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    - date: '2026-08-17'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/26120/20260817-maria_straatmann-imc-letting_go_of_what_came_before.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Maria Straatmann
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/142
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: Letting Go of What Came Before
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/26120
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location_city: Redwood City, CA
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  id: k1D3EWO_O-Q
  imprecise_upload_date: null
  title: Letting Go of What Came Before ~ Maria Straatman
  upload_date: '2026-08-18'
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1D3EWO_O-Q
---

# Letting Go of What Came Before - [Maria Straatmann](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/142)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [Letting Go of What Came Before](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/26120)

Okay, we'll try that again. I'm Maria Straatmann. I'm here for Diana tonight and next Monday night. And it is wonderful to see you. Thank you for being here. What I'd like to talk to you about this evening is loosely called thoughts on letting go of what came before.

I'm going to start with a quote by Ian McEwan who wrote a novel called _What We Can Know_[^1], and this is the quote: "Memory is a sponge. It soaks up material from other times, other places, and leaks it all over the moment in question." I love this phrase. Memory is a sponge; it soaks up material from other times, other places, and leaks it all over the moment in question. So much of how we meet our experience in any given moment is colored by what happened before.

Now, usually when I think about this, I talk about how conditions determine what's happening in this moment. But what I've been thinking about is how does what has happened before accumulate? How do we accumulate all these memories? We hold on to them, and we think things about them like they're true. And they're me. And what I think of you is who you are. We get stuck on that.

It's useful, in addition to knowing that everything that came before us conditions what's happening now. That's a useful thing to notice. But, there's also this sort of larger macro world which is comprised of our habits of mind. We get used to thinking a certain way. This neural circuit has a rut that we've really dug into and I believe that's who I am. Not only that, I know who you are, and I know what's true. I hold very strongly to those things I know based on what I've done in the past.

But, what if they're not real? What if they're just habits? Just convenient ways that we think of the world.

I've been in a proliferation of discussions lately with people who are saying things like, "Well, when I meditate, these thoughts keep coming up. This particular incident comes up, this thing from my life. What does it mean? And what should I be doing with it?" I remind them I'm not a therapist and they should go talk to a therapist about that.

But what was important to me is what do those memories conjure up for you now? How do you feel about those memories? Rather than the content of the memory, I'm interested in what's arisen as a consequence of this memory. What's here coloring how you're going to react to me or react to the day or react to what's just happened?

I don't want to get hung up on what constitutes a memory or how memories arise. Just for the moment, we're going to go with the idea that a memory has attached to it a story. And it's that story that we're attracted to. It's that story about what happened then that brings up all of the companion feelings that come with that memory. Sadness, despair, happiness, giddiness, confusion, disgust, fear. All of these companion emotions arise with the memories. We say, "Well, yeah, but that's what was happening there." And I will remind you, that's what happened _then_. It is not what's happening _now_.

What's happening now is whatever's happening. And whatever emotional content we're carrying over from that memory is influencing how we see, like wearing a pair of prescription glasses. How I see is very different when I take them off or when I look through a particular portion of the lens. How we see is influenced by whatever we conjure up in this moment that we think we've brought with us. And of course we have brought it with us.

Mostly at its core, a memory will have associated with it "I want it" or "I don't want it." "I like it" or "I don't like it." It's pleasant or unpleasant. For some of us, just saying the word memory will bring up a particular person or a particular place. We're so used to going to that place in our minds. It's just a memory.

In these stories, there are heroes and villains. Sometimes we're the hero or villain. We praise ourselves or we condemn ourselves, or we're critical of that person, or we really like that person, and we like that kind of person, or we like that color of person because it's associated with a memory. And now we're going to project that out on what's happening here. That feeling that has come up for us, boom. We impose it on what's happening now.

I remember somebody told a story one time that a teacher at a Dharma talk told a story about how she reacted really badly to yellow shirts. Sometime when she was a teenager, she met somebody that was really wretched to her and she associated him with this yellow shirt, and every time she saw a yellow shirt, she was triggered. She recognized that there was this aversive feeling that came up. The good news is that she was used to noticing aversive feeling, and she didn't get caught every time she saw a yellow shirt into hating the person that was wearing it or thinking there is something suspicious or bad about them.

