Inner Culture

There’s a book by Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers, a huge*,* four-volume retelling of the Joseph story. In the beginning of the fourth volume, Joseph is in prison. How does he spend his time in prison? He starts interpreting the dreams of the prison guards and his fellow prisoners. Then Mann makes an interesting comment. He says that this is a sign of an educated person: You find some activity to keep yourself occupied and happy even in miserable surroundings. That’s the best kind of education, one that enables you to maintain the well-being of your mind even when you’re sick, when you’re getting old, even as you’re dying. That would be the ultimate test of your ability to keep the mind in good shape. And this is one of the advantages of learning how to meditate, because it’s a skill that you can apply in any situation in which you would otherwise create trouble for yourself by complaining about the situation.

Look at the education we get not just in schools but also through the media: We’re an interesting culture. We train ourselves in greed, aversion, and delusion, exposing our children to messages of greed, aversion and delusion from a very early age. As a result, they’re trained in how to complain from an early age. No wonder the culture’s in a mess.

But we can learn how to re-educate ourselves, and one of the basic principles in our new education is that no matter how bad things are outside, your mind doesn’t have to be affected by them. You can learn the skills, the tools of the trade, to keep yourself well occupied, happily occupied, even when things are going not the way you want them to. You’ve still got the mind and you can decide to add more suffering onto the situation or to alleviate it. You’ve got that choice here in the present moment.

So here we are with the breath. This is the basic tool of our skill. We learn how to evaluate the breath. We talk to ourselves about the breath and then we play with the breath, experiment with the breath, realizing that the breath energy is the most important part of keeping the body and mind together. So you can use it to help with the health of the body, help with the health of the mind, and not just while you’re sitting here with your eyes closed.

Any situation where you have some extra time on your hands, go straight to the breath. Breathe in in a way that feels really refreshing, really nourishing, really gratifying, because it’s one area of your life where you have total free range of choice. You may have outside responsibilities where you have to take care of things or sit through boring meetings or deal with difficult people, but you don’t have to breathe in a way that adds to your suffering. The reason we do is because, as the Buddha pointed out, we breathe in ignorance.

When you hear about dependent co-arising, it sounds awfully complex, but it starts with a really interesting simple observation: One of the reasons that we suffer is because we breathe in ignorance. Bodily fabrication, which is the in-and-out breath, gets affected by ignorance, and that leads to suffering. Our verbal fabrications—the directed thoughts and evaluations that the mind creates—go off into areas that don’t really help to end suffering.

But if we learn how to do these things with knowledge, we can bring in the perception of the breath filling the body and learn how to evaluate the breath, think about the breath, in a way that gives rise to a sense of pleasure. Where you feel any disease in the body, how can you breathe in a way that’s soothing? Think of the breath as medicine for that part of the body. When irritated thoughts come up, breathe in a way that takes away some of the irritation. If all you can do is sit there and think of how miserable you are, that’s just adding more irritation on top of the irritation already there.

So here’s an opportunity to breathe in a way that feels really good, and nobody else even has to know what you’re doing. Even if they throw you in prison, you can breathe in a way that’s gratifying, and they don’t have to know.

So here’s your own secret education, your own secret culture.

You’ve probably heard the old British joke: What’s the difference between an American and yogurt? Yogurt has culture. Well, we can show that we have some culture, too, and they don’t have to know because this is an internal culture. It’s how you take care of your mind, like Joseph in the story. Someplace along the line he picked up the talent of learning how to interpret dreams. Of course, by the end of the story, it’s taken him all the way to becoming the advisor to the pharaoh because he’s able to interpret the pharaoh’s one big, important dream. He’s able to save his whole tribe as a result.

So who knows where your ability to work with the breath can take you, and what it’ll enable you to do for other people. One of the advantages of having this skill is that you can keep your head in the midst of all kinds of chaos, and you’re in a much better position to help others.

So realize you have a skill here that can be applied in lots of different situations, even some very negative ones. As I’ve said many times before, who knows what’s going to happen in the future, but one thing you do know is that you’re going to need all your powers of mindfulness and alertness to deal with whatever comes up. The more mindfulness and alertness you can develop, the more you’ll be able to deal with anything.

Remember that this is a skill that’s not just for sitting with your eyes closed at the end of the day and learning how to relax a little bit. It’s something you carry with you at all times. One of the impressive parts of the Joseph story is that Joseph, even though he was thrown in prison, was never depressed, never got down, and he kept finding some way to keep his spirits up. We can use this meditation for the same purpose.

Remember the values of the meditation, too. It’s not just techniques, it’s the values that go along with the techniques: that your ability to look after your mind is your responsibility, but here are the tools. The Buddha doesn’t just say, “Happy, happy” and think that that’s going to solve the mind’s problems. He gives you the specific tools and skills to make sure you can maintain the well-being of the mind regardless of the situations outside.

This is one of the contemplations that monks are supposed to engage in. In fact, King Asoka included it in his list of important Dhamma lessons. You’re young now, but you’re not going to be young forever; you’re healthy now, but you’re not going to be healthy forever; you’re alive now, but you won’t live forever. The Sangha’s in harmony but that may not be forever. Societies are relatively peaceful but that may not be forever, so you do what you can *now *to train your mind in such a way so that even when aging comes, when illness comes, when death comes, or if society happens to fall apart while you’re alive, or the Sangha manages to split while you’re alive, you’ll be able to maintain your well-being.

As far as how bad the situation can get outside, the Buddha has that great image of bandits pinning you down and using a saw to cut you into little pieces. He says, “If you have any ill will for those bandits, you’re not following my teaching. Spread goodwill to them and then, starting with them, spread goodwill to the entire world.” He adds that if you keep this image in mind, can you think of any other situation that you couldn’t stand—let’s say, if someone says something negative to you, can you think of any other situation where you couldn’t be able to maintain your cool?

That’s not the word he uses, of course, but that’s basically what he’s talking about. You can keep your cool because you’ve got your breath. You’ve got another foundation for your happiness, so that when people take away all the things that they’ve been giving you, or the situation of the world goes up or down, you’ve still got this. Place your happiness here, and it’s safe.