Focus on What’s Important

Tonight’s Visakha Puja. Visakha is the name of the month. We’re paying homage to the Buddha because three important events in his life took place on the full moon night of Visakha. He was born on the full moon night in Visakha. Thirty-five years later, he gained awakening on the full moon night in Visakha. And then forty-five years after that, he passed away into total nibbāna on the full moon night in Visakha.

We’re paying homage to the Buddha as a special person. That’s why we keep commemorating these events, year after year, because what he did was very special. It wasn’t special just for his own success. It was special because he found a path that opened the doors to the deathless, as he said, and then he opened those doors to everybody who wanted to listen. People have been listening and practicing now for more than two thousand five hundred years, and many of them have found the deathless as a result. So let’s keep up the tradition.

On the night of his passing, he said there were two ways of showing homage to him. One was through material things: āmisa pūjā. The other was paying homage through the practice: paṭipatti pūjā. We’ve already done the first with the candle circumambulation. Now it’s time to do the second.

So focus on your breath. The texts say that the Buddha was focused on his breath the night of his awakening. His breath was no different from yours. What was different was the qualities of mind he brought to it. He’d been searching for years, ever since he realized that the pleasures of his life in the palace were not going to be enough. He wanted something more noble than that—something that wouldn’t age, grow ill, or die—and to find that, he realized he would have to go out into the forest, into the wilderness. So he abandoned all of his status, all of his wealth, his family, and went out in search. He studied with two ajaans who taught the way to formless meditation. But that was as far as they went. He saw that this was not the deathless, because it depended on conditions.

Then he had a vision: There are three kinds of wood. One, a piece of wood soaking in water. Second, a piece of wood out of the water but still wet. And third, a piece of wood one that was out of the water and dry. Only the third piece of wood could be used to light a fire. So he interpreted that as meaning that the water stood for pleasure, and to gain awakening, he would have to deny himself of all kinds of pleasure.

He tried that for six years and almost died. There were five monks who looked after him as he almost starved himself to death. As he said, when he would rub his stomach, he could feel his spine. He would fall over in a faint every now and then if he tried to urinate or defecate. He realized that this couldn’t be the way. If he continued with those austerities, he would die without having found anything.

So he reflected, “Could there be another way?” He thought back to a time when he was a child, sitting under a tree, spontaneously entering the first jhāna: rapture and pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by a direct thought and evaluation. He asked himself, “Is there anything blameworthy about that pleasure?” No. “Would it be intoxicating?” No.

So he realized that he had misinterpreted that image of the three pieces of wood. The water didn’t stand for pleasure, it stood for sensuality. There are forms of pleasure that have nothing to do with sensuality. Even though the pleasure of the first jhāna is intensely physical, it’s not sensual. It’s a pleasure of form, the body as you feel it from within. He could engage in it without causing any harm to himself or to others. And it could take him to awakening. But to enter that jhāna, he would have to get his strength back.

So he stopped his extreme austerities and began taking normal food. The five brethren left him in disgust, so he was on his own. When he regained his strength, he sat down and meditated. We don’t know how long he meditated, we just know that on the last night, when he sat down, he vowed that he wouldn’t get up until he had achieved full awakening. And in that night he did.

It’s good to reflect on the knowledges that he gained in that night, because his awakening is what makes everything else in his life special.

As he got the mind into the fourth jhāna, he inclined it to knowledge of previous lives: “Was death followed by rebirth, or was it followed by nothing?” He discovered that he could recollect many, many lifetimes way back, eons and eons. An eon is the lifespan of a universe. Our universe here is what? Many billions of years, and that still wouldn’t be even one eon.

He saw that he had been many things. Rebirth was not a steady upward progress. He’d go up and he’d go down, up and down. As he said, it was like throwing a stick up into the air. Sometimes it would fall on this end, sometimes it would fall on that end, sometimes it would fall splat in the middle.