It doesn't matter too much whether the person in the story is the person in front of us or not. Although, if the memory has to do with a person who shows up in our lives and we say, "Oh, I know what you're like and I don't trust you," or, "Oh, my favorite person in the world." What's important is for us to recognize whatever that feeling or impulse is that's associated with that thought of what came before. What's associated with that thought?

I'm sure by now you have all had the experience of getting on the phone and contesting something from some utility company. "You've got my bill wrong, you've turned off my water, you've done something." I don't even want to talk about water right now. I think it's going to be a lot of problems. So, let's not go to water. But you're on the phone with this person and pretty soon you feel yourself revved up and you're chewing out this poor person who has to follow a protocol on the phone. You realize, "I'm really getting agitated with this person and I really don't like this person," and then wait a minute. I'm agitated. But I'm agitated about _what happened_. It's not this person. This person can't do anything except what this person is allowed to do. Unfortunately, they get somebody who's agitated.

Sometimes people become good or bad by acclamation. Whatever that energy is that comes up for us. "Oh, you are just like that person. The way you talk to me is just like that person." And that's either good or bad. But it isn't _real_ good or bad. It's just what we attribute to it because we haven't noticed the baggage that we've carried along with us from what happened before.

Last week I was driving back from Southern Washington. I drove into Redding at about 4:30 in the afternoon, and it was 110 degrees. I was tired. I came in to check into this hotel. The person who was trying to register me was really slow, and sort of didn't really look like she cared about whether I was there or not. What I noticed was that I was becoming very short with her. Quick answers. You can feel that energy in yourself. I thought, "Wait a minute. I'm definitely irritable here." That led me to recognize, I'm hot and tired and thirsty. But neither she nor the hotel had anything to do with that. They had nothing to do with that. But I was coming up with all kinds of criticisms. "What kind of place is this? They can't do this. They can't do that. They didn't even put soap in the bathroom. Wait a minute."

[Sighs and gasps] This isn't them. I checked myself because I noticed the irritability. I don't like that feeling. I recognize it as ill will and aversion. And it's different than unpleasant. Okay, being hot, tired, and thirsty was unpleasant. But the attitude that I was bringing to the moment was optional.

The reaction was in process by the time I recognized I was reacting. But at least I could stop. Which I did. I immediately leaned into being extremely polite, trying not to overdo it, and thankful. I thanked her for what she was doing, and she handed me a bottle of water, for which I was really thankful.

It's important to notice not only what am I bringing to this moment, but that this moment is not the _last_ moment. It's not the last bad hotel you were in. It's not the worst trip in the world that you had last summer when you almost fainted, or when you did faint, or when you lost something. It isn't that moment. To recognize the difference between that moment and this moment requires you to let go of what you've dragged into the moment by habit.

The mind tells us how to react to things based on what has happened before. I mean, it's a natural behavior of the mind. But we are not our minds. And they don't rule us. They're very reactive, and they're very fast. Minds are really fast. But we don't have to be the victim. We can always stop. We can cultivate the habit of saying, "What's really happening here?" Of not allowing ourselves to feel ourselves becoming extended beyond the moment.

It calls for a kind of awareness of our attitude of mind. It's not being mindful of your breath. You can always just kind of go to your breath. But the attitude of mind is shifting. As much as we think that we're the same all the time, we're really not. And so cultivating the ability to just notice what's happening now. What's _really_ happening now? Not how do I feel about it and who should I blame—me, they, or the institution—but what's actually happening as opposed to what I'm imagining based on the projection of what happened before.

Of course this falls into the category of being aware of our habits of mind. And the way to break that cycle is to be aware of them in the first place, which requires a certain amount of mindfulness. It takes mindfulness from the place of thinking that mindfulness is about only following your breath or whatever subject-object mechanism you set up to be mindful of, to really cultivating something that's a little bit less definite. A little more difficult to get your hands around. But is asking, "How am I showing up in this moment?" Noticing when I'm holding a cup of coffee and I'm noticing I'm actually enjoying that cup.

