Introduction The daily schedule at Metta Forest Monastery includes a group interview in the late afternoon and a chanting session followed by a group meditation period later in the evening. The Dhamma talks included in this volume were given during the evening meditation sessions, and in many cases covered issues raised at the interviews — either in the questions asked or lurking behind the questions. Often these issues touched on a variety of topics on a variety of different levels in the practice. This explains the range of topics covered in individual talks. I have edited the talks with an eye to making them readable while at the same time trying to preserve some of the flavor of the spoken word. In a few instances I have added passages or rearranged the talks to make the treatment of specific topics more coherent and complete, but for the most part I have kept the editing to a minimum. Don't expect polished essays. The people listening to these talks were familiar with the meditation instructions included in "Method 2" in Keeping the Breath in Mind by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo; and my own essay, "A Guided Meditation." If you are not familiar with these instructions, you might want to read through them before reading the talks in this book. Also, further Dhamma talks are available at www.accesstoinsight.org and dhammatalks.org. As with the previous volumes in this series, I would like to thank Bok Lim Kim for making the recording of these talks possible. She, more than anyone else, is responsible for overcoming my initial reluctance to have the talks recorded. I would also like to thank the following people for transcribing the talks and/or helping to edit the transcriptions: Debra Breger, Paul Breger, Kathy Forsythe, Addie Onsanit, Nathaniel Osgood, Xiao Quan Osgood, Barbara Pereira, and Michael Zoll; Vens. Atthaññu Bhikkhu, Balaggo Bhikkhu, Gunaddho Bhikkhu, Metteyyo Bhikkhu, and Vijjakaro Bhikkhu. May they all be happy. Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Metta Forest Monastery

May, 2011

Wisdom for Dummies April 9, 2009 If you read a lot of books about the Dhamma, it can get pretty confusing after a while, for there are so many different takes on exactly what the Dhamma is. On top of that, there are people who will tell you it's all very complex, very subtle; only a very erudite scholar or subtle logician could figure it all out. With so many teachings, it's hard to figure out which ones to hold on to. Of course, some people will tell you that you can't hold onto anything at all. That makes it even more confusing and obscure. So it's good to remember that the Buddha himself taught the Dhamma in very simple terms. And all the teachings derived from a few very basic, very commonsensical principles. You might call it wisdom for dummies: the kind of wisdom that comes from looking at what's actually going on in your life, asking some very basic questions, and applying a few very basic principles to solve your big problems. When you use wisdom for dummies, it doesn't mean you're dumb. It means you recognize that you've been foolish and you want to wise up. As the Buddha once said, when you recognize your foolishness, you are to that extent wise. This may sound obvious, but when you think about it, you see that it teaches you some important things about wisdom. In fact, the realization that you've been foolish contains within itself many of the basic principles of the Dhamma. To begin with, this kind of realization usually comes to you when you see you've made a mistake you could have avoided. In recognizing that much, you recognize that your actions do make a difference: Some actions are more skillful than others. In recognizing that the mistake came from your foolishness, you recognize the principle that your ideas and intentions played a role in your actions, and that you could have operated under other ideas and intentions. You could have been wiser — the mistake wasn't preordained — and you've got something to learn. That right there is the beginning of wisdom. It's when you're willing to learn that the Buddha can teach you more about what it means to be wise. Start with one of his basic ways of distinguishing a wise person from a fool: If you're a wise person, you tend to your own duties and avoid the things you're not responsible for. If you're a fool, you tend to ignore the things you're responsible for, and to focus on things you're not responsible for. This is probably the number one principle, because it cuts out a lot of other issues, such as taking a stand on where the universe came from, or if the universe came from anything, whether it's finite or infinite; what your inner nature is. A lot of what we think of as metaphysical issues get put aside this way, because you're not really responsible for those issues. And what are you responsible for? Your actions, what you're choosing to do. No one else can make your choices for you, so you have to focus on doing them well. This is why the Buddha says that wisdom starts growing when you ask someone who's knowledgeable, "What's skillful? What's unskillful? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?" Why are these questions wise? Because they come from seeing that the issue of how to find a worthwhile happiness is something you really are responsible for. Happiness is preferable to suffering, it depends on your actions, and long-term happiness is better than short-term. This is what's meant by "skillful." The distinction between skillful and unskillful is another basic principle. Once one of the Buddha's lay students was accosted by someone from another tradition who asked him, "Well now, does your teacher teach about the origin of universe, or whether it's finite or infinite?" He went down the list of the big issues of the time, and the lay student kept saying, "No, he doesn't talk about any of those things." And the other person responded, "Well, in that case he's a nihilist. He doesn't teach anything at all." So the lay student said, "No, that's not true. He does teach the difference between what's skillful and what's not." He later went to report this conversation to the Buddha, who approved of what he had said. The distinction between skillful and unskillful forms the basis for the four noble truths. When you dig deep down into why people suffer, you find that it's because of craving. How can people stop suffering? By developing the path, which is primarily composed of good qualities of mind. So you realize the mind has to be trained. That's another basic principle of wisdom: that true happiness comes from training the mind, because the mind is what makes the choices. That's why we meditate. And that's why meditation requires that we focus our attention on the present moment, because these choices are being made right now. This again brings up the distinction between short-term and long-term happiness. Not all your choices are between doing something harmful and something not harmful. Sometimes the choice is between two things that are relatively harmless, but one leads to short-term, and the other to long-term happiness. You have only a limited amount of time, a limited amount of energy, so you don't want to get distracted by the short-term things. Now, part of the mind likes doing things that lead to long-term suffering because they provide happiness in the short-term. Sometimes it'll deny the long-term suffering, or else it'll feel that the quick fix is worth the trade. Then there are other things, difficult in the short-term, that lead to long-term happiness down the line. So you need strategies and tactics for getting the mind to avoid the things that you like doing that are going to be harmful in the long-term and to get yourself to do the things that may be difficult now but will give you long-term happiness. This, too, the Buddha said, is a basic measure of your wisdom. One of these strategies is developing the brahma-viharas. Remind yourself that you want to be kind to yourself. You want to be kind to other people. This is an attitude you want to develop because it helps you. When you're facing a short-term happiness that leads to long-term suffering either for yourself or other people, it really helps to have this attitude of kindness already developed in the mind. This is one of the reasons why we meditate: to develop these attitudes ahead of time. Having the breath as a way of training yourself to be kind to yourself is an important aspect of developing goodwill: It helps you realize that you really do have a role in shaping your present experience, starting with the breath and then moving into other areas of the present. There's nobody forcing you to breathe in an uncomfortable way, or in a way that puts yourself to sleep, or in a way that gets you anxious and on edge. And yet we allow these things to happen because we're distracted, often about things that are really none of our business. But the breath is something that really is your responsibility. Nobody else can breathe for you. And nobody else can tell you what kind of breathing is going to be comfortable. You have to pay attention yourself. So this is another area where you really are responsible. And it does have a huge impact. If the mind has a sense of inner well-being, you're operating from a position of strength. You don't have to be a slave to things outside. You don't have to let the mind be shaken by things outside. You have a different source for happiness that comes from within. You're coming from a position of strength, which means that you're in a better position to act in skillful ways. At the same time, you get more and more sensitive to one of the big principles in the workings of cause and effect, the principle that informs all the basic principles of wisdom and discernment: the fact that some causes have an effect over time, some have an effect immediately, and some have both. When you're facing any experience in the present moment, part of it comes from past actions, and part from things you're doing right now. You aren't currently responsible for the things coming from past actions, but you are responsible for the things coming from your present actions. It takes sensitivity to figure out which is which, but if you can develop that sensitivity, it gives you a handle on things. You may be experiencing pain right now, but you don't have to suffer from it. The choices you're making right now are the ones deciding whether you'll suffer or not. This is where the distinction between what you're responsible for and what you're not shows its more subtle side. If there's pain coming from past actions, it's dukkha in the context of the three characteristics. It's just part of the way things are. The suffering you're adding, though, is dukkha in the four noble truths, which doesn't have to be there. It comes from your craving, and that's something you can do something about. There may be pain in the body, there may be undesirable thoughts coming up in the mind, but as you focus more carefully in the present moment, you begin to realize that you choose where to focus and how you want to shape the situation. You could let yourself suffer, fall victim to these things, or you could make a change. This point is often misunderstood. When you read the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness out of context, it's possible to interpret them as saying that when you're being mindful, say, of feelings, you just watch whatever feeling comes up and don't make any changes. Don't meddle with it. Just be non-reactive, allowing whatever's happening to happen. What this attitude does, though, is to drive underground some really important sources for insight: the ability to see to what extent you're shaping your feelings of pleasure and pain right now. This applies to physical pleasure and mental pleasure, to physical pain and mental pain. So when the Buddha talks about the things you do that lead to happiness, he's not just referring to your external actions. He's also referring to the way you think, the way you interpret, filter, make choices about how to shape the present moment: a purely internal matter. Mindfulness is to remind you that you can make choices, and that you want to learn to make them skillfully. You can learn how to breathe in a comfortable way, to think in a comfortable way, to fashion your thoughts and your perceptions so as to shape a greater sense of well-being. You