My daughter and I were driving in the
car the other day
and had a particular
interaction
that I explained my actions to her through
the lens of Buddhist psychology,
in the car.
And after she actually followed my explanation,
I said, oh,
that's what I'm gonna share this week. And
she said, I think you should, and I
think you should call it Doritos.
So my so this is Doritos
or actually Dorito.
So my other daughter, every now and then,
buys snacks, brings them to our house, leaves
them in the cupboard.
And for the most part,
I'm okay.
I can I like, I don't like, there's
most
junk food, I don't have a thing for?
But every now and then, she'll leave something
that just kind of irks
at me.
And there has been this little bag of
Doritos
in the cupboard
for, I don't know, like, 3 or 4
months now.
And I haven't eaten Doritos in a long
time, but I know,
you know, like, I know
me and Doritos. Like, I I I have
had enough experience.
And the only thing that was, like, my
saving grace is that
I try very hard to be mostly vegan.
And thank goodness these were nacho cheese flavored.
And, you know, like, I would go, oh,
yeah. Nacho cheese. Not doing that.
And so then, I guess, about 2 days
ago,
the other daughter and I were driving across
town to some big appointments. She hadn't had
time to grab lunch or to eat lunch
before we were going, so she opens up
the cupboard
and grabs whatever she can to snack on
in the car, including the bag of Doritos.
And so we get in the car, and
I don't know what your experience is with
Doritos, but my experience is also very palpable.
What happens when someone opens a bag of
Doritos in a closed space like a car.
Like, you open it, and then all of
a sudden, everyone smells
Doritos.
And I'm sure that there are people in
this room that that would just gross you
out. I'm not one of them.
And so for me, I'm sitting there driving,
and, like, now the smell is just everywhere.
And I'm thinking
and then finally I go, oh, just hand
me over one. And so she does,
and I take it, and I eat it.
And, like, there's this moment
of, like, bite
and then
flavor
explosion,
that's really
loud
internally
in here.
And
if I didn't have
a lot of years of practice, my next
statement would have been, oh, those are bad
for you. Just hand them over and let
me eat the rest of them for you.
Or, oh, let's pull over at that gas
station and get me a bag too.
You know, like, they they just I I
am the research subject that they used for
what is the perfect combo of salt,
little bit of tangy,
little bit of fat,
in this crisp
thing
that just, like, goes
so back to Buddhist psychology.
So, you know, like, I took a breath.
I do have practice. I didn't pull over
at the gas station. I didn't,
try to get get the bag. I didn't
even eat more of her Doritos.
I I found myself instead
explaining to her my reaction via the lens
of Buddhist psychology.
There's this great talk on dharma seed right
now. I sent it out on the community
email. If you're not on the community email
and you want to be, just email me.
I can't remember the title exactly, but it's
something like
finding a suitable
home for the heart and the body.
I,
a guy named Chaz de Caprio
Caprio. I'm not sure how you pronounce his
name. I listen to him every now and
then because I really appreciate,
his teachings.
And in this particular talk, he's talking
about,
a old Pali word, a Buddhist term
called.
It's
one of those
terms
that,
gets talked about fairly regularly.
About half of the talks I hear on
the Chitta,
I
go, oh, yeah. Got it. And about the
other half, I go, oh, no. Wait a
minute. I thought I got it, and now
I don't.
So it's it's it's it's used in a
lot of different ways,
and I invite you to take
my,
understanding
of the chitta.
Hold it lightly. This is just how I
am
working with my own reckoning of this term
in a way that has been
very, very
useful
for me.
So,
if you sat here with me at all,
you know my brain hand model that from
Dan Siegel that I refer to all the
time.
This is basically a version of understanding that
through the lens of
observation of the mind 26 100 years ago
before MRIs and all of that. And so
it's worded a little differently, and I find
that when
when somebody shines the light
on a part of me
in a little bit of a different way,
I just understand
more of my own internal flavors.
So,
this is my my take.
Really, deeply,
lots of appreciation to the the talk I
mentioned,
as a way to finally feel like, oh,
I can actually talk about this now.
So, Chitta, you may have heard the term
bodhicitta,
awakened heart.
So,
chitta, chitta, chitta, I guess, is the way
it's usually pronounced.
It's
translated in a number of ways. Most commonly,
I have heard is mind.
But in this talk by Chaz, he uses
the word instead heart,
for it. So it's part of our capacity
of awareness.
In Buddhist psychology terms, there are two main
parts to the mind,
the rupa,
that's the part of the mind we use
for math,
for planning,
for
thinking,
problem solving that's an analytical,
rational problem.
Machita
is everything else.
It's the
emotive,
emotional
heart.
It's the part of our mind, and this
is my understanding,
that
inborn
is
is always
online
and seeking to connect,
seeking to
feel
louder,
what it is feeling.
When this part of the mind is untrained,
what it connects with
is what is loudest.
That day in the car, what was loudest
at that first moment was a Dorito.
You know? Like, I the chitta
the chitta was, like, awake,
by the smell of Dorito.
Apparently, Ajan
Susito I can't pronounce his name well either
this morning.
He says it's the part of the mind
that gets bamboozled
by our experience,
by our scent stores.
So, like, really, what is connecting is whatever
we're taking in through sensory
experience.
And another important Buddhist psychology
explanation, which I think is
very useful, is not 5 senses, but 6
senses.
So the 5 that we typically name, sight,
hear,
taste, sound, touch,
plus the 6th
is the mind.
Everything that that comes up in the mind
is one way we sensorially
process our experience.
So the cheetah connects.
The untrained cheetah connects
with whatever
experience is loudest
in any of those sick sick stores.
Maybe it is that chip that has been
perfectly
manufactured
to be sensorially
extremely
loud and hookable.
