Donald Rothberg: Transforming the Judgmental Mind 2

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We begin by reviewing some and expanding last week's introduction to practicing to transform the judgmental mind, including clarifying our language and the way that in English "judgment" can ambiguously mean either an expression of the judgmental mind or a non-judgmental discernment. We identify examples of the judgmental mind, and point to how it can be understood in terms of the sequence of contact to grasping (and pushing away) in the Buddha's teaching on Dependent Origination, how negative judgments (in the sense of the judgmental mind) typically come out of unacknowledged or unprocessed pain. We also point to how our practice with the judgmental mind, as it goes deeper, begins to identify "limiting beliefs," often from childhood, that generate our most chronic judgments. We end the talk with naming a number of ways to practice with the judgmental mind. The talk is followed with discussion.