Not Crushed by the World

It’s been a busy day. Tomorrow is going to be another busy day. Time for some seclusion.

Of course, you’re sitting here with other people, but there’s still seclusion inside the mind. That’s what you want to focus on. And that’s something you can maintain even when there are a lot of other people around—if you’re determined and if you’re skilled.

So let’s work on that skill. There’s music off in the distance, but just leave it there in the distance. Think of Ajaan Chah’s comment: It’s not that the sound is disturbing you, you’re disturbing the sound if you’re commenting on it. It’s going to do its thing. You can do your thing, which is something separate. Work on mental seclusion: not hankering back to the past, not anticipating the future; and as for whatever arises in the present moment, keep some distance from it.

But first you have to get established. So focus on the breath or, as the Buddha said, the body in and of itself: in this case, the breath in and of itself. As you breathe in, breathe out, where do you feel it? What way of breathing is comfortable? Focus on that. When you find something comfortable, see if you can maintain that sense of comfort. Then, as you maintain it, think of it spreading. You can create a sense of well-being here.

This is one of the most important parts of the Buddha’s teachings. He saw the power of your actions, even the power of your actions to spread over many, many lifetimes. But he saw that even more important was the power of your actions in the present moment. Which means that what you experience right now doesn’t have to be totally shaped by the past.

Most people go through life just following their old habits. What they do in the present moment is pretty much determined by what’s happened in the past. But the Buddha said you can think independently, act independently in the present moment. So take advantage of that potential for freedom.

I’ve mentioned to you the time I talked to a Chinese astrologer who said she didn’t like doing the charts of people who meditated, because they go against the forces that’re pushing them around. So even in a relatively deterministic worldview like astrology, they recognize the fact that people who practice can make a difference for themselves.

So make a difference right now. Establish a sense of well-being inside. And find this enjoyable. We were commenting the other day on how Ajaan Lee would play with his breath instructions. There are the instructions in Method Two, but then there are also instructions in his Dhamma talks where he changes things around. He talks about different levels of breath in the body, breaths that go in the opposite direction from what he says in Method Two: starting at the feet and coming up the legs, going up the spine, as opposed to going from the back of the neck down the spine.

The principle being that you want to be very sensitive to what you need right here, right now, and to how you perceive the breath energy right here, right now. You can play with it. That’s part of the fun.

So, before you separate yourself out from what’s happening in the present moment, first you have to get totally immersed. There’s a term: mindfulness immersed in the body, kayagatasati—to immerse yourself in the sensation of the breath, the sensation of the body as you feel it from within. That helps to pull you away from your tendency to go floating out in thought worlds that travel around and burst and drop you off someplace else. You fully inhabit right here. The more you fully inhabit the body with a large sense of awareness, the harder it is to fit into little thought worlds.

This is a basic principle in establishing your sense of priorities right now. The world outside has other priorities for you. When you go out into the world as a practitioner, you find that you have to push back. Otherwise, it squeezes the time that you have to meditate, squeezes the time you have to practice. So it’s better to think of the world having to fit into your practice. As for the parts of the world that don’t fit in, you can lop them off.

And what is the framework for your practice? There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about things that a new monk should be aware of, be careful about. It applies just as well to laypeople in their daily life.

The first principle is that you’re strict about your precepts. Years back, when Ajaan Suwat was teaching in Massachusetts, at the end of the retreat the question came up, “How do you carry the practice in your daily life?” He talked about the five precepts. A number of the people got upset. They thought he way implying that laypeople couldn’t handle the reall practice in their daily life, so they had to content themselves with these lowly precepts.

Of course, Ajaan Suwat never said the precepts were lowly. And they’re not. They’re an important framework for your practice. They give you an idea of things that you just will not do. And you try to be consistent in that.

In fact, that’s a large part of the virtue of following the precepts: that you want to be consistent. Even people who break the precepts aren’t breaking them all the time. They’re not killing all the time or stealing all the time. As the Buddha noted, even people who are really sloppy about the precepts actually spend more time not breaking the precepts than they do breaking them.

The problem is that their precepts are not consistent. And because they’re not consistent, they don’t have much power. But if you say, “This is the framework for my life. I’m going to hold to these five precepts—no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no taking intoxicants,” it’s a challenge. And it develops lots of good qualities, consistency being one of them.

Then there’s mindfulness—keeping the precept in mind. Alertness—watching what you’re doing. Making sure that what you’re doing stays with the precepts. And then ardency—wanting to do this well. Meaning that when there are to be challenges, you’re up for dealing with them. Pests in your house. People who ask for information that you have, and you’re pretty sure they’re going to abuse that information if they get it from you. So how do you keep them from getting that information without at the same time misrepresenting anything? Take that as a challenge.

It develops your discernment. Forces you to think strategically. All this practice in consistency is going to be really helpful for your meditation practice.

It develops the three qualities you bring to mindfulness practice: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. The consistency helps you turn your mindfulness into concentration.

