The Secret of the Golden Flower
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- The Secret of the Golden Flower involves ‘turning the
mind around’. It was passed by word of mouth in China for more than 2000 years. It
was written down during a crisis about 200 years ago and has drawn together the
fundamental teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Thomas Cleary’s 1991
translation makes this down to earth teaching readily available to the English speaking
world.
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- Most people grow up to conform with the social life of their
time and place. Such people think, but they rarely think about thinking and they do not
immediately feel that thought can be controlled. Because of this surface level thinking,
they suffer a lot.
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- Such people are like those who buy a motor car based on the
colour of the seats and the cuteness of the stripes along the side. The ‘surface
frills of thought’.They may also know about the accelerator pedal and the brake but
they don’t know how the engine works. The ‘deep mind’.
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- To know how the engine works, look inside the bonnet to see
the different parts. To understand your own deep mind, turn your attention from thoughts
about surface frills and focus instead on how and why your are thinking those thoughts.
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- To know the deep mind it is necessary to interrupt that
pattern of thought which focuses on the surface frills. This involves noticing what is
being noticed and thinking about thinking. Where did that thought or feeling come from,
what does it look like at the moment, where will it go to when it is replaced by another?
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- In time, through thinking about thinking and noticing what
you are noticing, the surface frills will occupy less mind space less forcefully. Only
then is it possible to glimpse the engine which is deep mind. These glimpses are
accompanied by feelings of great peace and the desire to have more of them. Noticing the
noticing and thinking about thinking become easier and more frequent. Once the boulder
begins to roll down the mountain it is difficult to stop.
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- Thus it is that, in time, the mind is ‘turned
around’. It turns away from the habitual, uncontrolled pursuit of sensory objects and
emotions (the surface frills) and rather becomes, light, clear, fearless and peaceful
through being rooted in the calm centre of deep mind.
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