Look Around as You Follow the Trail

Someone was complaining the other day that she didn’t understand the distinction between the realization of nibbāna and nibbāna itself.

That’s a non-problem. Nibbāna is not something to understand. It’s a goal. It’s a place you go. You don’t get there by understanding it. You get there by following the path.

It’s like thinking that you have to understand Paris before you can go to Paris. To get to Paris, you get a plane ticket, get on the plane. Then, when you get there, you realize what it’s like there.

A lot of people want to have everything explained ahead of time. Actually, all they have to know for sure is that this is a good path and that everything’s guaranteed. The Buddha gives his guarantee, but then again, how do we know we trust the Buddha? We have to commit to doing the path.

Like we’re doing right now, developing concentration: This is how you get to the higher dhammas—by being really diligent in doing what you have to do right here, right now. Whatever the stage you’re at in getting the mind to settle down, work at that. We’re working on a skill that requires you to commit to doing it and then reflect on the results. Then you do it better the next time. There may be setbacks, but you learn not to be discouraged by the setbacks.

Realize that what you’re doing right now is important. There are people who complain, “Nibbāna is something that has nothing to do with the body, so why are we focusing on the breath?”

If you want to catch the mind, you have to give it something to focus on, and the breath is one of the best things to focus on. It’s right here. Of all the physical things in the world, it’s the closest to the mind. It’s with you wherever you go and it’s very responsive to what the mind tells it to do. You tell the body to breathe long, it’ll breathe long. Short, it’ll breathe short. Fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, shallow: You tell it what to do, and it does it.

And you can make it comfortable. Experiment with different ways of breathing, and you’ll find what feels best right now. If you’re not sure, just tell yourself, “Well, as long as it feels good enough, stick with it.” Then if you find that it starts getting mechanical or uncomfortable, you can change. What’s important is the quality of the mind you develop—a willingness to commit and reflect on your actions, not to insist that everything has to be explained beforehand.

Some people read the Kālāma Sutta in a way where the Buddha says, “Believe only in your own sense of right and wrong. Don’t accept anything unless you know it to be true.” But if you’re not true, how are you going to know things that are true? You’ve got to commit.

The way to nibbāna is not through understanding nibbāna, it’s through developing the path. The immediate purpose of the path is to help you abandon craving, and you want to abandon craving because it’s causing suffering. It’s causing you to latch on and cling to things. That’s the suffering. The Buddha’s genius—or at least part of it—was that he saw how the way to the unconditioned is to focus on the problem of suffering and its cause, and how to attack it at its cause, because he saw that the way we cling to things is getting in the way of finding what true happiness can be.

That’s the big irony. The things we like, the things we hold on to most strongly, are actually getting in the way of our happiness. Which is why a sense of irony is required as you practice. The things you’re most 100% confident that you know, you have to realize you don’t really know as well as you thought. That’s what the Buddha calls “guarding the truth.” When you have a particular idea that you’re really attached to, ask yourself, “Where did you get that idea? What are you basing your ideas on?” You begin to realize that there’s very little that you have direct experience of. It’s mostly inference and guesswork.

So, if you want to find the truth, you work with what you can directly experience—and what is more direct than your experience of the breath? Stay right here for the time being. Then you build on that as you see the qualities of the mind that get developed as you stay here. Let your mindfulness, your alertness, your ardency engage in directed thought and evaluation around the breath, so that the mind can get centered and concentrated on the breath.

As you do that, you start seeing things in the mind, different activities of the mind, in terms of how it pays attention to things, how it maintains an intention, how it forgets its intentions and has to remember them again. Doing this, you begin to get a lot of insight into the mind that you wouldn’t get just simply reading about it or thinking about it in the abstract.

The best way to get to know your mind is to give it something good to do, something that’s relatively quiet and near at hand. So focus on the breath. Try to stay focused on the breath. When a sense of well-being comes with the breath, realize that that’s part of why we’re focused here, but it’s not the whole story.

We’re also trying to develop our own powers of observation. As the Buddha said, your discernment is what allows you to realize the goal, so you have to develop your discernment. After all, everything you need to know, everything you need to be aware of, is all here right now, simply that you’re not properly focused, not continually focused, not really observant, not asking the right questions.

So you work on staying with the breath, learning to give yourself pep talks so that you’re happy to stay with the breath, realizing that whatever you’re going to gain from this, you have to put in quite a lot. The people who want to have everything served to them on a platter, so that they can pick and choose only what is to their liking, are never going to get there.

What we’re talking about here is the principle that Ajaan Mun taught: practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. Even though the breath may seem very far away from what we’d like to attain in the meditation, it’s actually the way to get there. When the goal is realized, it’s going to be realized right here, or right next to right here. So you don’t have to go thinking far away. Just get really dedicated to what you’re doing right here, right now.

There’s a humility in that, in that you’re willing to settle down and do the steps that have to be done. But there’s also a lot of wisdom in realizing that you have to be strategic. If you’re going to develop the kind of discernment that can detect what has to be realized, it’s going to have to be developed right here, as you observe the mind as you observe the breath, something you can observe directly.

You observe the mind trying to stay with the breath, and when it doesn’t stay, trying to bring it back. You learn about the processes by which the mind deceives itself into falling for states of becoming—because there’s a lot of deceit in the mind. The ignorance the Buddha talks about: Some of it is simple not knowing, and some of it is willful not knowing.

So you have to tease things out, strand by strand by strand. But as long as you’re willing to do the work, you’re going to get the results. And when you do the work, you come to realize things that the people who want to understand it ahead of time are not going to realize.

Everything you need to know is right here. It’s simply a matter of making yourself true and discerning and observant, with the exercises that the Buddha gives you. As he said, he wants someone who’s honest and observant. He’d teach that person the Dhamma. So you come with a certain number of good character qualities and you refine them.

This is why it’s not just an intellectual exercise. It requires the whole heart and mind. So you’re training the whole heart and mind. As the Buddha promised, the goal, when it’s attained, will be totally satisfying to the whole heart and to the whole mind. There’s a wholeness to the practice that you can’t find anywhere else.

So be happy that you’re on this path, even if it just means bringing the mind back, bringing the mind back, bringing the mind back, again and again. Learning to be cheerful, patient, and persistent.

Cheerful in realizing that you’re on a good path.

Patient in realizing that the mind has put up a lot of obstacles to itself over the many, many lifetimes, so getting rid of those obstacles will take time.

And you’re persistent in that you don’t let that get you down.

So follow the path step by step by step, as with any journey. If you stick with the steps, you get to the goal.

It’s not just a matter of obeying the Buddha. I mean, he does set out the duties, but in the course of obeying what he tells you to do, you’re going to see things on your own. Things he doesn’t mention, or that he only hints at. So be alert.

It’s as when someone tells you, when you’re going to Zion National Park, that you stop here and you follow this trail. They tell you the trail, but what you see as you walk on the trail is going to depend on you.

I’ve seen this many times. Go as a group to any one of the areas of the American Southwest. Different people will take different pictures. They’ll compare their pictures afterwards and someone will say, “How did you see that?” “Well, it was right there.”

In the same way, the ability to eventually gain the Dhamma-eye requires that you develop the inner eye in your own mind. The trail is all laid out. The path is all laid out. But what you see as you follow the path is going to depend on your own powers of observation.

So stick with it. And look around. You’re going to be focusing on the breath but, as you focus on the breath, you realize that your mind is right here. Feelings and dhammas are right here. All four of the frames of reference for establishing mindfulness are right here. Make sure you look around and see them all.