We can practice it by looking at whether something is pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. That's one obvious way of doing it, to get out of the habit of thinking this thing is what we're looking at. But developing awareness of what's happening now independently of what's come before, whether it's a couple of hours ago or 20 years ago. All of these things have combined to be the conditions that we have here, but what we're looking for is the awareness of: what is the energy, what is the mindset through which I am seeing and experiencing what's happening here?

Phillip Moffitt in a recent talk said, "Remembering comes from a place of attachment." I thought, "Well, that's really interesting. Remembering comes from a place of attachment." Another way of saying that is all of our memories are there because we have some emotional hook attached to them. They're good, they're bad, they're positive, they're negative, they're hopeful, they're despairing. There's some emotional feeling content that has caused us to register that and play it over again.

So, it's emotional content in addition to story content. This is what happened as I recall it based on whatever the emotional hook was for me. Which might explain why some people have different memories of the same event. Because it depends on what we were reacting to at the time.

It's another way of saying that I'm attached to how I am, how you are, how this is, how situations like this are. It's a form of attachment that leads to projection and colors what's actually happening now, and keeps us from seeing things as they really are. That's how we get stuck in ruts. That's how we get stuck in one way of thinking.

One of the things I'm thinking about is, sometime ago we were visiting some people and I felt that they were especially unkind to me. I mean, really unkind. I remember saying, "Why would I spend any time with these people?" And the answer, of course, was there was a reason for having a relationship with these people. This often happens between families. You know, I have differences of opinion with my brothers and sisters all the time. "I'm never going to see them again. I'm not even going to talk to them," right?

This happened for me and then it came up that we were going to see them again and I was very apprehensive. "Oh boy, I don't know. How am I going to navigate this?" And so, I instructed myself to treat this like I had never met these people before. There was no history. Zero history.

Now, I don't know how convincing I was for myself. It certainly was the attitude that I went in with. It was, "Okay, I'm just going to see what I'm seeing now and I'm totally free to react to what I'm seeing now, but try not to bring the hurt from not being treated the way I wanted to be treated, okay?" Wanting things to be other than they are. Seeing that and saying, "Okay, I'm just going to show up for this." And I have to tell you, everybody was delightful. It was shocking to me how totally different it was. I chose not to ask, "What's changed?" I chose to think I had changed, and I was being just freshly open. It was a wonderful experience. It was really great.

I can still remember the hurt, but it's irrelevant because I see it as past and not now. Now, in the case of a chronic abuser, you know, that's not a good strategy. But in the case of social interactions or any similar thing that is being highly colored by what came before, the experiment of what happens if I'm not looking backward. What happens if I'm really putting all of my attention on, "Okay, today there are no yellow shirts in the room. I can relax. Red, okay, red, that's not yellow." Right? So, I'm not hung up over the yellow shirt. What does that do?

One of the reasons they call this practice is we keep practicing. What happens if I do this? What happens if I take a fresh look at this? And the truth of mindfulness is you can't really hide. You cannot _not_ look. You cannot _not_ see. When reflecting on some of my past actions, I can look back and see that things I thought were blameless were in fact not so. As I looked at them carefully, I said to myself, "Okay, they weren't really evil, but they did cause harm through my thoughtlessness, through my ignorance, through my not seeing, by not paying attention to it." I don't want to perpetuate that. I want to pay attention to what's happening now and not treat it like a continuum of something else. There are consequences to the failure to see. You get trapped. You get caught.

In order to be free from suffering, we need a willingness to leave the safety of what we know. We have to be able to say, "I can venture out into this unknown, and maybe even what I think I know, I can for a moment suspend that belief that I know and see things with fresh eyes and see what happens." Perhaps I'm not always quiet, kind, a procrastinator. Perhaps she's not always unthinking. Perhaps it was just something that happened once and it's only my attachment to that one hurt that is perpetuating this enmity. We have to leave room for things to be otherwise. Open up to how freshly can I see this? How am I really feeling right now? What is here? What have I dragged into this moment with me? And can I separate that from what's actually happening here?

