Working with Nature

There’s a classic image that many of the ajaans use, that when you’re planting a tree or a rice plant, you do some of the work, but the plant does some of the work, too. And you have to let the tree or the plant do its work.

In other words, you look after the causes. You look after the water. Make sure the plant is getting the proper amount of sun. Make sure that no bugs are coming to eat it. But you can’t make the plant grow faster than it’s going to grow. If you pull on it to make it grow faster, to make it taller, you’re going to kill it. If you just leave it to its own devices, it may grow, but it won’t be the kind of plant you want.

So it’s a combination of knowing how much effort to put in and where the effort is best directed.

In the same way, we’re working with the nature of the mind, but we’re training it in a certain direction. As in the orchard here: We water the trees. We try not to water the weeds. Of course, the weeds will spring up. We’ve got to get rid of the weeds, otherwise they’re going to drink up all the water and waste it. But as for how well the trees will grow, how many avocados they’re going to produce, that’s up to them.

So we’re working with nature, directing it in a way that nature might not go on its own. After all, the mind that’s just left to its own devices is not going to get to nibbana. Sometimes it may, by a fluke, get into concentration, but if you’re not paying careful attention, you’ll fluke out of it as well.

So it’s a combination of knowing what to do and what not to do.

The things to do are the causes. As Ajaan Lee points out, when you’re trying to get the mind into concentration, directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation are the causes. You keep directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating it to make it a good place to stay. All of this may involve some activity. You want to get the mind still, but to get it still, you have to give it a good place to stay. So you do the work that needs to be done to create that place.

As for the pleasure and rapture that can come, those are the results. When you look after the causes properly, the results will come. So tend to the causes that you want here.

Part of the mind will say, “Okay, that’s interesting, but there are other things I want to do right now. I want to get this over with as fast as I can so that I can move on.” You can’t let that voice take over. That’s like letting the trees just do their own thing without your watering them or taking care of them.

We’re tending the mind in a certain direction, and then it will do its thing.

So there’s a balance here. Some people really want to push the practice. They say, “I’ve got a short time here at the monastery. I want to get at least at this level or that level.” Well, what do you know of this or that level? You may have had some experience in the past, all too often our conceptions of this or that level are based on ignorance.

You can trust things best if you focus on the causes. Those are things you can know about. If your mind is with the breath, you know. If it’s not with the breath, you know. You bring it back. And you bring it back again. And bring it back again. You find over time that it gets more and more inclined to come if you do it right—in other words, if you don’t berate it for going off. Just note that it’s gone off and you come back.

You look after the causes, and then the results will develop in the mind in line with their nature, as they respond to those causes.

Look at the forest tradition and its teachings. A lot of the similes have to do with agriculture. That’s what a lot of the monks were familiar with. They’d grown up with rice fields and orchards, so their experience was a combination of working with nature while directing nature in the direction they wanted it to go.

Nature on its own, the nature of the mind, is samsara. It likes to do samsara. Samsara is not a place, it’s an activity. It’s a wandering, going from one state of becoming to another.

What you’re trying to do here is create a state of becoming that stays. So you use some of the mental factors that would lead to becoming, but you’re trying to do it in such a way that creates a place where the mind can settle in. Some of its impulses will be to move on. It’s amazing how you can create a sense of well-being in concentration and then just drop it when you leave. You should try to maintain it as best you can, nurturing it in the direction that the Buddha lays out. That’s how you take its nature and turn it into something else. As long as the mind is going to create states of becoming, you create a good one.

Then you learn to observe it. That’s the step beyond concentration. The Buddha says you don’t want to get into that too fast. The analogy he gives is of a skill, archery. The archer knows how to shoot long distances, fire shots in rapid succession, pierce great masses. You want to get that good at your concentration. Then you can observe it to get beyond it.

So focus on doing things right, and the mind will develop. It’ll mature.

You can think of a tree with fruit. You’ve got a mango tree, and the mangoes are green and hard because they’re unripe. Someone tells you, “A ripe mango is yellow and soft.” So how do you get the mangoes yellow and soft? You don’t squeeze them to make them soft. You don’t paint them yellow. You focus on the roots of the tree. Put fertilizer down. Give them water. Keep the bugs away. And the mangoes will do their own thing. They’ll ripen on their own.

We take nature and we try to direct nature, but there’s a part of it that nature has to do on its own, at its own pace. This requires patience, discernment—all of which are good qualities to develop in the mind.

So learn that proper balance. You want the results, but you can’t keep thinking about the results. You’ve got to focus on the path.

There’s a teaching in Dogen where he says that the duty of the path, developing the path, is the same thing as the duty of realizing cessation. He’s not saying the path is the goal. He’s saying the activity of doing the path is where you find the activity of uncovering the goal. Which means that you don’t keep looking down the path and say, “When is it going to come? How can I get there faster?” You focus on the steps that have to be done. And focusing on them, you get more observant. You get more alert. You notice things in the mind that you wouldn’t have noticed before, which is precisely what we’re trying to do here. We’re not just trying to squeeze it in a certain direction. We’re trying to get it to settle in so that we can watch it. The more patient you are, the more you’ll see.