don't have to invest any money. Just take time and use your powers of observation. That's what it all comes down to. These are very simple things, very simple principles we're operating on. What the Buddha does is to take these very simple principles and follow them through, to see what their implications are. It's wise to realize that you're responsible for some things and not for others. This applies whenever you're experiencing stress: You have to ask yourself, "Is this something coming from the past, or from something I'm actually doing right now?" You focus on the issue of how you're creating suffering for yourself right now, and how you can develop new habits that create the causes for happiness. As you follow through with this, you begin to get more and more sensitive to where you're creating unnecessary suffering. This is how that question on skillfulness begins to translate into the three perceptions, or what are sometimes called the three characteristics. As the question says, you're looking for "my long-term welfare and happiness." When you give rise to happiness in the present moment, you focus on whether it's long-term or short-term. You notice that if it's short-term, if it changes, if it's inconstant, you can't rely on it as your true happiness. It's stressful. So why would you want to lay claim to it as you or yours? In these ways, these three perceptions help to become your principles for judging what's working and what's not. If it's inconstant, it's not long-term; it's stressful. If it's stressful, it's not happiness. And if it's not happiness, you can't hold onto it as your long-term welfare and happiness. But the follow-up question is, "Is this a stressful cause that will eventually lead to long-term happiness, or just a cause of more stress?" Remember to keep this point in mind as well. If it's solidly pleasant in terms of its result, you put up with the stress and pain of the action. But if it leads to long-term suffering, it's something you want to drop. You tell yourself, "This is not what I'm looking for." It's like going into a place where you can pan for gold. You want to have standards for what you're looking for as you pan for the gold there. You're looking for certain colors, certain characteristics, that indicate genuine nuggets of gold. Any gravel or flashy fool's gold that doesn't meet those standards, you just throw away, throw away, throw away. But as for the pan in which you're swilling the gold around, even though it's not gold, you don't throw it away yet. In other words, even though the qualities you develop in terms of virtue, concentration, discernment are not ultimately what you're looking for, they do help you find what you're looking for. When you're looking at the results of your actions, you want to have some way of separating the gold from the gravel and dross, so you need the pan. It's not not-self just yet. Ultimately, when you apply the perception of not-self to let go of everything, it's still a question of knowing what is your responsibility and what's not. You let go of everything you've been identifying with because you're looking for the highest happiness. The quest for happiness is your responsibility; everything else at that point — even your innermost sense of who you are and who's been following the path — is not. But once you've done that final act of letting go, you don't have to be responsible for anything. The ultimate happiness looks after itself, and you're finished with your duties on the path. As the Buddha says, the holy life is completed, the task done. In this way, when you follow through with all the basic principles of wisdom, you find that they explain everything in the Buddha's teachings. You focus on what's your responsibility and you realize your responsibility is the fact that you're creating unnecessary suffering. But you can also be responsible for creating long-term happiness. Then you use the Buddha's teachings as tools to help you realize that if there's something you want to do but you know it's going to cause harm, you need some help in learning how to talk yourself out of it. As for good things that are difficult — as when it's difficult to be generous, difficult to be virtuous, or difficult to meditate — you need ways of helping yourself get over the hump: tools, strategies, ways of thinking that make it easier, so that you can let go of the unskillful things that you like, and arrive at that true happiness, which ultimately lies beyond even wisdom. This kind of happiness is the fourth of what the Buddha said, the four ariya-dhammas, the four noble Dhammas: virtue, concentration, discernment, and release. The first three factors in the list all aim at release, and then — when they've done their work — they get put aside. Even wisdom gets put aside. You put down your gold-pan for you've found all the gold you need. But until that point, you want to learn how to use it. The important point is to remember that the most useful wisdom is the basic kind: just following these basic principles to see how far they can take you as you get more and more sensitive to what the right questions are, and finding more and more skillful ways of answering those questions. So hold onto the pan, even though it may not be pretty or fancy, and simply learn how to use it with greater and greater skill. That, basically, is wisdom for dummies: the wisdom for people who recognize that they've been foolish and that they don't want to keep on being foolish. That means that they aren't fools; they simply see that they've been fools — an important difference. They're the kind of fools who aren't really dumb. The real dummies are those who think that they're already smart, and that the only wisdom good enough for them has to be counterintuitive: hidden essences, mysterious teachings that don't make sense. But the Buddha didn't teach that way. He simply taught basic principles for people who want to wise up: The first principle is to realize that your actions are important, that they make a difference, that they come from your ideas and intentions, and that they can be changed for the better. Second, focus on what really is your responsibility, and let go of things that are not. Third, train your mind to develop better and better answers to the question that focuses on what you're really responsible for: what you can do that will lead to your long-term welfare and happiness. Then take advantage of the tools the Buddha offers so that it's easier to give up the things that you like doing that are harmful, and to get yourself to do the things that are difficult but will lead to the long-term happiness you want. Ajaan Lee has a nice image to illustrate this point: A person goes to a mountain and comes back with a big hunk of rock to get the gold ore out of it. Another person, who assumes he's smart, sees the first person doing that and says, "What kind of fool would want a big hunk of rock? I just want the gold." So he carries a pick to the mountain to dig out the gold — but he doesn't get any gold, because gold doesn't come out of the rock that way. You have to take the rock, put it into the smelter, and heat it. That's when the gold comes out. The silver comes out. All these other minerals come out on their own when they reach their melting point. The heat here stands for the effort of your practice. You're willing to put in the effort to separate what's skillful from what's not. That's how you get the gold. Another analogy is climbing a tree. You can't climb the tree from the top down, starting with subtle concepts and advanced treatises. You have to start from the bottom, admitting to yourself, "There's a lot I don't know, and I can't figure it out just by reading, but I can figure it out by watching what I'm doing and seeing what's working to give long-term happiness." If you're willing to be the sort of person who doesn't have things all figured out ahead of time, but you know that you've got some good tools and you're willing to learn how to use them well: That's how you'll get to where you want to go.

Adult Dhamma September 28, 2006 The Buddha treated his students like adults. If he had wanted to, he could have told them about all the amazing and wonderful things that he had learned during his awakening, and that they should simply obey him without question. But instead, he taught them how to question, how to think for themselves, how to gain awakening themselves. Even when he was teaching children he taught them adult things, or basically how to become adults. The Novice's Questions, for instance, start out with the big harsh fact of life: that all beings subsist on food. This fact is also the main proof against the idea of intelligent design. If there were intelligent design, we could all live off the dew every morning, the rain every evening. We wouldn't have to harm anyone else in keeping our bodies going. But this is a fact of life: We have a body that need to be fed; we have to eat. When we eat, there's suffering, even if we're very strict vegetarians. The farmers who have to clear the fields and plant the food, the animals who die when the fields are cleared, the people who have to transport the food once it's grown: A lot of work and misery goes into that. So when the Buddha introduced the topic of causality to children, he started with a harsh fact of life. This is your prime experience of causality: Feeding goes on all the time. Without it, life couldn't last. When he taught his young son, Rahula, about truthfulness, the teaching was also pretty harsh. If you feel no shame in telling a lie, he said, your goodness is empty. It's thrown away. You can't be trusted. Then he taught Rahula to apply truthfulness in looking at his actions, to learn from his actions. That is basically what it means to become an adult. When you do something, you notice what actually happens as a result, and then you learn from it. If your action harmed yourself or others, you resolve not to repeat that mistake. Then you remember to apply that lesson to your next action, and then the next. That's what mindfulness is for: to remember these lessons. As the Buddha says, this is how you purify your thoughts, words, and deeds. Nobody else is going to come along and do the job for you. You've got to do it yourself. You have to learn how to be observant. You have to learn how to deal maturely with your mistakes. Don't hide them from yourself. Don't pretend they didn't happen. Be adult enough to willingly tell your mistakes to other people. That is what it means to be an adult: You take responsibility. When he taught Rahula meditation, he started off with the images of making the mind like earth, making the mind like water, like fire, like wind. In other words, earth doesn't react to what it dislikes. If you throw something disgusting on the earth, the earth doesn't shrink away. The same with fire: It can burn disgusting things and doesn't recoil in disgust. The same with water, the same with wind: They wash things away, they blow things away, and it doesn't matter whether those things are disgusting or not. They don't react. That was the Buddha's preliminary instruction to Rahula on the kind of mind you have to bring to meditation. You don't go by your likes or dislikes. You don't shrink away from pain. Yet this doesn't mean you become indifferent, because the next step is to work with the breath, which requires that you train the mind in a certain direction. You train yourself to breathe constantly aware of the whole body, to breathe calming the breath — which means that you are sensitive to pleasure or pain, and you're working to ever more subtle levels of pleasure. But in order to learn how to do this skillfully, you have to put your immediate reactions aside, and look to see what actually works. All of these are instructions on how to become an adult, how to deal with complexities, because cause and effect is a very complex issue. Look at dependent co-arising. It requires an adult mind to handle that kind of complexity. And yet the Buddha gives basic instructions to children on how to handle it — how to approach it, how to be an adult in your meditation, how to take responsibility for yourself — looking at things in terms of what you do and the pleasure and the pain that result. Once you've got those basic principles down, then it's simply a matter of learning to be more and more observant as to what works in getting the mind to