The Skills of Stillness

Start your meditation with thoughts of goodwill. Get into a comfortable position, close your eyes, and then tell yourself, “May I be happy. May I be truly happy.” True happiness comes from within, developing qualities you have inside. Which means that your true happiness doesn’t take anything away from anyone else’s. And it also means that your true happiness doesn’t conflict with theirs. So when you wish for your own happiness, it’s not a selfish thought. In fact, the more you can develop your inner resources for happiness, the more you have to offer to others. So tell yourself, “May I understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” Because happiness comes from your actions.

When you wish for happiness, it’s not just a wish. It’s an intention. And you want to maintain that intention.

Then you can spread the same thought to others. Start with people who are close to your heart—your family, your very close friends: “May they find true happiness, too.”

Then spread those thoughts out in ever-widening circles: to people you know well and like; to people you like even though you don’t know them so well; to people you’re more neutral about; and to people you don’t like. Remember, the world would be a much better place if everyone could understand the causes for true happiness and be happy to act on them.

Then spread thoughts of goodwill to people you don’t even know. And not just people—living beings of all kinds, east, west, north, south, above and below, out to infinity: “May we all find true happiness in our hearts.”

It’s good to think of infinity at least once a day. It puts the events of the day in perspective.

Think of the Buddha on the night of his awakening. First he thought of his many previous lifetimes. They stretched way, way back, to the point where he couldn’t even find the beginning point. Then the question was, why is it that his rebirths just went up and down, up and down, up and down? In the second watch of the night, he saw that all living beings go up and down based on their actions. What do their actions come from? They come from their intentions.

Then, having gained that larger perspective, he then focused on his intentions in the present moment. That’s where he found awakening.

So you can focus on the present moment here. Focus on your intentions right here. Set up the intention that you want to stay with the breath, all the way in, all the way out. Each breath as it comes in, each breath as it goes out. Start with a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths to emphasize the feeling of breathing. And notice where you feel it most clearly. “Breath,” here, is not so much the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s the movement of energy in the body: the rise and fall of the abdomen, the rise and fall of the chest, the shoulders. Some people even feel it in their arms and their legs. Wherever you feel it most clearly, focus your attention right there.

Then try to notice if long breathing feels good. You can experiment for a bit with shorter breathing, more shallow, faster, slower, heavier, lighter; or in long, out short; in short, out long, until you find a rhythm and texture of breathing that feels good for you right now—energizing if you feel tired; soothing if your nerves feel frazzled; relaxing if you feel tense. Think of the breath as medicine that you’re going to administer to the whole body.

First get this area where you’re most aware comfortable with the breath. Then think of that sense of comfort spreading: down the spine, out the legs, down the shoulders, out the arms. All around the torso. All around the head. Think of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out with a sense of ease.

If your thoughts wander away, you don’t have to follow them. If you find that you have followed them, just drop the thoughts and you’ll be back here. You don’t have to pull the mind back. If it happens again, drop the thought again, come back. Each time you come back, reward yourself with a breath that feels especially good.

If there are any pains in any part of the body, you don’t have to pay them any attention yet. Focus on the parts of the body that you can make comfortable by the way you breathe.

As you do this, you’re developing three qualities in your mind. The first is mindfulness, which doesn’t mean non-reactive awareness. The way the Buddha used the term, it means being able to keep something in mind. Here you’re keeping in mind the fact that you want to stay with the breath each time it comes in, each time it goes out. And you want to remember the instructions for breathing comfortably, letting go of any other thoughts. Keep all of that in mind.

The second quality is alertness: watching what you’re actually doing and the results you’re getting. If you catch yourself wandering off, you come right back. If the mind is staying here, and the breath does feel good, then try to be especially sensitive to how the breath feels.

In doing this, you’re developing a third quality, which the Buddha calls ardency—ātappa in Pali. It’s the wholehearted desire to do this well. This is where wisdom comes into the meditation. You could be mindful of anything, you could keep anything in mind. You could be alert to anything in the present moment. But if you try to do this well, you try to keep in mind the things that are relevant to getting the mind to settle down and you’re alert to what you’re doing because what you’re doing is going to make all the difference.

You realize that the Buddha’s teachings are all aimed at developing this skill: getting the mind to settle down so that you can understand it, so that you can observe it clearly. All of his teachings—the four noble truths, the noble eightfold path—are all aimed right here. It’s like tuning a radio. If the radio is not well tuned, there’s a lot of static and it’s hard to tell what’s being said, what the music is. But once it’s finely tuned, then things come through clearly. So you’re tuning your mind—tuning your mind to how the body feels from within right now.

Any other thoughts you might have that would lead away, just think of them as little worlds, and that you have the choice: You could go into those little worlds, but they would float away like bubbles and pull you away from what’s actually here right now. Those bubbles will burst. Who knows where they’re going to leave you. So you want to stay right here. Get comfortable right here. At ease. Alert.

Then try to maintain it. Sometimes we have a lot of trouble getting the mind to settle down, but then when it does settle down, we say, “Okay, what’s next?” Well, “what’s next” is learning the skill of staying. And one of the first things you’ve got to deal with is that thought that says, “Well, what’s next? I want to do something else.” Say, “No.” Having the mind develop the skill of stillness is an important thing to be doing. Think about our education system and the things it teaches us: There’s nothing really aimed at making us truly happy. This is something we have to learn on our own: how to be independent researchers, finding out how to develop a source for true happiness inside.

It begins with simple exercises like this, because you have to learn to get some control over your mind.

So, give it an exercise, like being mindful of the breath, being alert to what you’re doing around the breath, trying to breathe well. Try to get the mind really still and interested in the breath as continually as possible. All the other skills you need to know about becoming happy, truly happy, will come from here.

That’s what’s special about the Buddha’s teachings. He teaches happiness not as a crapshoot or a gamble. He teaches it as a skill. And as with all skills, you have to practice it again and again, and watch yourself as you do it. You learn from your own actions. He says the Dhamma is nourished by commitment and reflection. You commit yourself to doing it, trying to do it as well as you can, and then you reflect on the results. If the results aren’t good, you go back and you make adjustments. Reflect again, commit again, reflect again. This way, you become your own teacher. After all, you’re not dealing with minds in general; you’re dealing with your mind, your body, as you feel it from within.

Right here is everything that you need to know. Just learn how to see it clearly. So pay attention right here. Learn how to ask the right questions: i.e., “What am I doing? In what way is it causing suffering or stress? How can I learn to stop?” When you’re at the right place, you’re asking the right questions, and you’re really observant, you’re bound to come up with good answers.