Lighter & Stronger

One of the basic principles of going on a trip is to take no more than you need, because the more you take, the more you get weighed down, and the harder it is to keep going. So there’s a strength in letting go.

The Buddha talks about perceptions you can develop that strengthen the mind so that it can become more independent. In fact, the best perceptions help separate you out from things that you might ordinarily depend on. They include the perception of inconstancy, the perception of not-self, and the perception of drawbacks—in this case, the drawbacks of coming back and having a body again. We think of the body as opening the world to us, providing us all sorts of opportunities, but it also opens us up to physical attacks and disease. Every part of the body has one or two diseases, if not more. Even your eyebrows have little mites.

Then there’s the perception of abandoning, the perception of cessation, dispassion, and the unattractiveness of the body. These are all designed to help you let go. And in letting go, the Buddha says, you strengthen the mind, because you find that you can get by on less and less, so you’re not weighed down.

Take the perception of inconstancy. Just observing that something is inconstant means that you have to step back from it. If you were one and the same with that thing, then when it disappeared, you wouldn’t notice when it disappeared because you wouldn’t be there. Similarly, when it arose again, you wouldn’t see it arising. You’d suddenly be there together with it. So the fact that you can observe something as it’s inconstant means that it isn’t you. The perception is separating you from it. Instead of losing something that you needed in order to survive, you realize you can survive perfectly well without it. In fact, there’s a joy that goes with letting go.

It’s the same, of course, with the perception of not-self. When you observe that something doesn’t fall in line with your wishes, that shows that it’s not really you. It’s not really yours. It’s not worth declaring as you or yours. This is a point that a lot of Buddhist scholars have argued with: “What’s wrong with the idea of a self that you can’t control?” they say. Now, it is possible to have the idea that something is yours even though you can’t control it, but is it really worth identifying with something you can’t control? The scholars’ attitude is, “Well, if it’s all you’ve got, then you’ve got to hold on to it.”

But here the Buddha’s making the point that you don’t need it. There’s something better.

This is why we have to use the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self in the light of the third noble truth. We’re measuring things against something that’s constant, totally easeful, and doesn’t require any sense of self at all. It doesn’t require any sense of not-self either. You need not-self when you’re holding on. It’s like a bottle opener or a can opener. When the bottle needs to be opened, you hold on to the bottle opener. When the bottle is already open, you put the bottle opener down. But, again, you strengthen yourself by not weighing yourself down. All those things you claimed as you or yours: You have to remind yourself you don’t really need them. You’ve got something better that won’t weigh you down.

And so on with the contemplation of drawbacks and contemplation of the unattractiveness of the body. You realize what you’ve got here in the body: Even though it’s a useful tool, it can bring a lot of suffering if you’re attached to it. And you’re better off not being attached.

Again, these perceptions have to be used together with all four of the noble truths. The truths teach you to get the mind into concentration, and one of the things you’ll learn as you begin to do that is that you need a lot of activities. We talked today about how concentration is fabricated. In the beginning, to counteract all the streams of the mind that would head off in different directions, you have to protect your focus on one object with lots and lots of activity. To counteract the fact that the mind wants to think about other things, you think about the breath. You evaluate the breath. But there comes a point where you don’t need to do that anymore.

A lot of people feel a little bit disoriented when they stop that internal commentary. Some people think that it’s a great insight into the fact that there’s no ego or no self there. Actually, there’s still a sense of self, but it’s very much attenuated.

I was talking to somebody today who had one experience of no commentary in his mind, and he felt, “This is it. This must be the experience of not-self.” That’s the problem with having preconceived notions about what you’re trying to get out of the meditation. What you have to do is look for, “What am I still doing? And to what extent is it necessary?” You realize after a while that the rapture of the second jhana is kind of tedious. In the beginning it’s energizing, but after a while the mind wants something that quieter. So you let that go.

Then you don’t need the sense of pleasure or the sense of having to breathe. You let them go as well. When the sense of breath energy is filling the body, you begin to notice that you can go longer and longer without breathing. It’s not that you suppress the breath, it’s just that everything is so thoroughly breathized in the body that there’s no need to breathe in or out. So step by step you’re discarding things, discarding things, discarding things. You find that you’re stronger without them.

So many people go through life thinking, “I’m going to need this someday, I’m going to need that someday,” so they carry a lot of stuff around. The image they give in Thailand is of an old woman who carries a big bale of straw on her back, because you never know when you’re going to need some straw. Well, it’s stupid to carry that much stuff around. We think that we’re rich because we have a lot of things, but we weaken ourselves—both in the carrying around and in the sense of, “I’m going to have to depend on this, I’m going to have to depend on that.” Your mind becomes a hothouse plant that can survive only in very specific environments.

What you want is a plant that’s really hardy and can survive anywhere. What that means is a mind that has lots of skills. And the skill of peeling things away like this is one of the primary ones. You strengthen the mind by holding in mind perceptions that help you to separate yourself out from the things you felt you had to rely on, or that you actually thought were you.

Like this body: It’s hard for a lot of people to imagine themselves without a body, in particular the one they have. Yet the body keeps refusing their claims. When it finally kicks them out, then they go looking for another one, laying claim to that, too. It’s because they feel they have to depend on things like this.

Whereas if you develop these perceptions, these inner skills, you find that you’re perfectly fine without having to depend, without having to lean on anything. And therein lies strength—and also lies freedom. We have this tendency to keep fabricating states. Even with the concentration, you realize it’s a fabricated state. There’s that attitude, “It’s the best I’ve got, so I might as well hold on; I might as well keep on doing this.”

This is why we’re lucky we have the Buddha to remind us, “No, there’s something better.” If you can learn to see where you’re fabricating the concentration, stop doing that. And don’t replace it with any other fabrication. See what happens. That’s when the mind can exhibit its full strength. You’re strong because you travel lightly. And the mind is especially strong when it doesn’t have anything at all and doesn’t need anything at all.

There’s that refrain that you hear again and again and again in the Dhammapada and the Udana: “How happy we are, we who have nothing. See how they suffer, those who have something. People bound in mind with people. People bound in body with people.” People bound even to their own ideas. When you learn how to let go, that’s when you have everything you need.