A vital question: how can I have a quiet, peaceful mind?
Mystics across the ages have insisted that it is only when the inventions of the mind and ego stop that reality (if it exists) can be found.
I don’t know about the deeply peaceful mind, but I do know about my repetitive and incessant stream of thoughts and emotions.
The immediate impulse is to reach for a method that will make my mind silent. Chanting, breathing techniques, yogic postures: all help to some extent. But take away the tool and the mind becomes wild again.
The further problem is that the techniques become tied in with my ego, with my sense of who I am, what is right or wrong. This only perpetuates the inner noise. I am the kind of person who follows the yogic style. When challenged about my beliefs, my identity, the mental narrative springs again to life.
Can I be simply, naturally quiet? Krishnamurti suggests that when there is attention without a technique, the inner noise quietens down and the observer, the inner ego, the meta-narrator, dissolves.
Attention without method and without seeking a result, attention that just wishes to see the inner reality and learn about it, may be the key to the deeply quiet and peaceful mind.
AWARENESS MEDITATION 
I completely agree with this post. This is timed perfectly as a counterpoint to my recent blog “Four Breaths.” I’m not trying to suggest it was intentional; merely perfectly timed. As mine is about technique, I went back and gave a lot of thought to your post. I find myself, usually, not using a specific technique, but when discussing meditation with others I find it useful to begin there. But I now wonder if I could approach it differently. I’m accustomed to people wanting techniques, lists, algorithms. And I typically frame my response by explaining what I have used for myself. I find myself far less “method dependent” nowadays, but maybe I need to look more closely at my own tendencies in this area. Thank you for a great post.
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Hi, thanks again 🙂 I meant this post to be a follow up to my earlier one on essentially an unquiet mind, noisy and repetitive. My automatic response is to find a “way” to be quiet and this was what I was trying to explore and question in this post. I appreciate your feedback! I also wanted to know which of Toni Packer’s books you might recommend as a beginning. Many thanks.
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I truly wasn’t assuming, I just thought the timing was awesome. It helped me take a pause and reflect. As far as Toni Packer’s books, The Wonder of Presence. Absolutely.
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Ok, I will read that first then!
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