It is a common refrain among mindfulness teachers these days that you cannot expect to sit quietly in meditation and have a pleasant experience after a day of murder and pillage. But this is not a new idea and its roots can be traced back to the early teachings of the Buddha. The idea is that mindfulness cannot be established if we live an unethical life. This should make sense: if I have spent the day arguing with loved ones and cheating on my finances, then my time meditating will be filled with concerns, perhaps shame for my actions, perhaps worry about future arguments or punishments that may come to me.

On the other hand, if I’ve done a little extra to help my partner, offered my seat on public transportation to an elderly stranger, and donated a little to a local charity, my mind might settle into peace and focus more readily when I begin my meditation.

On a philosophical level, the Buddha’s concept of anattā or not-self helps us see why this is so: when we quarrel with others, we create divisions and harden the sense of there being a “self” against others in the world. When we help others, near and far, our sense of self dissipates: we become a “we” of a family, “we” of a community, “we” of a society, and so on.

This is why the Buddha’s path to awakening is often taught beginning with ethics or conduct before moving on to mindfulness. Over the previous two articles in this column,* I have examined the early Buddhist understanding of mindfulness, or sati, and the important move to right mindfulness, sammā-sati, which initiates one onto the Buddhist path. Sati itself is considered to be a wholesome mental factor—at least in the Abhidhamma analysis that came after the death of the Buddha—but on its own, sati does not help to alleviate suffering in our lives and the world around us.

Sammā-sati, right mindfulness, is the application of mindfulness with energy and understanding. How do we get that energy and understanding? Ethics. Another often-used line from mindfulness teachers today is that meditation helps us take a foot off of our brake pedal. We “let go” of our activities that are actively slowing us down. Those activities often include ruminating about conflict and concerns about the future mentioned above. Just as we learn to actively let them go in our meditation practice, we can eliminate them in the first place through living a more moral life.