Somebody a week or so ago started telling me about a dream. And she said, "Oh, my teacher was in the dream." And then I said, "Stop. Don't tell me what happens next. Tell me what you're feeling about this. Are you feeling lightness? Are you feeling shame? What does telling me about this dream conjure up for you? What does it bring into your awareness now? Notice whether there is lightness or heaviness. Don't tell me what happened." Because it was just a dream. I'm not going to interpret the dream, but I'm really interested in what's going on for you right now as a consequence. Why are you telling me about this dream in the first place? What's up?

Practice reflecting on what's going on with you. Practice attending to what is there, to the delight or the sorrow that you feel now. Tend to it. Notice it. Tend it. See it. And when you do, check your intentions. Here's this feeling. It's pleasant or unpleasant. What's the intention I have right now? And then take your next move. It's fresher that way. Don't decide in advance how you're going to be with someone or with something. Decide on your intention. Be aware of what's coming up for you.

[Sighs] Being aware of what's going on in your own heart-mind, not the details, not the content, not the analysis of it, but how does it feel? Do you feel lifted or pushed down? Be aware of what that feeling is, so that you can say, "Ah, that's here along with whatever's going on." So you can adjust. You can choose. It's not totally reactive. When you find yourself in the midst of a reaction, you can stop and say, "Is this an appropriate action or not?" Maybe it is. It gets us out of the habit of judging our own selves. Judging everything around us based on what happened before. So, just consider how what happened before is living in you. And notice it when it shows up. Because therein lies freedom.

This inspired me to look at a Thich Nhat Hanh[^2] poem, which is his poem _Message_. He wrote this poem when he was out of Vietnam and part of a peace reconciliation effort before the end of the war. Actually, it was written in Saigon. This was the Vietnam War. I realize I've gotten to the age where people don't even know what war I'm talking about.

> Life has left her footprints on my forehead.
> But I have become a child again this morning.
> The smile seen through leaves and flowers is back to smooth away the wrinkles
> as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach.
> Again, a cycle of birth and death begins.
> I walk on thorns, but firmly as among flowers, I keep my head high.
> Rhymes bloom among the sounds of bombs and mortars.
> The tears I shed yesterday have become rain.
> I feel calm hearing its sound on the thatched roof.
> Childhood, my birthplace, is calling me and the rains melt my despair.
> I am still here, alive, able to smile quietly.
> Oh, sweet fruit brought forth by the tree of suffering,
> carrying the dead body of my brother, I go across the rice field in the darkness.
> Earth will keep you tight within her arms, my dear, so that tomorrow you will be reborn as flowers.
> Those flowers smiling quietly in the morning field,
> this moment you weep no more, my dear.
> We've gone through too deep a night.
> This morning, I kneel down on the grass when I notice your presence.
> Flowers that carry the marvelous smile of affability speak to me in silence.
> The message of love and understanding has indeed come to us.
> Life has left her footprints on my forehead,
> but I have become a child again this morning.
> The smile seen through the leaves and flowers is back to smooth away the wrinkles
> as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach.
> Again, a cycle of birth and death begins.

I like this poem because it concedes that our memories are not erased, but they morph. They become something else if we don't attach to them and try to make them solid figures that determine everything that comes elsewise. But that we know life has left its footprints on my forehead. And today I'm a child. And I can look at this thing new. This day is not the day before.

So, those are my thoughts on letting go of what came before. I hope that it's useful. And I hope all of you know the joy of a fresh day. We are all born again every moment. Thank you.

## Q&A

**Questioner 1:** Thank you for your talk. I'm reflecting on the moment where you said you walked into the hotel. Because, very commonly, say you walk into a relationship and the person's already there—you're with somebody who you know is angry. And for me, it's kind of like I'm going through my story and I don't really know what to do in order to mitigate that. Like you, you were able to change your own perspective. But in the face of something that is a very toxic, real energetic force, do you have any recommendations for how to just navigate that to get to the other side? Because engaging with it will destroy everything. And not engaging with it will destroy everything. [Laughter] You've got to do something, but I'm very interested because I feel like I'm powerless in that situation.

**Maria Straatmann:** You're not powerless. First of all, you have the advantage that you notice the other person is angry. You know that. So, what I left out of my story about the person in the hotel is what I finally came to realize. When I realized I was hot, tired, and thirsty, it was that it was the end of the day for her, and she was probably hot, tired, and thirsty, too. And that's what allowed me to be really kind to her. When I was able to see, "Ah, she's not rude, callous, listless, and uninterested in her job—she's just ready to go home." And that was a feeling I could identify with. So, the ability to notice what's going on with the other person and to say, "Ah, just like me, you're hot, tired, and thirsty."

