Mindful All the Way

June 01, 2025

The Buddha says that among the rewards for generosity and virtue is rebirth in heaven. But then we read that rebirth in a good destination is guaranteed only in the case of a stream-enterer—in other words, someone who’s had a first taste of awakening. That sets the bar a lot higher.

So the question is, what about those earlier promises? The Buddha actually says there’s a tendency to lead in those directions. Generosity tends to lead to heaven. Virtue tends to lead to heaven. But they depend on a lot of other conditions as well. One is the condition that I mentioned this morning.

One of the Buddha’s discoveries about karma is that you can do a lot of good karma in this lifetime and then have a change of heart, either afterwards or right at the moment of death. You’re no longer confident in the goodness you’ve done. You no longer believe the teachings of the Buddha. That change of heart can pull you down. Now, your earlier good actions will someday lead to good results. But in the meantime, the fact that your mind has been pulled down will get in the way.

Conversely, if you’ve been doing bad things in this lifetime but have a change of heart toward the end, that can pull you up. The bad things you’ve done will still yield their results at some point. But the fact that you’ve pulled your mind up at the last moment, or the last section of your life, will tend to take you to a good destination.

Which shows the importance of training the mind. The mind is so changeable, so quick to change its direction. We have to train it to be mindful, to resist that tendency. Especially if the direction you’re going in has been good, you want to make sure it doesn’t turn around and go someplace bad.

So work on your mindfulness.

What is mindfulness? It’s the ability to keep something in mind. Alertness is what watches what you’re doing. Ardency is the effort to do this well. These are the three qualities you need to get the mind into concentration. We start with mindfulness practice, and the purpose of mindfulness practice is to get the mind to settle down and be one with its object.

So, for the Buddha, mindfulness practice and concentration practice are not two separate things. They’re one and the same. The instructions in mindfulness are basically telling you how to get the mind in concentration. Then the descriptions in right concentration tell you the different stages you go through as the mind begins to settle down. But first you have to focus on the how-to, which is establishing mindfulness.

You remember to remember good things, useful things. Like right now, what’s useful? Remember what’s worked in the past to get the mind to settle down. Wherever in the body you like to stay focused, go right there. Make a survey through the body first to make sure that everything is calmed down. Any obvious patterns of tension or tightness, you allow them to relax. Then find your favorite place to settle in. When you settle in, you don’t just sit there doing nothing. If the mind is doing nothing, it’ll either think of other things to do or just fall asleep.

So we give the mind good work to do. Go through the body again and again and again, ferreting out any little patterns of tension that you missed the first time around.

Or you can think about the bones in the body. Where are the bones inside the tips of your fingers right now? Where are the bones in the second joints, the third joints? Try to be sensitive to those parts of the body as you visualize them. If you feel any tension or tightness in those parts of the body, allow it to relax. Go up your arms to your shoulders and then start again at your toes. Work up through your feet, ankles, legs, pelvis, up the spine, one vertebra at a time. Up through the neck, up into the skull.

In other words, as the mind settles down, give it work to do.

Then, when it finally does settle down in a big way, it’ll be really solid: alert, mindful, and ardent. As you train the mind in this direction, it’ll be more and more likely that, as you go through life, it’ll maintain these skills. However, they can be lost, so you have to be careful not to get heedless.

This is one of the reasons why, when people are approaching death, the people around them in Thailand try to remind them of all the good things they’ve done. Not the good things they’ve owned or the good times they’ve enjoyed, but the good things they’ve done—in terms of being generous, being virtuous—because that lifts the mind. You can imagine what it’s like when you die. You can’t stay in this body. You think ahead to the future, and the future seems to be a big blank wall. So people have a very strong tendency to start thinking about the past. Old issues can come up. Old resentments, old nostalgic memories, all kinds of things can come up in the mind at that time. It’s very easy for the mind to latch on to those things.

But you have to remind yourself, where you latch on is where you’re going to be reborn. You want to make sure that you’re reborn in a place where you can practice the Dhamma. You want to make that your determination. Then try to stay with the breath as best you can. Stay with your present awareness as much as you can, realizing that choices will have to be made.

Some people, as they approach death, just give up and let things take their course. Who knows where they’re going to end up. But if you’re determined that you want to practice the Dhamma to the very last breath and beyond, it points your mind in the right direction.

Of course, a lot of people as they’re dying have trouble maintaining mindfulness, which is one of the reasons why you want to practice it as much as you can ahead of time. This ability to keep things in mind helps you stay pointed in the right direction.

So when you think about places to practice the Dhamma, don’t just go by appearances. Sometimes you can be reborn in very comfortable circumstances, very wealthy, but there’s no opportunity to hear the Dharma. There are lots of places like that in the world.

Think back on the ajaans of the forest tradition. Many of them were born in very poor places in terms of material things. But in terms of the Dhamma, the true Dhamma was available. There were people who were practicing it, happy to teach it. The ajaans were those who took advantage of that. So don’t go by appearances.

Just tell yourself, “I want to find a place where I can hear the true Dhamma and practice the true Dhamma.” As long as you focus on that, you’re bound to go to a good place. Ideally, of course, if you can develop the qualities of mindfulness, alertness, and discernment, you can decide you don’t want to come back at all. But failing that, come back to a place where you keep on practicing. The best way to create the opportunities to do that, of course, is just to keep on practicing as you go through life.

So as we’re staying here in the present moment, it’s not just to be in the present moment. We’re here to develop good qualities that will stand us in good stead, to make sure that our minds don’t change direction with the passage of time and the passage of the body.

We’re not just here to be here. We’re here to develop good qualities in the mind, because this is where they’re developed: right here, right now.

When I was in France, I was talking about how mindfulness means keeping in mind good lessons from the past. I was being interviewed, and the interviewer said, “But aren’t you supposed to be totally in the present moment?” My response was, “You can do that by getting a frontal lobotomy.”

We’re here to be in the present moment not just to be in the present, but to do the work that needs to be done here, so have a good idea of what work does need to be done. We devote ourselves to it for the sake of the present moment and for the sake of the future.

All three time frames are involved. It’s just a matter of learning how to focus them on what you’re doing right here, right now. As long as what you’re doing is skillful, you don’t have to worry about the future. Just make sure you remember the good lessons you’ve learned from the past.

So the main focus is right here, but it connects past and future. After all, we are creatures in time. The time we’ve spent so far becomes useful to the extent to which we can learn good lessons from it—lessons that will inspire us to act in ways that lead to long-term welfare and happiness, now and in times to come.