settle down, what works in giving rise to insight. He gives you help. Look at the Canon: forty-five volumes. And a very large portion of it appears to have come from the Buddha himself. That's a lot of advice, but it all keeps pointing you back to yourself. As the Buddha keeps saying, Buddhas only point the way. It's up to you to follow the path. This means you have to be responsible. You have to be clear about your intentions, mature about admitting when you have some unskillful intentions in the mind, and honest about the results that come when you act on unskillful intentions. Only by observing that, again and again, can you finally get tired of those intentions. When you really see that there's a connection between unskillful intentions and needless suffering, you become genuinely motivated to find the escape from that suffering. This is the only way you can do it. Basically, you have to learn to judge what's worth observing and what's not. And again the Buddha points you to what's worth observing. The issue of needless stress that comes from unskillful states of mind: That's where he points you – "Look here, look here, look here." Then it's up to you to see and — when you've seen — to take that knowledge and put it to use. This requires that you be responsible. So it's a pretty radical, a very demanding teaching. The question is, "Do you want to be an adult or not?" There are lots of people out there who'd rather not be adults, who'd rather be infantilized. And there are lots of other people who enjoy telling them what to do, what to think. Even in Buddhist circles, you find various kinds of meditation where as they say, "Everything has all been thought out, everything has all been worked out, just follow the instructions. Don't think, don't add anything of your own." It's interesting to note that a lot of these methods also refer to the teaching on not-self as egolessness. Any sense of pride, any sense of independence is a bad thing in those meditation traditions. As one tradition would say, just be totally passive and aware, very equanimous, and just let your old sankharas burn away. And above all, don't think. Or if you are going to think, they say, learn how to think the way we think. And they have huge volumes of philosophy you have to learn, to squeeze your mind into their mold, after which they promise you awakening. But that doesn't work. Awakening comes from being very observant in seeing things you don't expect to see, developing your own sensitivities, your own discernment. After all, as the Buddha said, the issue is the suffering you're creating. If you don't have the basic honesty and maturity to see that, you're never going to gain awakening no matter how much you know, no matter how much you study, no matter how equanimous you are. You've got to take responsibility. And you've got to be willing to learn from your mistakes. When the Buddha taught Rahula, he didn't say, "Don't ever make mistakes." He said, "Try not to make mistakes, but if you do make a mistake — and it's expected that you will — this is how you handle it, this is how you learn from it." That's teaching Rahula how to be an adult. So it's up to each of us: Do we want to be adults? Or do we want to continue to be treated like children? — told what to do, told what to think, not being willing to take any risks. It may sound safe and reassuring, but if you don't take risks, you never get awakened. And the safety of being a child is all very delusional. It's the delusional safety of wanting to be told that everything you need to do has already been thought out. Or that there are lots of different ways to the goal, so it doesn't matter which one you choose; you can choose whichever one you like and you can be guaranteed that all the paths will lead to the same place. Again, that kind of thinking puts your likes and wishes ahead of everything else. That's precisely what an adult can't do. As an adult you have to realize that there are risks in this meditation path. There are some paths that do lead to the goal, they do lead to the end of suffering. Other paths lead to all kinds of other places. You have to be responsible for which path you choose, which one looks to be the most honest. This of course throws you back on your own honesty as well. Sometimes you read about teachers who turn out to be major disappointments. They do really horrible things to their students, and the students complain that they've been victimized. But in nearly every case, when you read the whole story, you realize that the students should have seen this coming. There were blatant warning signals that they chose to ignore. You have to be responsible in choosing your teachers, choosing your path. Once you've chosen the path that looks likely, you have to be responsible in following it, in learning how to develop your own sensitivity in following it. Because after all, what is the path that the Buddha points out? There's virtue, there's concentration, and there's discernment. These are all qualities in your own mind. We all have them to some extent. Learning how to develop what's in your own mind is what's going to make all the difference. The Buddha's discernment isn't going to give you awakening; his virtue and concentration aren't going to give you awakening. You have to develop your own. Nobody else can develop these things for you. Other people can give you hints; they can help point you in the right direction. But the actual work and the actual seeing is something you have to do for yourself. So the question is: Are you mature enough to want this path? Are you mature enough to follow it through? Nobody's forcing you. Just realize the dangers of not following this path and make your choice.

Precept Meditation October 22, 2006 Years back, when Ajaan Suwat was teaching a meditation retreat at IMS, someone asked him a question in a Q&A session toward the end of the retreat: "How do we bring meditation into daily life?" His answer was to focus on the five and the eight precepts — but a lot of people misunderstood his answer. They interpreted it as his being dismissive of laypeople; that laypeople really couldn't or shouldn't focus on meditation in daily life; that they should just stick to the lowly practice of the precepts instead. But that wasn't his point. His point was that following the precepts is an important part of meditation. The act of taking on the five precepts teaches you very important lessons about skills integral to meditation. To begin with, it focuses your attention on your intentions, because you can break a precept only intentionally. This forces you to ask yourself, "What are your intentions? Why do you act? What's the motive behind your actions and your choices?" When you're forced to focus on these questions, you realize that one of the few intentions really worth sticking with all the time is the intention to be harmless. This is why you decide that you don't want to kill, to steal, to have illicit sex, to lie, or to take intoxicants, because all of these actions are harmful by nature. So you set up that intention and try to stick by it. This requires mindfulness and alertness, which are important factors in training the mind. You have to keep your precepts in mind and be alert in watching over your actions to make sure they don't go against your original intent. At the same time, you have to develop strategies for fending off any intentions that would go against your intent to be harmless. This requires ingenuity and discernment. Right here you can begin to see the connections with meditation. Once you've set up an intention to stay with the breath, you have to be mindful and alert to make sure you actually do stay with the breath and don't go wandering off. You also have to use your discernment and ingenuity to fend off any contrary intentions that would lure you away from your original intent. The precepts also teach you to be scrupulous. It's easy to think of being harmless to all beings in a general way, but when you really try to act on that intention, you discover all sorts of ramifications you didn't expect. You have to pay attention to animals you may have otherwise overlooked: ants and termites, for instance. You've got to take their survival into account. This forces you to be very scrupulous in your behavior, very careful in what you will and will not do. This habit, too, is very helpful in the course of meditation, helping you to pay attention to little details, little movements in the mind that are easy to overlook but can have important consequences. In this way you can see how the precepts are a form of meditation in daily life. They take your actions as your objects of meditation and they force you to develop many of the mental skills and attitudes you need in formal meditation: mindfulness, alertness, ingenuity, strategic discernment, and a scrupulous attention to detail. The precepts also teach you the power of your intentions. As you stick with a skillful intention, you'll find it really does change your life. It creates a better atmosphere for your meditating. If you stick with the intention not to be harmful, then when the time comes to sit down and meditate or to try to be mindful in other ways throughout the day, it's a lot easier. You're not burdened with remorse over any harmful things you might have done or said. You don't have to go into denial about might have done or said. This creates a much better atmosphere, a much better environment for the mind to keep things in mind and to settle down and be at ease with itself. But the precepts also help induce a sense of samvega: dismay over the prospect of continued samsara. You'll begin to notice, as you try to maintain the intention not to be harmful, how really difficult it is to be totally harmless, because life maintains itself by feeding. This is one of the best arguments against intelligent design, or at least compassionate intelligent design: Why do we have to feed off one another all the time? Wouldn't it be better if we could feed off inanimate objects or energies? If we could eat rocks or soil, if we could live off light waves or sound vibrations, nothing would be harmed. Like the harmoniums in The Sirens of Titan: We could just feed on vibrations and take pleasure in one another's happiness. But that's not how the world works. Worldly happiness is limited by the fact that one person's happiness often requires feeding on someone else's suffering and pain. So there are limitations to the range of the precepts. When you decide to adopt the precept against killing, for example, you decide basically that you yourself are not going to kill and you're not going to give the explicit order to anybody else — or even an indirect hint to anyone else — that they should kill. But even then, it's still difficult to go around without somebody's getting killed. When you walk along a sidewalk, you don't know how many living things you step on. Or eating: Even if you decide to be a strict vegetarian, a lot of insects get killed in the process of farming vegetables. Gophers and other animals get killed when farmers clear the fields. So as you reflect on your precepts and on your desire to be harmless, it creates a good strong sense of samvega — which is an important element of discernment to remind you that it would really be good to get out of this whole process of samsara-ing, to find a happiness that doesn't need to feed. Maybe there is something to this nibbana business after all. It really would be something good, something worth trying to attain. So the precepts not only help develop the skills you need for concentration but also provide a context and motivation for gaining discernment and insight. As for the eight precepts, those move into another area of training for the mind. Again, Ajaan Suwat: "The eight precepts add the element of restraint of the senses." Each of the added precepts places restraints on the types of pleasures we might try to get through the sense doors. The precept against illicit sex turns into a precept against sex, period. That covers all of the sense doors right there. Then there's the precept against eating after noon or before dawn. That covers pleasures of taste. The precept against watching shows, listening to music, using perfumes and scents covers pleasures of sight, hearing, and smell. And then the precept against high and luxurious beds and seats covers the sense of touch. As you go down