About This Teaching
For a layperson, Ajahn Dtun advises keeping sīla as a normal part of life and finding as much time as possible each day for sitting and walking meditation, keeping it continuous every day. Outside formal practice, whether standing, walking, sitting or doing anything, try to have mindfulness watching the mind.
At first mindfulness cannot keep up with thoughts and moods, but by recollecting the present again and again it grows. Continuous mindfulness gives rise to samādhi, and samādhi in turn makes mindfulness stronger. When mindfulness is strong, one sees the mind and its moods as separate, and wisdom can see the face of the defilements, coarse, middling and subtle: greed, anger and delusion, which cause suffering.
So a practitioner should not restrain the mind only while sitting and walking and then let it follow its thoughts afterwards. When unwholesome thoughts or defilements arise, let them go and do not keep them in the mind. If mindfulness and wisdom are not strong enough to lift a mood off the mind, return to the breath or whatever meditation object suits you for two or three minutes, or five, until the restlessness passes. Mindfulness built up in this way comes to look after the mind, and one will see the defilements each time they arise.