You’re Doing Something Wrong

Ajaan Lee tells the story of an old monk who came to see him one time—seventy years old, thirty years in the monkhood. He asked Ajaan Lee how he taught meditation, and Ajaan Lee replied, “Breath meditation. You know*, buddho, buddho.”* The old monk complained that he had been doing that kind of meditation ever since the time of Ajaan Mun and had never gotten anywhere.

Ajaan Lee attributed that to the fact that he’d never done any directed thought and evaluation in his meditation. He’d just done the buddho, buddho, which I guess would be directed thought, but no evaluation. He was missing an important part of what Ajaan Lee called “concentration work.”

We often come to concentration thinking we just get to rest, and there is an element of rest. But there’s also work to be done: first, to get the mind into a proper, balanced state of rest. Sometimes you get so quiet that you fall asleep, which is not what you want. You want to be alert and still at the same time. You want to develop a quality of mind, an awareness, that fills the whole body. One way to get that full-body awareness is to work with the breath energies throughout the different parts of the body.

For some people, this is easy and quick; for other people, it takes time. But it’s worth the time invested, because directed thought and evaluation are where concentration and discernment practice overlap. It’s the discernment element in your concentration. It’s what keeps everything balanced.

Of course, one of the first things you have to evaluate is how much evaluation you need. There are times when you’re really tired and the mind really should rest first. There are some people who find that as they try to be aware of the whole body, it’s more distracting than calming.

In a case like that, Ajaan Lee would say to think of yourself as like a person in charge of an orchard. You’ve got the land, you’ve got some seedlings, but if you try to plant the whole piece of property with your seedlings, you have to watch out. You have to be careful because a drought may come, and all your seedlings may die. So you plant just one small section of the land. Look after that, based on how much water you have in reserve. Then gradually, as those trees begin to bear fruit, you take the seeds from their fruit and you plant new trees. Gradually, gradually, gradually, you spread your awareness, spread your “orchard” around.

In other words, you don’t try to tackle too big a job at once. If the mind needs to rest, give it a good place in the body, one spot in the body. But be very careful to stay in the body. Don’t drift away outside of the body. Some people find it easier to be in a kind of a spacey state. But if you haven’t gone through the body first, that spacey state is very unstable.

So use the evaluation to read the state of your mind, and of course to read the breath. In fact, you’re reading all three kinds of fabrication. This is where the concentration practice begins to shade into insight practice. You’re looking at the breath, which is bodily fabrication. The directed thought and evaluation itself are verbal fabrication, and then your perceptions and your feelings are mental fabrications. These are the things that, if you do them in ignorance, you’re going to cause suffering. If you do them with knowledge, they can become part of the path.

This connects with the basic message of the four noble truths, one that people often miss: The four noble truths are basically saying you’re doing something wrong. The fact that you’re suffering, the fact that you’re not an arahant, means you’re doing something wrong. And a good place to start to check where you’re doing something wrong is with these three kinds of fabrication. xx

So you have to have a willingness to look at what you’re doing, step back a bit, and ask yourself, “What am I doing wrong here? What could I change?” You want to always be willing to see where your mistakes are.

This is part of the problem with our ignorance: In some cases, it’s simply that we don’t see what we’re doing wrong. In other cases, we won’t see. In other words, we don’t want to see what we’re doing wrong. We don’t like to admit making mistakes—and that attitude is deadly for the practice.

That’s why the Buddha, when he was teaching Rāhula, taught him right from the very beginning how to look at your actions. If you see that you made a mistake, if you’ve actually done something that’s caused harm, you make up your mind not to repeat that harm, and then you go talk it over with someone you trust. You don’t hide it. You don’t get defensive. You freely admit your mistake. After all, you’re here to learn, and that’s the first part of learning: seeing where your mistakes are.

I had a student who teaches computer science and he had one particular student whose code he said was really ugly. So he called the student into his office, showed him the code that he, the student, had written, showed him the code that someone else had written to solve the same problem that was much more elegant. He said, “Look. This is where you’re doing things wrong.”

Now, in a case like that you have the advantage of being able to see what someone else does. Here, though, you’re sitting and meditating with your eyes closed, looking at your own breath. You can’t see what other people are doing with their breath. But you can take advantage of whatever advice they offer.

As the Buddha said, if someone points out your faults to you, you should regard that person as someone who’s pointed out treasure. Just as you can’t see your own eyes, there are often times when you can’t see your own mistakes, yet someone else can see them very easily. Of course, you can see your eyes in a mirror. In this case, the mirror is the other people around you, the other meditators around you. They see you’re doing something wrong, they point it out to you.

One of our rules as monks is that if someone criticizes us, no matter how good or bad the criticism is, we always have to show respect. You never know: Someone who says something that seems stupid today may say something wise tomorrow, and you may realize that what seemed stupid today actually was quite wise.

But if you show disrespect, they just stop teaching you. Then you don’t get the opportunity to learn more. So have the attitude that you want to see your mistakes. When you accept the four noble truths, that’s the attitude that should come automatically: They’re saying you’re doing something wrong.

In terms of dependent co-arising, the first things you’re doing wrong are the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself—the directed thought and evaluation—and the perceptions and feelings you’re holding in mind: either specific perceptions and feelings that you’re focusing on, or the way you’re focusing. That’s where you’re doing something wrong. Which is why you want to evaluate what you’re doing as you’re sitting here watching your breath. When you can admit your mistakes, that, the Buddha said, is a cause for growth in the Dhamma and Vinaya.

The ability to admit mistakes starts from outside. When you have the attitude that you freely admit your mistakes, and try to make amends when you can—when you’re dealing with other people—then that attitude becomes an inner attitude as well. When you’re sitting and meditating, and you can get the mind to settle down in a way that really is conducive to insight, you don’t want to just rest and rest and rest, because sometimes the way you’re resting is wrong. It’s like sleeping on a mattress that’s bad for you. You feel good because you’ve been able to sleep, but you don’t get full rest because the mattress is wrong.

In the same way, as you’re trying to settle down, learn how to adjust things. Spread your awareness, spread the breath, gain a sense of well-being. See how you can work it through the body and you’ll learn an awful lot.

The resting will be more restful, more invigorating, more energizing. And you’ll gain insight at the same time into what you’re doing wrong and how you can correct your mistakes so that you can reach the point where you stop repeating them.