the list, you can see that each of the five senses is covered. This adds a higher level of restraint and places some barriers on our typical ways of indulging our desire for pleasure: evening munchies; the desire for a nice, thick mattress to lie on; wanting to smell nice; liking to listen to music. By taking on these precepts, you learn to put some barriers around your self-indulgence. These barriers serve several purposes. One, they focus you on the meditation: If you're going to find any pleasure in the course of the day, you have to look more intently at developing pleasure in the meditation to make up for the restrictions you've placed on your foraging for pleasure outside. In addition, you learn important lessons about indulgence. If you tend to be indulgent in your daily life, you're going to be very self-indulgent when you meditate. If you can't say No to your daily desires, it's going to be hard to say No to them while you're sitting here meditating. The mind-states that want to go off and think about pleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations are very easy to indulge in if you don't have the habit of saying No to your impulse to look for pleasure in those things throughout the day. As you develop this habit of saying No to sensual indulgence in the course of the day, it's a lot easier to say No to sensual thoughts in the course of the meditation. You've also developed the habit of learning when to say "enough," which will hold you in good stead as you begin to develop the sense of non-sensual pleasure and rapture that come with concentration. You'll be more likely to realize when you've indulged enough in those kinds of pleasure so that you can turn to the further work you need to do in terms of insight and discernment. You can't just stay wallowing in the pleasure of concentration. You've got to learn how to understand what's going on in the mind, why it creates mental worlds to begin with — the worlds that pull you away from the present moment and lead to suffering and stress. So the precepts are a crucial part of meditation. They help you develop good habits and foster insight. In particular, they help you see into your habits of self-indulgence. A lot of the pleasures we indulge in really do get in the way of deeper pleasure, deeper happiness. We all want to have our cake and eat it too. When we play chess, we want to keep all our pieces and yet win at the same time. But an important lesson in life is that certain pleasures really do get in the way of higher happiness. You've got to learn how to say No to them. And to develop a sense of moderation: how much pleasure is enough for you to do the real work at hand. Ultimately, you see that even the most harmless pleasures in this world are not absolutely harmless. This realization leads to the sense of samvega that motivates you to look for an even higher pleasure: the absolutely blameless bliss of nibbana. So learn to look at the precepts as an important part of the meditation. They're not Sunday school rules or "conventional truths" that someone who hits the more "ultimate truths" can eventually put aside and discard with impunity. They're an important part of training the mind in the skills and attitudes it'll need in concentration, in developing discernment, and ultimately leading to release. So when Ajaan Suwat was asked about how to bring the meditation into daily life, his answer didn't dismiss lay life at all. It pointed to an important fact. This is how you meditate in daily life: by being very careful about your precepts, respecting them, and being alive to the lessons they teach.

Meditation Prep January 30, 2008 Meditation isn't a lap belt. You can't just squeeze your mind into a single technique and expect the technique to do all of your work for you. You've got to develop the proper attitudes toward meditation, proper attitudes toward your mind. In addition, you've got to develop a range of techniques and learn how to determine which technique to use at which particular time for which particular problem, so that you can use the techniques wisely for their intended purpose. They're not meant to be straitjackets for the mind. They're more means for exploration. As the Buddha once said, he points out the road but it's up to you to follow the road, to see what you learn along the way and to discover where it takes you. In many cases, the good techniques actually present you with questions more than they provide you with answers. You've got to develop the right frame of mind for taking up the questions and figuring out how to get the right answers, answers that help put an end to suffering. To get an idea of what these attitudes are that you need to bring to the meditation, it's good to look at what the Buddha taught his son, Rahula, prior to teaching him how to focus on the breath. There are two main sets of instructions. In the first set, the Buddha started his meditation instructions not by telling Rahula to sit and close his eyes, but by telling him to develop the right attitude toward all of his actions: his thoughts, words, and deeds. In other words, Rahula was going to get practice in how to be a meditator by looking at his actions in all situations. First, the Buddha established the principle of truthfulness. If you're the sort of person who feels no shame at telling a lie, he said, then you have no value as a meditator. You've thrown your value away. If you find it easy to lie to other people, it's going to be easy to lie to yourself. So truthfulness was the first principle, the first attitude the Buddha recommended. Then, he said, you apply that truthfulness to your thoughts, words, and deeds before you act, and keep reminding yourself to act only on harmless intentions. This develops the qualities of good will and compassion. When an intention comes up and you're thinking about following it through, ask yourself: "Is this going to be harmful?" If you can perceive some potential harm, don't do it. If you don't foresee any harm, you can go ahead and do it. While you're acting, look for the immediate results coming from your action, because actions can bear their results not only in the long distant future but also right here, right now, where you can immediately see them. If you stick your finger in fire, it hurts right now. It's not going to wait to hurt you in some future lifetime. If you swallow hot soup, it'll scald you now, not after you die and are reborn. So if you see any harm coming from your action, stop doing it. But if you don't see any harm either to yourself or to others, you can continue with it. When the action is done, look at its results over the long term. If you realize that it did cause harm over time, develop an attitude of shame about the action. Now, notice that the Buddha is not saying to be ashamed about yourself; he wants you to feel shame toward the action. In other words, view the action as something beneath you. That's a healthy use of shame; it's the companion to a healthy sense of pride. Make up your mind that you're not going to repeat the action, and then go talk it over with someone you respect. This develops an attitude of integrity, that you accept responsibility for what you've done, and are open about what you've done. This way you can learn. So the Buddha doesn't start out by telling Rahula not to make mistakes. He says to try to avoid making mistakes, but if you do make a mistake, this is how you handle it, with honesty, with an attitude of harmlessness or compassion, with a healthy sense of shame, and with integrity. If, on the other hand, you look at your actions and see that they haven't caused any harm, you can take joy in the fact and keep on practicing. That's how you start meditating in your daily life. Those are the attitudes you want to bring to the meditation: a willingness to look at your intentions and to look at their results. This is going to be really important in the course of your meditation, because there's no other way you'll be able to read your own mind. Then, at a later time, the Buddha taught Rahula breath meditation. But before he taught him breath meditation, he taught him ten other exercises to prepare him for the breath. The first four exercises deal with the physical elements, looking at the body in terms of its elements, its properties. Earth is solidity; water, liquidity; fire, heat; and wind, motion. He said to Rahula, "Try to make your mind like each of these elements, each of these properties." For example with earth: If you throw disgusting things on earth, earth doesn't react. Now the Buddha is not telling Rahula to be passive or oblivious. He's saying to be grounded, to learn powers of endurance, because as you'll see, the meditations he taught Rahula further on are active kinds of meditation that require a lot of sensitivity. You don't simply sit with whatever's there without making any changes. You are supposed to adjust and change things. But if you want to make the proper changes, you first have to understand where you actually are and what the problem actually is. Then make your changes and watch to see if they actually work. Now to be able to watch to see things clearly, you have to have powers of endurance, the ability to sit with things and watch them steadily over time. Unpleasant things are bound to come up in the meditation for sure. To comprehend them, after all, is the duty with regard to suffering and stress: You've got to comprehend it. And to comprehend it, there are times when you'll have to really sit with it, to watch it over time, again and again and again. This requires endurance. Then when you try changing something in the meditation — when you experiment with your breath and your mind in various ways — you've got to sit with things for long periods of time to see if what you did really works. You don't want to be the sort of person who makes a little change, sees a little something that looks promising, and immediately jumps to the conclusion that this is the solution. The result may be short lasting. You may ultimately find yourself back where you began. So you want to see if that's the case, which means you've got to be able to sit with things. The same principle applies with the other properties. Fire can burn unpleasant things, but it doesn't shrink away from them. Water can be used to wash away unpleasant things, but doesn't get disgusted. Wind blows unpleasant things around, and doesn't show distaste. So you learn to be grounded. Remind yourself that whatever comes up, you can bear it. I remember once when I was staying with Ajaan Fuang, he told me out of the blue one day to sit up and meditate all night. My immediate reaction was that it wasn't a good day for me to try that. I had been working hard that day, I said, I couldn't do it. He looked at me and said, "Well, is it going to kill you?" "Well, no." "Then you can do it." That's the attitude you've got to have — as with that saying, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. But in the midst of doing difficult things, you don't just suffer through them. You've got to figure out, "How can I get through this without suffering?" That's where you start learning how to be ingenious. But the important thing is that you remind yourself, okay, you can stand this; whatever's coming up, you're not going to get blown around. That way you can begin to trust yourself as an observer. Then, to show that the Buddha wasn't teaching Rahula to be passive, the next four meditations are about replacing unskillful attitudes with more skillful ones, essentially the attitudes of the brahma-viharas: goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity — although here the Buddha isn't asking him to develop these thoughts to the limitless extent of brahma-viharas. He's simply telling him to replace various levels of aversion in the mind — irritation, resentment, ill will, or the desire to harm — with more positive emotions. If you notice ill will coming up in the mind, try counteracting it with goodwill. Don't just allow the mind to stay stuck with its ill will. You do what you can to foster an attitude of goodwill to whomever the person may be. If the idea comes up that you'd like to be cruel or harmful to somebody, counteract it with an attitude of compassion, reminding yourself that you're not going to benefit from that person's suffering in any way at all. In fact, when other people are suffering, that's when they tend to