The Buddha gives five techniques for dealing with unskillful thoughts that have arisen in the mind, but all five depend on two things. The first is that determination not to give in, to recognize these thoughts as former parts of yourself that you no longer want to get involved with. The second is the willingness to see those parts of the mind as strangers.
This is where Ajaan Lee’s image of all the different consciousnesses in your mind comes in really handy.
The desire to give in to lust, the desire to stay with your lust, or to stay with your anger: They’ll say, “We’re already here. What are you going to do about it? You’ve already made your choice to side with us.”
Well, you can unmake that choice. You’re not committed to it.
It’s amazing how once the mind gets into a state like that and the unskillful state has taken over, it can claim, “OK you’re committed, you can’t leave,” and you feel intimidated by its claim. You know that it’s someone who’s really not fair, someone who’s really not honest, so why are you so committed to it? Actually, you can break off the engagement whenever you want. Learn to feel committed to your good impulses instead.
That’s the first thing to keep in mind.
The second thing, of course, is to figure out: What does this defilement want? After all, it was a part of you at one point. It was something that you fed because it gave you some pleasure. By now, though, you should know better, so the question is, what are you still looking for? What in that unskillful mind state thinks that it’s going to gain something? What are you going to get?
Look at it carefully, because often the underlying desire or expectation is something you don’t expect. You’ve got all the reasons for not giving in and yet somehow there’s a part of the mind that still wants to go with it. That means that it’s got a hidden agenda. You need to question it, you need to thwart it, to make it confess what its demands and exceptions are.
Now, while you’re holding it at bay, it will say, “You’re going to give in at some point anyhow so why don’t you just give in now?”
Don’t believe it. And don’t be scared by its threats to keep coming back. When you hold it at bay, //expect// that it will keep coming back, coming back and coming back. But each time it comes back, it will come back with something slightly different, and at some point it’s going to slip. It’s going to give you its real reasons. You’ll recognize them: “Oh, that’s what I thought I was going to get out of that.”
The part of you that was still there in that defilement was still deceived, but now you’ve seen through the deceit. That’s when you can really let go. ~Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Inner Civil War"
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