All in the Mind
Original source: satipanya.org.uk
In this insightful essay, Noirin Sheahan challenges the common dismissive attitude toward problems that are 'all in the mind,' revealing instead that all suffering is fundamentally mental in nature. Drawing from her meditation experience, she demonstrates how physical pain and mental reaction are entirely separate phenomena - the broken leg simply heals while the mind creates the drama of suffering around it.
Through vivid examples from walking meditation, Noirin illustrates the Buddhist teaching of the six sense spheres (āyatana), showing how sight, sensation, and mental awareness operate in distinct dimensions of experience. This direct insight reveals that while the mind weaves these separate streams into a coherent narrative, each sense door offers an alternative refuge from mental reactivity.
The essay culminates in a powerful personal account of working with anxiety, where Noirin discovers the voluntary nature of thought and the courage required to step away from mental proliferation. Her experience demonstrates how attention can be redirected from anxious thinking to simple sense contact, offering immediate relief from suffering. This practical wisdom shows how understanding the six sense spheres provides multiple doorways to freedom, making meditation not just an academic exercise but a direct path to liberation from mental turmoil.
Its all in the mind.
Noirin Sheahan
If we suffer a physical disease, a broken bone, a bereavement, we might get sympathy
and attention. But if people suspect our problems are ‘all in the mind’ they usually
want to get away as fast as they can!
And yet suffering is ‘all in the mind’. The pain of a broken bone is physical. True we
might writhe in agony, convinced our leg is where suffering is located. But the leg just
gets on with the business of tissue repair. It’s only the mind that panics, thinks ‘this
is unbearable’, gets us moaning and contorted in an effort to sooth ourselves.
When the mind is still in meditation, we can sometimes see that physical sensations
are separate from mental reactions like emotions and thoughts. In fact all of the six
senses (five physical senses plus the mind which forms the sixth sense in Buddhism)
occupy distinct ‘spheres’ within experience. I first saw this during walking
meditation. I noticed that the sight of the foot swinging forward was totally separate
from the sensation. It was as if they occupied separate universes, different
dimensions. One contained colours and shapes, the other sensations. There was no
possibility of communication between the two, and it was a third dimension, the
mind, that put the information together and decided they both described a foot
moving forward. I was amazed that I could walk so easily even though my legs, eyes
and mind were confined to separate dimensions!
This isn’t just academic. The Buddha’s only purpose in teaching was to point us along
the path to the end of suffering. In meditation we begin to see for ourselves that
suffering ‘is all in the mind’. The fact that we can also experience other dimensions,
where there is no suffering, allows us train the mind to stop causing us to suffer.
I learned this one time when my mind was afire with anxiety and I was only vaguely
aware of sounds and sights in the environment. They seemed irrelevant by
comparison to questions like - what was going on? Why couldn’t I get on top of this
anxiety? But for one blessed moment, attention came to rest on the sound of a bird
singing. My mind relaxed momentarily but as soon as I noticed this, I went back to
the more urgent business of fretting. As I did so I felt the voluntary nature of
thought. I sensed myself choosing to indulge anxiety in much the same way as I
might have chosen to pick up two heavy suitcases.
Now I was forced to make a choice. Would I continue burdening myself with anxious
questions? It felt scary beyond words to stop, to accept the reality of not knowing
what was going on, or how to get on top of anxiety. It was like taking a step over a
cliff. And yet, something deep within commanded that I stop fretting, accept that I
did not know any answers. With my heart in my mouth, I surrendered to that truth.
Next moment, anxiety disappeared without trace!
Luckily, suffering is ‘all in the mind’. And we have access to five other dimensions of
experience which show us the way out. At each and every moment we can rest
attention in sense contact, learn to recognize the possibility of not reacting, not
picking up heavy suitcases of anxiety, depression, woe and misery. We can choose
sense contact rather than thought as our guide, step over our mental cliffs, fall into
freedom.