do crazy, ill-considered, unskillful things. You've got to have some compassion for people who are engaged in unskillful activities, hoping that they'll learn the good sense to stop. Empathetic joy is the antidote for any feelings of resentment you may feel for somebody else's good fortune. You realize that resentment doesn't do you any good at all. People who are enjoying good fortune must've done something sometime that leads to happiness, so why resent it? Do you want people to resent good fortune when it comes your way? Of course not. As for feelings of equanimity, these are meant to counteract feelings of irritation. You want to be equanimous toward irritating things so that irritation doesn't build up to the point where it makes you do something stupid. In each of these cases, you want to be skilled at giving rise to skillful attitudes when you need them so that you don't just sit there stewing in aversion. Then the Buddha taught two meditations for counteracting other sorts of unskillful qualities. For lust, he said to try to develop the perception of the foulness of the human body. Now this is not about having an unhealthy negative image of the body; it's actually training in having a healthy negative image of the body. You realize that everybody is in the same boat this way. We're all filled with blood, pus, contents of the stomach, contents of the intestines, all kinds of stuff you wouldn't like to have on the floor here in the morning when we're getting the meal ready. This is a useful antidote. When feelings of lust come up and you think about what lies under the skin, it's hard to maintain sexual desire. So again, the Buddha is not teaching Rahula to be passive, or simply to accept whatever's coming up. He's telling him how to counteract unskillful attitudes and replace them with skillful ones. In the final preparation, before teaching Rahula breath meditation, the Buddha taught him something that's usually considered to be a very advanced teaching. He said, "Try to develop the perception of inconstancy, to counteract the conceit, 'I am.'" Now notice: The Buddha is putting this right at the beginning. One of the reasons for this is that when skillful and unskillful things come up in the mind, if you immediately brand yourself as "I'm the sort of person who's always skillful," or "I'm the sort of person who's always unskillful," that's going to get in the way of actually seeing which actions in the mind are having a helpful impact and which ones are not. If, when something that looks unskillful comes up, and you immediately react to it, "My gosh, I'm a really bad meditator, I'm miserable, look at this, this horrible thought, I shouldn't be thinking this": You either feel self-hatred or you start going into denial, pretending that it didn't actually happen. Neither reaction helps develop any insight at all. If you engage in denial, you can't see what you're doing, can't see whether the intention was actually skillful or not, and can't see the results of the action. And you certainly can't counteract denial if you don't admit that it's there. Or if you build the other kind of "I am" around the unskillful thought, that "I'm miserable," that really shoots you down, saps your ability to counteract the thought. This is the problem with "I am": It starts getting to issues of innate nature. If you have a bad innate nature, you can't change it. If you have a good innate good nature, then when something that looks skillful arises in the mind, you immediately read it as a sign of your innate goodness. You start getting complacent and careless, and you don't really see whether there's anything unskillful lurking under the surface. Where does this particular intention really lead? What needs to be done with it? Is it really as good as it seems at first glance? If you decide that it's part of your innate Buddha nature, you get complacent. So again, you miss out on things, don't really see things as they're happening, because the "I am" gets in the way. It's interesting: The Pali word for "conceit" — mana — doesn't mean only a sense that you're better than other people. If you say, "I'm worse than other people," or "I'm equal to other people," that's conceit as well, because you're still building the "I am" around things. There are several ways to get around this. The first is the Buddha's advice to Rahula: Whatever comes up is inconstant. It doesn't last, so it's not enough to build an identity around. Another way around the "I am" is that, whatever comes up in the mind, you remind yourself that this happens to everybody. Remind yourself that you don't have any innate nature. The mind is neutral. It just knows. The thinking is skillful or unskillful, but those are habits, which aren't innate at all. Or you can do what the Buddha did. This is something people tend to forget when they meditate. On the night of his awakening, his first knowledge was about himself, his narratives. You think you have narratives: He had narratives going way back, eons and eons. But he didn't jump straight from there to the present moment. He took a detour and thought about all the beings in the world: How about them? He saw that they all went through the same process — all different kinds of birth and rebirth — and on seeing them in a more universal way, he was able to see underlying patterns: what kind of actions were skillful, what kind of views underlay skillful actions that lead to fortunate rebirths, and how unskillful actions lead to unfortunate ones. It was by looking at the large picture that he was able to see patterns. Only then did he look at the present moment from the perspective of those larger patterns. That helps cut through the "I am" and the individual narratives. You're looking at events common to beings all over the world, and you're looking at them in light of those larger patterns — not of natures but of actions. When you're looking at greed, anger, and delusion in the mind in this way, it helps to loosen some of the sense of identity around them. Another way to loosen that sense of identity is to think of the mind as a committee. The committee contains all kinds of members who propose all kinds of things. Just because somebody in the committee has proposed a bad idea doesn't mean the committee is bad. The duty of the committee is to listen to the ideas brought to the floor figure out which is the best one to act on right now. If they make a mistake, they go back and undo the old decision, open the floor to suggestions, and arrive at a new decision. They don't worry about the innate nature of the committee. When you can see events in the mind in this way, then you're really ready to meditate, because it allows you to deal with them just as events, as instances of intention and the results of intentions. When you put aside the "I am," you're in a much better position to see things for what they actually do, and then you can deal with them in the most appropriate way. It was only after the Buddha taught Rahula all of these things that he said, "Okay, sit down. This is how you do breath meditation." So when you sit down to do breath meditation, it's good to reflect on these attitudes. They're your tools, your means for reading the events that are arising and passing away, and also for reading the results of applying different techniques. They help you figure out which technique is useful for which kind of issue, what's getting results, what's not getting results. That's how you develop your discernment. You see cause and effect, skillful and unskillful, i.e., the four noble truths. You develop the path, so you can comprehend suffering and eventually let go of its cause. That's how you realize the end of suffering: by experimenting, by exploring, by bringing the right attitudes and the right mental qualities to whichever meditation technique you choose. Those qualities are the factors that make all the difference. So do your best to bring the full set of mature qualities to meditation. That's how you get results.

Establishing Priorities September 11, 2008 When you start to meditate, it's important that you make a firm determination, establishing the firm intention that you're going to stay with the breath for the entire hour. And it's good to remind yourself of the reasons for why you want to do this, because that helps to firm up the intention. We're here because we want a happiness that's blameless, a happiness that's dependable, a happiness that'll last. And this is the road that leads there: training the mind. The Buddha once said that the difference between a wise person and a foolish one is that the foolish person sees no need to train the mind. Happiness can be bought, happiness can be taken: That's the foolish person's attitude. But the wise person sees that the pursuit of that kind of happiness actually leads to a lot of unhappiness. Whatever little happiness it does produce isn't dependable. It requires that conditions be a certain way, conditions that lie totally outside your control. The fact that those conditions are unstable means that the happiness coming from them is going to be unstable as well. So reflect on that. Sometimes you hear theories about how causality works in life. And in many philosophies and religions causality typically starts with an unmoved mover, something permanent, something good that gives rise to everything we experience. The question of course is, "Why does a permanent cause lead to changeable results? Why does a good cause lead to undesirable results?" Those ideas of causality offer no help at all. If something is undesirable, where do you go back and change the cause to make it more desirable? If the cause is unchanging, you're stymied. But as the Buddha saw, causes change too — and effects can have an effect on causes. This is one of the reasons why things are so unstable and unreliable, but it's also part of the way out. The causes of suffering can be changed, which means that you actually can put an end to suffering. The Buddha's approach was not to simply accept suffering as a given in life, that it has to be that way and we simply learn how to accept it and that's the end of the problem. He saw that suffering can actually be brought to an end. And the causes of suffering are largely internal, which means that the way to put an end to suffering is largely an internal job as well. As someone once said, true happiness is an inside job. That's why we train the mind: to search for the causes within it that lead to suffering and see what we can do to change them. Keep this point in mind as you practice because a common experience in meditation is that you sit here focused on the breath and then after a while suddenly realize that you haven't been with the breath at all. You've been someplace else. There was a lapse of mindfulness, a lapse of alertness. You're usually surprised that it's happened, but you shouldn't be. Expect that the mind will come up with alternative intentions in the course of the hour and be on the lookout for them. So while you're focused on the breath, you also have to be heedful of the fact that you could lose the breath at any moment. This means that you want to do your best to strengthen your focus, strengthen your mindfulness, strengthen your alertness. And one way to do that is, as soon as you catch yourself wandering off, immediately come back to the breath but without engaging in self-recrimination. Don't berate yourself for losing the breath. If you do, you'll tie yourself up in another long discourse that'll take you away from the breath again. Just drop the distraction in its unfinished state and come back to the breath as quickly as possible. Reestablish yourself. And try to get interested in the breath. As the Buddha said, using your powers of analysis is actually one way of leading the mind into concentration. For people who can't calm the mind simply by sticking with the breath, it's good to look into the breath as a process to explore. How does the breathing affect the body? How does the effect of the breath on the body have an effect on the mind? How can you maximize the positive effects? What kind of breathing would feel really good? And when it feels good, what can you do with that good feeling? The Buddha suggests spreading it around, allowing it to permeate the body throughout. So there's plenty to do here. It's not just in out, in out, in out. When the breath comes in, explore how it's coming in, how