In the case of meeting an angry person, they're not likely to be reasonable because they're stuck in a place of anger. I've been stuck in a place of anger; I know what that feels like. And so I can walk into that situation and know that I'm possibly going to take some abuse here. And my job is not to react to the abuse. My job is to try as hard as I can to hear what that person has to say so that I can find a way in. And the hard part is not reacting to the abuse. It's really hard. But if you come in with the knowledge that it's likely that you're going to get an earful, just give space for that. Then maybe you can find a place where you say, "Okay, I remind myself of my intention toward wise speech. I'm not going to tell you you're a son of a gun. I'm not going to tell you how it's unfair. I'm not going to tell you all the things that I could say, because I know I don't have to say that." I know what it feels like to be really angry and out of control. And the only way to meet that is by not becoming what you see. When you can actually see the other person... what can I see besides the anger? That's your question. What can I see in addition to the anger? What can I see in this person that is just like me?

**Questioner 1:** Thank you, that helps. Thank you very much.

**Questioner 2:** Tomorrow is our 30th wedding anniversary.

**Maria Straatmann:** Congratulations.

**Questioner 2:** And I'm thinking about how in these relationships that last a long time, part of what's helpful is that we have so much memory together, that we grow to rely on patterns that are comforting. And then at the same time, of course, there are patterns of hurt, of disappointment, of inevitable ways that we do things that perpetuate unhelpful things as well. I'm wondering how to reconcile those two. The fact that memory and patterns can provide a simplicity that's helpful, but this tendency and the capacity of human beings to create heuristics, to create predictability, is also limiting. So, I guess my question is: how to have a beginner's mind with the people that you know the best?

**Maria Straatmann:** [Gasps] So, you know, I've been with my husband for over 40 years and we have patterns and we have things that happen. I can see a pattern setting up when we have a disagreement about something. I can see it starting to set up and I'm going, "Oh, boy. What can I do about this?" You know, as soon as you hear the word _always_, it's a trigger. Boy, that's a trigger. "You always do..."

So, one of the things that I do is in every conversation I have with my husband, I remind myself that he isn't necessarily on the same wavelength as me just because we're so familiar with one another. You know, we're very familiar. The same things happen and you know, "I know what you think about this." We forget that everybody has fresh thoughts, really. That we're not thinking the old thoughts. So, the very thing that makes it comfortable is tied to the word familiar. And sometimes the familiar gets in the way of what's actually happening. Just as you pretty well described.

When you come to the point where you realize that, the first thing I remind myself is that my intention is to be kind to my husband. So, even when I am feeling anger, I remind myself that my intention is to be kind. I'll realize that there's energy in the body. My husband doesn't like confrontation and he doesn't respond well to a raised voice. I came up from a family that was really noisy. And noise isn't equated with anger, but in his mind it is. After all this time, it doesn't change, because what he was attracted to in me is my energy, and what drives him crazy is my energy. Okay.

So, I know this. When he curls his lip, I remind myself not to react. He doesn't actually hate me. I have to remind myself of that. I do it by first thinking my intention is to be kind. And I periodically engage in thinking, "How is he different today? How are we different today? What can I see that is new today?" So that I don't get stuck in a rut. Because what happens in my marriage has everything to do with what I _think_ is happening in my marriage. And only a little bit with what's actually happening. I'm always looking at: am I stuck in what I think about this, or am I paying attention? And that's the fundamental question. Am I stuck with what I know already or am I open for it to be different? Does he have the freedom to be somebody I don't think he is? That I haven't already decided he is.

This afternoon—this is a trivial thing, but this afternoon I said to him, "Well, so-and-so's having a sale, and you know, if there's anything you want." He says, "You know, I don't really like their clothes anymore." This is a guy that would only buy their clothes at one point in his life, and I thought, "That's really interesting." I didn't know that he'd changed so much that he didn't even like those things anymore. So, also keep in mind the ability to be delighted by news, however trivial it may be. Huh. What I thought was just not true anymore. How about that? So, curiosity, the intention toward kindness, and the openness to not know. That's the best I can do. [Laughter] But if you've made it 30 years, you know a lot of that.

