to become enlightened.
It's an exploration of reality.
So the only problem with going from one thing to the next is that you wind up without a base.
not knowing what to do next, when nothing comes up, for example.
So the answer should always be come back to the rising and falling until the next thing arises, just for the purpose that it keeps your mind focused, it keeps your mind from getting lost and from giving rise to unwanted states of overexertion, you know, extreme energy where you become distracted and...
fluttered we were looking at the this this passage in the Yoganada Sutta where the what's it called Dhamma something Udacca the word I can't remember the word exactly Dhamma something Dhamma Dhamma I can't remember I forgot but it's it's
distraction that comes from meditation.
You know, you wind up meditating on all sorts of things and many different things come up and you wind up getting flustered in the meditation.
And so the Buddha said one way people become enlightened is by focusing their meditations.
They have good qualities of mind but they're not able to focus them properly because their mind is too diffuse.
try to be structured about it and always come back to a main object not forcing it back but when there's nothing left come back to the rising and falling