Maybe
it is our own anxiety
or worry
that when it connects to, it can, like,
amplify.
And so, you know, it leads it's that
part of the mind that gets hijacked, bamboozled,
such a good word,
into rumination.
Like, just
sucked right in hook, line, and sinker.
The example that Chaz uses in the talk,
that I referred to
is,
getting
passionately
in love
with the person you met, like, 3 minutes
ago.
And then you don't see
anything
but just how stunningly
wonderful this
person
is.
So that's the first characteristic of the Chitta
that I wanna name.
It, the untrained Chitta,
connects with whatever is loudest in our since
sensory
field.
If we listen to a lot of angry
politics
without training,
of course, that part of our mind
grabs in,
hooks on,
and just gets hijacked and goes
with it. That's the wiring.
That's what this body, mind, heart,
has as part of its its inborn capacity.
The second characteristic
of the chitta
is that it also has this,
and I don't use this word lightly,
astoundingly
beautiful
capacity
to turn back and reflect on itself,
to, like, taste
what it has taken in
and
and open up to wisdom,
like, self reflect,
contemplate
wisdom about that experience.
For me, that moment of eating that Dorito,
I mean, there is, like, this boom
of, like, total flavor
and, like, right
how do you say I can't get any
words out today. Simultaneously.
Oh, I did it.
Simultaneously
with the taste was instant craving.
Like, really, really, really, really strong craving.
Thankfully,
my chitta was functioning and had this capacity
to turn back and self reflect.
And in that self reflecting,
of craving.
I really don't like that sense of
I got to have more Doritos or whatever
it is.
I dislike that sense of craving more than
I like the taste of Doritos.
That's the self reflection
that when it is trained deep enough,
it can start to it just naturally
educates us.
It naturally is built
in to be a door to wisdom
when we have
enough training to
support that turning back on self reflection.
And the third piece that's so important to
name,
it does this through connection with our body.
The more
attuned we are
with
our body's
reaction
to what is happening,
the more that is the wisdom pool
that the Chitta draws from.
There is this, like, really
astoundingly
beautiful
capacity
of learning
what is
wholesome.
Not in that sense of judgment,
but in that sense of what is natural
leaning in the direction of my healing.
Like, we can feel that.
I could feel I really wanted another Dorito,
and everything in my body
did not.
And it was just, like, really clear.
The the desire for the taste of it
was not in alignment
with what feels good and nourishing
for me. And a thing like a Dorito,
it's a really useful thing.
You know, like, find your example of what
is the Dorito for you
that you can that's, you know, got the
hook,
but there is enough training, there is enough
whatever
that you can examine
the hook,
that you can explore
what that hook is doing
for you. If the hook is too strong,
that self reflective capacity, it just gets it
just bamboozled.
It just gets bamboozled.
And and we just go down. So you
don't want some you don't wanna start with,
like, your hardest thing. You wanna pick something
on the level of a Dorito chip,
whatever that is for you,
and really
allow
the chitta
that is
you,
that is part of your natural inborn system
to reflect,
the whole experience
in the body, heart, and mind
of what happens,
and feel
that the body, heart, and mind, in that
moment,
naturally
does know
what is in the direction of my healing
and what is not.
I'm just thinking of that line from the
Mary Oliver poem, the wild geese.
You only have to let the soft animal
of your body
love what it loves.
You only have to let the soft animal
of your body
love what it loves.
Isn't that kind
of astoundingly beautiful
That our path of healing
is in coming to understand what the soft
animal of our body
loves.
So
let me do just a very short practice
with this.
Invite
you to close your eyes.
Take a breath in.
Breathe out.
Feel the heat.
Breathe out the heat.
And see if you can bring to mind
something for you
that has some charge, has some hook,
but it's something that you can work with,
a Dorito chip.
Something that's kind of
irritating,
And and this works in both ways. It
can be that thing we want,
and it can also work the other way,
the thing we don't want.
Like, another example might be the person who
cuts you off in Charlotte traffic, and you
just feel that urge
to do whatever it is that you might
do,
that's not part of your practice
in that moment, the reactivity
in that moment.
Remember, the chitta
connects with what is loudest
in the untrained sensory
field.
The untrained sensory the untrained
scitta connects with whatever is loudest in the
sensory field.
So once you have your example,
feel the reaction.
Maybe it is wanting to let those words
come out of your mouth when the person
cuts you off. Or maybe it is wanting
to grab the whole bag of Doritos
and eat them.
Feel whatever the reaction is, and then feel
what that feels
like in your body
when you have that taste of the reactivity.
And then let yourself
know this is your capacity
of self reflection.
Be aware
of knowing,
of curiosity,
of the ability to turn and feel and
look and learn
from whatever this reactivity is.
Like, not try to make the reactivity go
away,
but use the reactivity
as your teacher
and feel into that capacity
to reflect
on the reactivity
here.
Feel it as an act of care.
As an act of care,
what would be a natural
way of meeting the reactivity
for you?
Maybe it is just to take a breath,
but to stop. Stop.
Take a breath. Observe with kindness.
Proceed.
Maybe you wanna offer it some sort of
phrase,
like the phrase we use in our meditation.
May I have compassion and understanding
for myself just as I am.
It's not necessary that the reactivity
go away.
More important is you noticing
your capacity to turn and look with care.
And feel how
This
This is
the birthright
of the Chitta,
that it is trainable.
The more
you give room appreciation and
space
for the to simply reflect
on the experience,
the wiser it becomes.
It starts to have these insights, like, I
dislike the craving for the chip
more
than I like the taste of the chip.
I didn't have to think that through.
I could just feel it.
The body knew that,
and it told me.
What might your chitta tell you?
When you open to listen and give it
space to simply meet
and connect
with you
and your experience
with care.
Thank you.