Stagnant Water Stories

In Thai, there’s an expression, ruang nam nao, which literally means “a stagnant water story.” It’s the kind of story where, when you see the beginning of the story, you know how it’s going to end. It’s not going to be all that imaginative, just the same sort of thing all over and over and over again.

The mind has its stagnant water stories, the thought worlds where you go over something again and again and again. Even though you don’t like the story, it keeps coming back, and you go for it again. You’ve got to find some way of pulling yourself out.

This is what the skills of meditation are for, because each of those stories counts as a state of becoming—an unhealthy, exasperating one. And as with all states of becoming, you have to learn how to pull out.

There are two connected qualities that are very helpful here. The first is, when you’re establishing mindfulness, you have to be mindful. In other words, keep something in mind. In this case, keep the breath in mind and keep in mind all the things you’re going to be dealing with. When something unskillful comes up, you have to remind yourself, “Okay, this is nothing to get involved with.” You have to recognize it as an unskillful mind state. And you remember whatever techniques you’ve learned in the past for getting out.

The second quality is a combination of things. There’s ardency, which is the attempt to do this well, and alertness, which is watching what you’re doing. But you have to realize that it’s not simply a matter of being aware of what you’re doing. There’s going to be a little bit of a commentary there as well: “Now I’m doing this; now I’m doing that.”

As the mind gets established and the factors of mindfulness are turned into the factors of jhāna, this quality of alertness, together with ardency, turns into evaluation. You look at what you’re doing and you ask yourself, “Is it going well? If it’s not going well, what can I do to make it go better?”

Here that verbal fabrication gets more pronounced. You’re pulling out, watching what you’re doing, and then commenting on it. You’re trying to comment in a way that’s helpful for getting the mind to settle down.

This combination of being aware of what you’re doing, pulling out to watch, and then commenting: That’s precisely what you need to do with these stagnant water stories.

There will be a part of the mind that says, “I just want to be done with these things and get rid of them.” You need to have intelligent commentary, which says, “As long as there’s an appeal to these stories, as long as you haven’t really fully understood them, you’re going to have to live with them.”

The trick is learning how to live with them but not be overcome by them, how to step out of them. Let them run on their own as long as they want, and you learn how to be apart from them.

Sometimes this ability to step out is called the observer or the knower. But notice: It’s composed of two things. One is bare awareness of what’s going on. But it’s not really bare. It’s also got some commentary going with it. The commentary is basically attention, the questions you ask, the comments you make. You want that faculty to be appropriate.

The Buddha never had any use for bare attention. For him, there were only two types, appropriate and inappropriate. The difference has to do with the commentary you’re running.

So try to remember that you want intelligent commentary, commentary that’s going to be helpful, that doesn’t just get frustrated or impatient. You can remind yourself that, to get out of these things, you have to understand them. These are an instance of suffering, stress. You’re latching onto something that has to be comprehended before you can get rid of it, be done with it.

Part of comprehending it is seeing what the cause is, what the origination is—where is this coming from in the mind? The fact that this story has such a pull means you have to watch and ask questions, and watch again and ask questions again. Try to find a spot outside where the mind can gain some nourishment, some refreshment so that it does have the patience and the strength not to get frustrated.

This is why we develop the breath, so that you have a good place to stay. At the same time, as you’re working with the breath, you’re developing this quality of evaluation. You’re learning to teach yourself how to talk to yourself, basically. We’ve been talking to ourselves ever since we learned language, but we’re not very skillful about it.

There are times when a thought comes in, and we don’t feel right about letting it go. We want to see it through to the end, even though it may not be all that useful or helpful. But there’s that part of the mind that feels compelled, almost obligated, to finish off its thoughts. You have to remind yourself there’s no obligation. Just because one committee member has proposed a thought doesn’t mean you have to take it on.

As you’re evaluating the breath, you’ll find that distractions come up. This is where you have to remind yourself to pull out of the distraction, watch it, and learn the intelligent commentary on it.

Now you’ve got a good place to stay with the breath. That helps you with your patience. Patience is not just putting up with things. It requires that you find, “What is pleasant here? What can I rely on? Where are my strengths right now?” They’re there. Put them to use.

I keep thinking about that time when Ajaan Fuang had us do an all-night sit without warning. It was after a very busy day. I felt I couldn’t do it. I said as much. He said, “Is it going to kill you?” “No.” “In that case, you can do it.” I wasn’t all that convinced, but I gave it a try.

I made it through the night, partly out of sheer tenacity and partly because I learned some things about the breath that night. I learned some things about how you can play with the breath, play with your perceptions of the breath, to make it interesting, make it more comfortable, make it a more reliable place to be.

So sometimes when you’re forced, you find that you have resources inside that you didn’t expect. Which means that the part of the mind that paints a black picture of what you can do is not necessarily what you want to believe. In fact, you shouldn’t believe it at all.

The whole point of the teaching is that it’s something that we can do. It’s a teaching appropriate for human beings. We’re human beings. So it doesn’t demand any superhuman forces. But as you take it on, as you try to rise to the challenge, you find that human forces can be a lot stronger than you might have thought.

So take heart. The Buddha teaches us the skills we need to take advantage of the potentials we have. As Ajaan Suwat used to like to say, “If you don’t trust anybody else, at least trust the Buddha.” Lots of other people have trusted him and they’ve all benefited as a result.