Does anybody else have something they'd like to say? Yeah, get the microphone, please.

**Questioner 3:** Thanks for the talk. Not really a question, just maybe an observation, but the talk made me think of... I guess at the risk of misusing this concept, dependent origination[^3], meaning like we interact with people and...

**Maria Straatmann:** Let's pause for a moment because I think I missed part of what you said. Hearing problems. Please repeat.

**Questioner 3:** So, the talk reminded me of this concept... dependent origination, or the risk of misusing it. But basically, we interact with people and an exercise that I've been getting into is thinking about, oh, like what are all the possible ways that an interaction is going the way it's going? Kind of as you had mentioned, it could be the weather, it could be... but if you really, really go far back, I mean, you can make up all sorts of stories and possible chains of what creates the current moment, right? And over time, I guess what's come up for me is that's a lot, and when I compare it to this idea of like, oh, there's the so-called free will, like that feels way smaller compared to all these other potential chains that could create it. So, I think tonight's talk reminded me a bit of that, and it gave me this idea of like, we always have this ability to exercise that and go, "Yep, there's so much more." And so, you can keep dragging all these possibilities in, and that's somewhat freeing, at least for me...

**Maria Straatmann:** Yeah, thank you. Thank you. My husband's been on a two-year project to understand the concept of free will, whether we have it or not. So, I've really heard a lot about that. And one thing that's interesting, and the thing that is important particularly when you think of dependent origination, is that you have the sense, then there is the feeling tone, you know, is pleasant or unpleasant, and then there's a step of "I like" or "I don't like", you know, "I want" or "I don't want". And so, part of dependent origination has all these steps to it. And the truth is, you can stop anywhere. It's not inevitable. It's just what happens. So, at any point, you can kind of step off the wheel and take it another direction.

That's what the intention of kindness towards my husband does for me, so that even when I'm feeling agitated and we're in a heated discussion, I can go over and wash my hands to get rid of the energy or I can walk out of the room and come back. And by now, because of familiarity, my husband knows when I get up and walk out of the room, I'm coming back. And that I'm leaving the room so I don't say something I will later regret. We now have that understanding about how I deal with this particular issue. Because to me it's more important to be kind. So, even though there is this chain that is initiated, it is not determination. It is not a given that this will always lead to that.

If you ever did an Abhidharma[^4] diagram of things that are connected, how the conditions of this moment... they're incredibly complex. There's an infinite number of conditions that affect this moment. And we are only looking at this chain. So, if you think you have control over anything, it's probably a fallacy. But you do have control over forming an intention and what you do next. You don't have control over what happens when you do next. Sometimes we get tripped up there, too. But I think freedom lies in that place of seeing clearly. Even if the ill will comes right back, you can say, "Ah, there again." Yeah, but it's that edge of being alive in this space where there's freedom. It isn't everything's wonderful. Freedom isn't wonderful. Freedom is real. But I'm not going to talk about free will. Thank you all. Do you have something you'd like to say? Yeah, get the microphone, please.

**Questioner 4:** I have concluded that all of the people who work for Comcast are Buddhists. They meditate. Because when I call them, I'm always angry, and somehow they calm me down.

**Maria Straatmann:** They are trained. [Laughter] They are trained. But they also appreciate when somebody says, "Whoops, I know it's not you." They love that, too. [Laughter] Thank you, everyone.

---

[^1]: **Ian McEwan quote:** The original transcript mentions a novel called _What We Can Know_ by Ian McEwan, but this phrase does not seem to appear in a book by that exact title. It may be a misremembered title or quote.

[^2]: **Thich Nhat Hanh:** A Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, and founder of the Plum Village Tradition.

[^3]: **Dependent Origination:** (_Paṭiccasamuppāda_) A key Buddhist principle stating that all phenomena arise in dependence upon other phenomena.

[^4]: **Abhidharma:** Ancient Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic reworkings of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist sutras, mapping the mind, consciousness, and the nature of experience.