Inner Listening 2

We tend to think of the mind as being in the body. Actually we’ve got it wrong: the body is rather in the mind. Everything that we know about the body, now and at any previous time, has been known through the agency of our mind. This doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a physical world, but what we can say for certain is that the experience of the body, and the experience of the world, happen within our mind.

It’s all happening here. And when that here-ness is truly recognized and woken up to, the world’s externality, its separateness ceases. When we realize that we hold the whole world within us, its thing-ness, its other-ness has been checked. We are better able to recognize its true nature.

If you focus on the inner sound and then simply reflect, recollect that “The world is in my mind. My body and the world are here in this space of awareness, permeated with the sound of silence,” this will eventually bring about a shift of vision. By holding things in this way, you suddenly find your body, the mind and the world all arriving at a resolution; there is a realization of orderly perfection. The world is balanced within that heart of vibrant silence.

This reflection by Ajahn Amaro is from the book, Inner Listening, pp. 26-27.