it effects different parts of the body. When it goes out, explore and experiment to see what's the most comfortable way of allowing it to go out. All too often our cartoon notion of the breath coming in and going out requires that we squeeze it out when it goes out. But you don't want to do that. The squeezing is actually depleting the breath energy in the body. Try telling yourself that you'll help the breath come in, but when it goes out, it can go out on its own. You don't have to push it. You don't have to squeeze it. That way you can begin to maintain a sense of fullness that carries from the in-breath even through the out-breath. When you breathe with that sense of continual fullness, the breath feels a lot better. It becomes a lot more interesting. You begin to realize that this breath work we do in the body is a useful way of getting the mind interested in the breath, so that you don't have to force it to stay here. You're here through the power of your curiosity. At the same time, you have to keep an eye on the mind to notice when it begins to show signs that it's about to wander off. Maybe it's a little impatient; maybe the results aren't coming as fast as you'd like. Nothing seems to be changing. The mind starts looking for someplace else to go, something else to think about. If you're really alert, you can catch it before a distracting thought is fully formed. The more quickly you can see that process, the better. You can feel that stirring of a form or a thought beginning to occur, like a little tingling or a little stirring around, a little knot in the breath energy. At that point, it's hard to say whether it's physical or mental. It could be either. There will come a point, though, when the mind decides that the stirring is a potential for a thought. It looks into it and turns it into a thought world. The more quickly you can see that happening, the more you're able to zap it at the very beginning of the stirring. This too is something you'll learn in the course of exploring the breath. So even though we say to keep one eye on the breath and the other eye on the potential for the mind to leave, when you really look carefully at the breath, you'll find that the potential for it to leave is right there as well, in the little knots or stirrings that can develop in the breath energy. So you don't have to split your focus. In this way you can help maintain your original intention to stay continually with the breath because it's interesting, because there are lots of things here to learn. A similar principle applies when you leave meditation because you really don't want to leave totally. You spent all this time getting the mind to settle down, and it would be a shame just to throw it away. So there is a skill to leaving meditation as well, a skill to opening your eyes. When you open your eyes, remind yourself that the breath-body is still here, the sense of energy in the body is still here. All too often when we open our eyes, all our attention goes flowing out into the visual world and our sense of the body gets shrunken down, pushed aside, blotted out. You want to learn how not to do that. In other words, you can be aware of the visual world at the same time that you're aware of the breath-energy world. You might ask yourself, "Which contains which? Does your sense of the body contain your awareness of the visual world or does the visual world contain your sense of the body?" See which way of conceiving this relationship helps you to maintain that sense of breath awareness even as you open your eyes, get up and move around, negotiate the outside world, so that your breath awareness becomes more continuous. This allows you to learn things about the mind, to develop new skills, in the course of daily life. You learn how to maintain a sense of ease even in difficult situations, a sense of fullness at times when your mind would otherwise be daydreaming or drifting around. Instead of wasting your time drifting, you can stay right here and continue to explore the sense of the body, the breath-energy body inside. You can also begin to sense which things knock you off balance, distract you, pull you out of the body. When you see that happening, you've found an issue to explore. This is how concentration leads to insight. It provides you with a still center from which you can watch the movements of the mind and see where they go. This way you can detect: This is what a defilement is like; it blocks the mind, obscures the mind. You check into it: Is it greed, anger, delusion, lust, fear, jealousy? What are the things that spark these emotions? You see the defilements in real-time. If you're able to do this, then the next time you sit down it's going to be a lot easier to stay with the breath more continuously. But if you develop the habit of throwing away your concentration as soon as you get up, it's going to be easier to throw it away in the midst of your meditation. You've got to keep in mind the fact that the mind has to be trained if you want to gain true happiness, and you don't want to train the mind only when you sit here with your eyes closed. You want the training to be 24/7 because the mind's potential to create problems is 24/7 as well. So it's a matter of establishing your priorities. What kind of happiness do you want? What are you willing to give up to attain that happiness? How much time and energy are you planning to invest, willing to invest to find true happiness? This is another aspect of wisdom: keeping your priorities clear. If true happiness is the top priority, that helps to pull the mind out of its ignorance — in other words, its overriding concern for other issues — and to bring the issue of suffering and the causes of suffering up to the fore. That's what clear knowing is all about, making it your clear priority that the issue of suffering is paramount. This is the most important issue to deal with. When the Buddha talks about ignorance, he's not talking about a general lack of knowledge about things. You can know many things and still be ignorant of the big issue. And part of that ignorance comes from the fact that you don't really regard the big issue as the big issue. You've got other priorities, other agendas. But the Buddha wants you to see that the question of suffering is the big issue in life. Your ability to train yourself to put an end to it should be your top priority. When I was up in Bellingham this last weekend, I was out walking after the meal. A guy looked at me and asked, "Buddhist?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Why are there so many religions in the world?" I answered, "Because the different religions ask different questions." "So what's the Buddha's question?" "His question is: 'Why are we suffering and what can we do to put an end to it?'" "Don't you just hate that question?" he said. I said, "No, I think it's a pretty good question." The fact that there's suffering is something you might not like, and it's natural not to like it, but it would be strange to hate the question of why it happens and how you can put an end to it. We should regard this as the most important question to try to answer because it's the most useful, most fruitful question we can explore. It's a privilege to be able to ask this question and answer it. That's why one of the duties with regard to the four noble truths is to develop the path, the way out of suffering. This is what we're doing here right now. So wisdom is largely a matter of priorities. As you're sitting in meditation, as you go through life, your top priority should be to stay here with the breath so as to develop the powers of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment that will allow you to realize the end of suffering. A lot of the practice is learning how to stick to those priorities and not let other priorities sneak in.

How to Feed Mindfulness August 3, 2008 We sit here with a lot of potentials: potential sensations in the body, potential qualities in the mind. The practice of meditation is learning how to put aside the unskillful potentials, how to develop the skillful ones, and how to take advantage of the skillful ones — learning how to feed them, to give them strength, so that they basically take charge and help put an end to suffering and stress. You could, if you wanted to, sit here and spend the whole hour thinking about all kinds of random, frivolous things. Or you could sit here creating a lot of pain. Psychologists studying the nervous system have discovered that there are times when you have a sensation of pain but there's really nothing, no pain signal, coming in at the end of the nerve. The monitoring stations along the nerve interpret a particular signal as a pain signal, and so that's what they send on up the line. That means that you could sit here focusing on whatever potentials for pain there are, and you could turn almost anything into a pain — but you don't. You focus on the potentials for pleasure. Notice, when the breath comes in, where it's feeling good, which part of the breath cycle feels nicest. Is it the middle of the breath, the beginning of the breath, the end of the breath? Can you notice when the breath is getting too long? Can you catch yourself squeezing the breath as it goes out? When you squeeze it, you're weakening the potential for pleasure that the breath can give. Someplace in the middle of the in-breath there's a point of balance. You might want to focus your attention there and maximize that particular sensation, which means that the breath will get shorter and shorter, more and more subtle as it hovers around that point of balance. If that's too subtle to notice, simply be aware of when the breath is too long, when it's too short, too shallow, too deep, which parts of the body would feel better if they were given a greater role in the breathing process. Try to figure out which ways of breathing will help to develop the potentials of comfort, ease, refreshment, fullness in the body. As you do this, you're developing good potentials in the mind as well. The two major ones are mindfulness and alertness. I recently read someone saying that mindfulness is an unfabricated phenomenon — that only your thought processes that pull you away from the present moment count as fabricated, that when you're in the pure present there's no fabrication going on at all. But that's a major misunderstanding. Mindfulness is something you do. It's a fabricated activity. Alertness is something you do. It's a fabricated activity as well. And there are potentials in the mind that can either foster the mindfulness or starve it. In other words, mindfulness is something you have to feed. It's not your simple awareness. It's the ability to keep something in mind. The reason we don't understand things, the reason we don't see the connection between cause and effect, is because we forget. It's because we forget that we can't stick with our resolves. Say you decide you're going to stay here for a whole hour with the breath — and five minutes later you find yourself planning tomorrow's meal, or thinking about events far away in Iceland. What happened? You forgot. And why did you forget? Well, there was a blanking out for a moment or two because you weren't paying proper attention to the causes for mindfulness. The Buddha identifies two qualities that feed mindfulness and help it grow. The first is well-purified virtue. Virtue here means the intention not to harm: not to do harm to yourself, not to do harm to other living beings. If you have harmful intentions in mind, part of the mind goes along with them and part of the mind doesn't. There's a conflict. And one of the mind's tricks for going along with the harmful intention is to allow itself to forget that the intention is actually harmful. If this becomes a habit, it's hard to develop mindfulness because you're running up against these walls of forgetfulness that the mind very insistently wants to keep up. Your mindfulness runs up against them and gets deflected. This is why people in Thailand, before they meditate, sometimes make a vow: "I'm going to observe the five precepts. I'm going to stick with them. And I'm sincere in that resolution." This is even easier when you already have been following the five precepts. You reflect on your actions, and there is nothing you regret. You don't have to go into denial. That way it's easier for mindfulness to be continuous. But the simple