And your ability to think strategically is going to help you deal wisely with the strategies of the defilements, because they’re pretty clever. They don’t sit down and argue with you reasonably. They get into your breath. They squeeze your nerves. They whisper. They disappear. They threaten. They’ve got lots of tricks. So you have to learn how to think strategically to get around them, and holding to the precepts helps you think strategically.

That’s the first thing you have to hold to as you create your environment as a meditator.

The second thing is restraint of the senses. Be very careful about what you let in through your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and the thoughts in your mind. Most of our minds, which should be like homes, are more like bus stations. Anybody can come in, hang around, do all kinds of illicit things. You need to have a home where you have windows and doors that you can open and close, and be very selective about who you allow in. Of course, there’ll be a lot of things that you can’t help but see or hear. The question is, when you look, when you listen, what are you looking for? What are you listening for? It’s not the case that we’re just sitting here passively and innocently, and then things come in at us. We’re out looking.

So, you want to make sure that wisdom is looking, discernment is looking, not your greed, aversion and delusion. You have to see the way you engage with your senses as a cause-and-effect process. What you’re looking for, what you’re listening for, will have an impact on the mind. So be very careful about how you go about these things.

As the Buddha said, it’s like having six animals tied to leashes. If you tie the leashes just to one another, the animals will pull and pull and pull, and whichever animal is strongest will pull all the rest with it. But if you tie the leashes to a post that’s really firm, then pull as they might, they end up just lying down next to the post.

In this case, the Buddha says, the post means establishing mindfulness immersed in the body, which can mean focusing on the breath, sensitive to the breath energy as you go through the day, noticing when any tension builds up, and releasing it. It builds up again, you release it again, so that the body is a pleasant place to be. When you have a pleasant place to be inside, then it’s a lot easier not to get pulled outside or to go wandering outside looking for something else.

The third principle is moderation in your conversation. This of course now means not only the people you talk to, but also the websites you visit and the social media you get engaged in. Try to put limitations on that, because that can come in and flood your mind.

What does it flood your mind with? It floods your mind with everybody else’s attitudes, everybody else’s value systems. You’ve got to be very careful about that. And be careful about what you put out there in the world.

Then there’s seclusion.

And finally having right view: Right view means believing in the power of your actions. It also means developing appropriate attention, looking at things in terms of the question of how to develop skillful qualities in the mind, how to abandon unskillful ones—and thinking in the long term, remembering that your actions have consequences and asking yourself: What kind of consequences do you want to create? You have the choice.

In other words, have a sense of your powers. Don’t let the world crush you.

There’s that image the Buddha talks about: four mountains moving in, crushing living beings. They can crush their bodies, and most people allow their minds to get crushed as well. Your body, too, is going to get crushed. You look at your body right now. It may be relatively young, but actually, it’s aging all the time, wearing down all the time. The thing is, when you’re young, it repairs. It covers up the aging that’s constantly going on. But as you get older, the repair system begins to break down. It’s the same body but it doesn’t warn you ahead of time, saying that you’re going to get a pain here or a pain there, that this is going to stop working or that’s going to stop working. It just does it.

But you still have the power of your mind, so that you don’t have to suffer from these things. So focus on that. Your body’s going to get crushed, but the mind doesn’t have to get crushed by aging, illness, or death. You can maintain your virtue. You can maintain that post inside: mindfulness immersed in the body.

And don’t think of yourself going through the world. Think of the world just coming by, coming by. You’re staying right here. Wherever you are, you’re right here. So you can be established. You can be firmly in charge.

Think of a Ajaan Chah’s image of a house that has one chair. As long as you’re sitting in the one chair, you’re in charge. The problem is that different defilements will come in and they’ll try to lure you out of the chair so that they can get in the chair and order you around.

It’s like that story of Sri Thanonchai*, *the character in Thai literature known for playing tricks on people, even playing tricks on the king. We’re talking about back in the days of Ayutthaya. Probably the best trick he ever played was the time he’s down in the river and the king happens to come along on the bank of the river with his retinue. They see Sri Thanonchai and the king says, “I know you’re clever. You’ve fooled me many times, but you can’t fool me into getting down in the river.”

Sri Thanonchai stops and thinks for a minute and then says, “Well, you know you’re right, but if you got into the river, I could get you out.” The king says, “Oh yeah?” He goes down in the river and says, “Okay, now get me out.” And Sri Thanonchai says, “Well, I already got you down in the river. Whether you want to get out or not, that’s your business.”

Our defilements are like that. They’re really tricky. So we have to learn how to think strategically. Have a good solid center inside and have a good sense of its value—how important it is to stay centered in spite of whatever else is going on in the world. Your mind is your most important possession, so you have to give it top priority.

All these trainings—training in virtue, training in concentration, training in discernment—are designed to help you think strategically so that you can outwit all the defilements that have been outwitting you for who knows how long.

So maintain your center as best you can. And learn all the skills—in terms of the precepts, restraint of the senses, moderation in conversation, seclusion, and right view—that’ll protect your center. That way, as your body gets worn down and finally crushed by the world, your mind doesn’t get crushed. Your goodness survives.