act of resolving to be harmless in all your activities — harmless in what you do, harmless in what you say, harmless in what you think — can begin to create the right conditions for mindfulness immediately. Make that a principle you want to hold to. The other quality that helps feed mindfulness is views made straight — straight in the sense that they're in line with the truth: understanding that your actions will have consequences, that skillful intentions will tend to lead to pleasant results, unskillful intentions to unpleasant results. This is a principle that wasn't just made up by somebody. It's been observed by people who've developed their minds to the point where they really can see what's going on. And on the basis of that, you realize, for example, that generosity is a good thing, gratitude is a good thing, because people do have the choice to act skillfully or unskillfully. You have to be grateful for the times when they've chosen to be skillful, and grateful to yourself for the times you've chosen to be skillful, because thinking in this way helps to break down the barriers in the mind that say, "I don't want to think about the Dhamma right now. I want to think about sex, or I want to think about drugs, or I want to think about who-knows-what." If there's part of the mind that says, "Hey, you can't do that without consequences," you've got your first line of defense against those wandering, unskillful thoughts. Then there will be part of the mind that says, "I don't want to think about that because it means I've been acting unskillfully in the past, and it just hurts too much to think about that." That's where the Buddha recommends developing the right attitude toward your past mistakes. It's not inevitable that you're going to have to suffer a lot from your past mistakes. As the Buddha said, if you can develop an attitude of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, that'll mitigate the results of your past bad actions. If you can train yourself so that the mind isn't overcome by pleasure, isn't overcome by pain — in other words, you don't let these feelings get in the way of your seeing what's actually going on — then again, the mind is immune, or at least the results of your past mistakes will be mitigated. So the proper attitude to have toward your past bad actions is, one, realize that remorse is not going to undo them. Simply make the resolve that you're not going to repeat those actions again. And then, two, try to develop attitudes of limitless goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. When the meditation gets dry, bring out these attitudes and work on spreading them around, realizing that other people's unhappiness isn't going to help you in any way, nor is your unhappiness going to help you in any way. So why would you wish for anybody's unhappiness? Even with people who have been cruel and unprincipled, you realize that if they suffer more, they'll probably get even more cruel, more unprincipled. So try to picture them learning to see to the error of their ways and changing their ways. In other words, you wish for them to start creating the causes for happiness. You don't feel that you have to settle old scores first before you let them be happy or wise. When you learn how to think in these ways, it helps to cut through a lot of the barriers you create in the mind, a lot of the unskillful attitudes that can get in the way of continual mindfulness. So when you've lowered the walls, you can see back into the past and ahead into the future. You can start seeing the connections between actions and their results. When you focus the mind in a certain way, what are the results over time? If you're mindful of your actions, you can really see this for yourself. If you change the way you focus, if you change the way you breathe, what effect does that have over time? Sometimes the effects are immediate; sometimes they take a while to seep in. Only if you're really mindful can you see the long-term effects. Only if you're alert can you see the short-term effects. This is why mindfulness and alertness have to go together. I was reading a Dhamma talk by Upasika Kee last night in which she was saying that real insight, as soon as it sees, lets go in that very moment. It's not that you see in one moment and let go in the next. You see and you let go in the seeing, right there and then. That kind of insight requires very quick alertness. But the ability to develop that kind of alertness requires solid mindfulness, long-term mindfulness, so that you can understand how you get the mind in the right place to see things clearly to begin with. All too often when people sit and meditate, the meditation either goes poorly and they have no idea why it's going poorly, or it goes well and they have no idea why it's going well. That's because they haven't been watching mindfully. They watch for a little bit and then they forget. Then they come back, and then they forget, so that they don't really see the connections. Mindfulness is what keeps the practice in mind and allows you to remember what you did so you can understand the connection between what you did and the results you're getting. Alertness is what allows you to see what you're doing right now. When you develop the resolve to act only on skillful intentions, and the proper understanding of how your actions shape your life, those are the conditions that feed mindfulness, that allow mindfulness and alertness to grow strong. So it's not the case that people can just walk in off the street, sit down, and develop mindfulness. It takes the ability to look at your life and make some decisions about how you're going to live, and how you understand the best way of living. That's when mindfulness has a chance.

Permission to Play March 16, 2009 Focus on your breath. Know when it's coming in; know when it's going out. Notice where you feel it, the sensations that tell you when it's coming in and going out, and then keep your attention focused on those sensations. You have to be careful, though, in how you focus. If you put too much pressure on the breath, it starts getting constricted. If your attention to the breath is too light, it slips off and floats away. So find just the right amount of pressure to maintain on the breath — here meaning the pressure of your attention — but allow the breath to flow as freely as possible in the body. We often make the mistake of tensing up around something in order to highlight it in our attention or to stay focused on it, but that'll get in the way of the breath's being a pleasurable place to stay. Which is what you need as you meditate — a good place to stay — because if the mind doesn't find any sense of ease in the present moment, it's going to go wandering off looking for ease and pleasure someplace else. So experiment with the breathing. You can do it in one of two ways. The first is simply to pose the question in your mind with each breath: "What kind of breathing would feel really good right now?" See how the body responds. Or you can go about it more systematically. To expand your sense of what the breath is capable of, ask yourself: "What would longer breathing feel like?" And think of the breath going longer for a while. Then how about still longer: What would that feel like? And then go shorter, deeper or more shallow, heavier or lighter. Try to push the envelope until you gain a sense of what kind of breathing really does feel good right now. It's important that you learn how to play with the breath in this way. This may seem counterintuitive. After all, we're trying to get to something unconditioned and unfabricated and yet here we go about it by fabricating. But that's what the whole path is: a kind of fabrication. Every factor of the noble eightfold path, from right view through right concentration, is something put together. It's a fabrication. It's something you will through bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, and mental fabrication: i.e., through the breath, through directed thought and evaluation, and through feeling and perception. But to will skillfully, you have to bring these fabrications together in a way that makes the path pleasant to follow. Otherwise you can't stick with it. This is why right concentration is such an important part of the path. It gives you a good place to stay — a sense of ease, well-being, refreshment, or rapture that nourishes and sustains your ability to stick with the path. So play around with the breath. Think of fabrication as playing, and you have permission to play. Don't think that playing around in this way is going to get in the way of insight. It actually helps create the conditions for insight to arise. For one, it gives stamina to the practice. If you're simply sitting with whatever comes up, meditation becomes an exercise in brute endurance. If no pleasure's coming up in the meditation, no sense of rapture or gratification, it becomes dull and unattractive. You find it harder and harder to actually sit down and keep up with the practice day after day. But if you allow the meditation to be a process of exploring, of finding what's really comfortable right now, you can stick with it. It becomes something interesting, something you want to do. As you're sticking with this process of experimenting with the breath, getting it more pleasurable and allowing that sense of pleasure to seep throughout the body, it gives you a steadier base in the present moment. The interest you develop in exploring the breath energy in the body helps you stay steadily in the present as well. If the meditation is simply a matter of watching whatever comes up, it gets boring very quickly. The mind's going to find reasons to do other things, to slip away and find other things that seem more interesting or important. But if you allow yourself to explore, your curiosity makes you want to stay here, to stay sensitive and steadily focused. At the same time, allowing the breath to be comfortable gives you a safe foundation in the present moment — a foundation you're going to need because pains will come up. We need the right attitude toward pain: not to feel threatened, not to run away. Our duty with regard to pain is to comprehend it, but you're not going to comprehend it if you feel threatened by it. So it's good to know that you have a safe, comfortable place to return to whenever you need it. Say there's a pain in your leg and you're not really ready to deal with it yet: You can focus on whatever sense of ease and fullness you can develop elsewhere in the body — say, in the chest, in the stomach, in your hands, in your feet — through the way you breathe. If things get bad with the pain, you can go back to the breath. Once the mind feels nourished and protected by the breath, it'll be more willing to actually look into the pain, probe into the pain, trying to understand: What is this pain I have in my body? Why do I fear it so much? Is it really as fearsome as it seems? As you get interested in exploring the pain, you start taking it apart: Which part of the pain is actually a physical sensation and which part is the mental perception that makes things worse in the mind? And even with that physical sensation: Which part of it actually is a pain? Because you also have sensations of the different elements in your body, which are more like properties of how the body feels from within. There's solidity, liquidity, warmth, and energy. How does the pain relate to those? It's a different kind of sensation. Liquid is just liquid. Solid is just solid. It doesn't have to be painful. In fact, these sensations are a different order of sensation entirely from the pain. But there's a pain flitting around in there. If you glom it together with the physical properties, especially the property of earth or solidity, you make the pain seem a lot more solid and threatening than it actually is. If you're coming from a position of well-being, a position of inner security, it's easier to explore and see these things happening because your agenda isn't necessarily to make the pain go away. You're curious. You want to learn about it. And as you develop a greater sensitivity to the breathing, a greater sensitivity to how you fashion the breath and how intention plays a role in your experience of the breath, you start seeing more and more subtle levels of stress that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. You see more subtle levels of fabrication that you wouldn't have seen otherwise as well. Because one of the big lessons in the meditation is that the present moment is not a given. You're actually shaping the present moment with your intentions. And the best way to sensitize yourself to those intentions and their role in fashioning the present is to try to fashion it skillfully. This way you get a sense of when you should try to change things, and when you shouldn't; which problems in the body or in the mind respond to active intervention, and which ones respond better when you simply watch them with equanimity. As you put the mind in a better mood through giving it a good comfortable place to stay, or giving it something to explore with the breath, it becomes more open to seeing its own mistakes. It can even admit its mistakes with a greater sense of cheerfulness, because it sees that they don't have to be repeated. If the mind is in a bad mood, it's like a person in a foul mood. If you want to talk to him about where he's been unskillful, where he's been outrageous or whatever in his behavior, he won't want to hear anything you say. He's going to resist. But if he's rested and well fed and in a good mood, it's a lot easier to broach the topic of his shortcomings. And the same with the mind: A lot of what we're going to learn in the process of understanding the mind is in seeing its subterfuges, where it lies to itself, where it's been dishonest with itself, all of which are things we don't like to see. Yet if we don't admit these things to ourselves, insight will never have a chance. You can't just put the mind through a meditation grinder and hope that the process is going to take care of it. The mind has to develop the sensitivity to see where it's been lying to itself, where it's been dishonest with itself, for genuine insight to arise. So this game we play with the breath helps put you in the right mood to learn those lessons. Try to explore how to get the breath more comfortable, more refined, seeing how still you can get both the breath and the mind without forcing them unnaturally. After all, you're working with a sense of ease, so you can't force it to the point where the ease dies away. This means that you need to develop your powers of sensitivity. You need to have a sense of how much fiddling around becomes too much fiddling around. When the breath gets comfortable enough that you can stay with the body, when it feels good to be with the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out, then you just allow it to do its thing. And as the mind calms down, the breath calms down as well. This is a common pattern throughout the Buddha's meditation instructions. You try to get a sense of what fabrication is going on, and then once you're sensitive to the process of fabrication, you allow it to grow still. This gives you some insight into the fact that you're shaping the present moment. You develop the desire to do it with more skill, with more finesse, with a greater sense of sensitivity and subtlety. And you can get there only by consciously trying to fabricate things: fabricating your sense of the body through the breathing, and fabricating your mind through the perceptions you hold. The sensitivity that develops over time is what allows you to see the subtleties of these processes. If you try to lay down the rule in the beginning that "I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going to watch what's already there," a lot of what's really happening in the present moment goes underground where you can't see it. But as you consciously try to fabricate a sense of well-being in the body, a sense of ease in the mind through the way you breathe, through the way you relate to the breath, then you bring these processes up to the surface. You see them more clearly. This brings more honesty into the mind. So it's important, as you meditate, that you realize you have permission to play, are encouraged to play, with the breath. This is how maturity develops in any field. Children who don't get a chance to play never really mature. The same principle applies to meditators. If you don't learn how to play with the present moment, you never develop a mature understanding of what's going on in the present moment. When you don't really understand the role of intention in forming the present moment, you never get to the point where you can drop every element of intention that's creating the present. And only when you drop the last shred of intention can there be an opening to something outside of the present, beyond space and time, to that happiness we're all looking for, which is totally independent of conditions, totally reliable. And only when we have a reliable happiness can we rely on ourselves. You see this everywhere now. The economy's collapsing. There are more murders out there, more suicides, more robberies as people's sense of well-being gets more and more threatened. This is when you really get to see how strong people's sense of their inner wealth is. The more wealth you have inside, the less you're worried about wealth outside. The less you worry about wealth outside, the more you can trust yourself to do the skillful thing, to say the skillful thing, to think the skillful thing in any situation. If you can train the mind to the point where it's found something that can't be touched by anything in space and time but can be touched through inner awareness — as the Buddha says, you touch it with the body, or you see it with the body; in other words, it's a total experience; it's not just a vision, it's not just an idea, it's visceral: Once you've had your first taste of that, you know you have a happiness you can depend on. This means you can depend on your mind as well. The other pleasures of the world become less important and are less likely to tempt you to do unskillful things to attain them and protect them because you realize you have something that doesn't need protection. That's where the meditation gets really good. But the only way you can develop the maturity needed to find that mature happiness is the same way any person develops maturity: You start out by playing around, learning about cause and effect by nudging things to see what they do in response. You nudge this cause — i.e., the breath — to see what that does to the mind, what it does to the sense of ease in the body, and then nudge another cause: say, your perception of the breath. If you see the breath only as air coming in and out of the lungs, you're really limiting yourself. Think of other ways you might perceive this energy in the body — flowing through the blood vessels, flowing through the nerves, flowing around the nerves, flowing out to every pore in the skin, flowing around the body just beyond the skin, having everything in and around the body all connecting up. Ajaan Lee's image is of cutting roads through a jungle till you have a whole system of interconnecting roads. Communication gets easier. Information flows more smoothly. It's by playing around in this way that you start outgrowing your childish attitudes. It's through play that children become adults. So each time you sit down and meditate, remember you have permission to play. It's what the meditation is all about.

Levels of the Breath August 20, 2006 We all bring our stories to the meditation. Sometimes they're helpful stories, sometimes they're not. Even the Buddha brought his stories to the meditation. That first knowledge on the night of his awakening was basically his story stretching back over many lifetimes. The big issues in each lifetime were his name, his appearance, his food, his experience of pleasure and pain, and how he passed away. That's pretty much it. The life of living beings: name, appearance, food, pleasure, pain, death. Not much of a story. And yet we can elaborate these things into all kinds of issues and spend whole lives going over the details, certain incidents in the stories, especially the painful ones. Or we can look back on the pleasures we once had but that we're missing now, which can turn those past pleasures into present pain. The Buddha found two ways to get out of his stories. One was to generalize, to think about all living beings as a whole: That was his second knowledge. The question arose: If he had previous lifetimes, how about other beings? Maybe looking at other beings, he would begin to see some general patterns. And that's precisely what happened. He saw how all beings died and then were reborn, and in taking the larger view he saw an important pattern: The quality of their rebirth was based on their actions, on the quality of their intentions, shaped by their views. From there he went to the third knowledge, which took the pattern he saw in the second knowledge and applied it to the present moment: looking at his views and his intentions in the present moment, taking them apart. That was how he got out of his stories altogether. So as we meditate, we want to think about the pattern the Buddha found. We've got to get out of our narratives, our stories. Otherwise they drive us crazy. You go through the same old movies over and over again — movies that, if they were put up on the screen, you wouldn't pay to watch. Yet because of the "I" and the "me" — my pain, my pleasure, my appearance, my food — you get hooked into watching them over and over again. If you want your meditation to go anywhere, you've got to get yourself off the hook. The first step is to start generalizing. Think of all the beings in the world who had appearances they didn't like, or food they didn't like, or missed the food that they once had that they did like, or suffered both pleasure and pain. You're not the only one. Think about that often. These are situations we all undergo. And the particulars of our appearance and food and pain and pleasure may enthrall us, but you've got to look at the general pattern. When you do, you find that the comings and goings of good and bad, likes and dislikes, start seeming inconsequential. As the general pattern takes the sting or the allure out of your own personal narrative, you can come to the present moment and see more clearly what you're doing in the present moment that's creating pain that doesn't have to be there. What do you have in the present moment? You've got intentions, or in other words, fabrications. What kind of fabrications do you have here? You've got the breath; that's the bodily fabrication. You've got directed thought and evaluation; those are verbal fabrications. And you've got feelings and perceptions and the intentional element fashioning them; that's mental fabrication. These are the things you want to understand. You understand them by learning how to master them, bringing them all together — as we're doing right now when we focus on the breath — and approaching their fabrication as a skill. What's the most skillful way to breathe? What's the most skillful way to think about and evaluate your breath? What are the most skillful perceptions to apply to the breath? What kinds of feelings are useful to develop out of the breath? As you get more and more absorbed in these questions, they really help you get out of your narratives. During my first year as a monk back in Thailand I had a lot of time by myself, a lot more than you do here. And sure enough, a lot of my old narratives from grade school, high school, college, and my family, kept coming back, coming back, coming back. The one thing that kept me from going crazy was the fact that I had something interesting to explore in the present moment: the breath. As I got more of a handle on the breath, got more absorbed in the breath, the fascination with the old narratives began to wane. The understanding began to arise that if I really wanted to comprehend why I was suffering from those old past narratives, I should try to see how I was causing suffering for myself right now in the present moment. The breath was a good way to explore that. Getting absorbed in the breath is a very important way of getting out of those narratives and into the really big issue: Why are you causing stress and suffering for yourself right now? You're not a passive observer. You're not here watching a TV show that somebody else has pre-packaged. You're actively creating the show. It's an interactive game. So it's important to look at how you think about the breath, how you perceive the breath, and to see the impact those thoughts and pe