So the next question was, “What determined the ups and downs?” That was the knowledge he gained in the second watch of the night. He saw all the beings of the universe dying and being reborn in line with their actions. Their actions were based on their intentions. Their intentions were informed by the views that they listened to, the views they respected. If they believed in the power of skillful action, they tended to act in skillful ways and be reborn in good places. If they didn’t believe in the power of their actions, they would tend to be very careless in their actions and be reborn in bad places.

But the pattern was complex. He saw that there were some cases where a person would do good things in this lifetime but then go to a bad place in the next lifetime, or vice versa. That, he discovered, depended on the complexity of human action. After all, in one lifetime you don’t do just one action or one type of action.

He saw the power of what you may have done in previous lifetimes combined with the power of your attitude after you’ve done the action. Say, you’ve done good things but before you had some bad actions in your karma account that could pull you down. Or afterwards, you developed wrong view, or you had specifically developed wrong view at the moment of death—that would pull you down, too.

The good news is that your good actions would not be wasted. Their good results would come after some time, but some bad things might come in the meantime, making it hard to practice. Vice versa, you might do something bad in this lifetime but you had good actions in your previous account or you had a change of heart and developed right view, especially at the moment of death. That would pull you up. Again, the results of the past bad actions wouldn’t be erased, but you’d have the chance to have a good rebirth and perhaps make some more good karma in the meantime.

What this alerted him to was the power of your thoughts in the present moment, your views in the present moment. Views themselves are actions, he saw. And just that moment-of-death action could have a huge impact. That inspired him to look into his present moment actions in his mind, right then and there, in the third watch of the night. That was when he gained the knowledge that brought about his awakening. It’s called “the knowledge that puts an end to effluents.” It consisted, first, of seeing the four noble truths: the truth of suffering, the truth of its cause, the truth of its cessation, and the truth of the path to its cessation.

The suffering, he discovered, was something internal. It was clinging to the five aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrication, and consciousness. Its cause was the three kinds of craving: for sensuality, for becoming, for non-becoming.

Sensuality is your mind’s fascination with thinking about sensual pleasures. Becoming is the act of taking on an identity in a world of experience. You see something that you want, you see the world in which it’s found, and you see yourself taking on an identity within that world, as someone who can get what you want: All of that is becoming. It’s a pattern of thought that we engage in day after day after day, many, many times in a day. He saw the craving that leads to that pattern leads to suffering.

And finally, there’s the craving for non-becoming. You have a state of becoming and you want to see it destroyed. But, in doing that, you take on a new identity of the one who wants to see it destroyed. So that, too, leads to more becoming and more suffering.

The truth of the cessation of suffering dispassion for all those three kinds of craving. And the truth of the path was aimed at developing that dispassion, basically, through virtue, concentration, and discernment.

He saw all these things clearly in his mind. He realized there were duties with regard to each: Suffering was to be comprehended. Its cause was to be abandoned. Its cessation was to be realized. The path for cessation was to be developed. It was in developing the path that most of the other work was done. So he focused on developing the path.

In the course of that, he began to realize that the path itself was composed of the five aggregates. So once he had fully developed the path, he realized he had to let that go, too. That was when he reached the cessation of suffering—the goal for which he had been searching for many, many years. He saw the nature of the Dhamma, the regularity of the Dhamma, and then he reached unbinding. With the cessation of suffering, the mind opened to total freedom.

So that’s the pattern of his night: knowledge of previous lifetimes, knowledge of all beings in the cosmos, and how their death and their rebirth is determined by their actions; and then finally looking into his actions in the present moment, sorting out what was skillful and what was not, doing what needed to be done to develop what was skillful and to abandon what was not—and doing that with circumspection. That’s how he gained release.

It’s a pattern we should think about.

You sit down to meditate. Usually you’re coming in from the day and you carry with you the narratives of the day. You try to focus on the present moment, and it just doesn’t happen, because the scenarios in the narratives keep getting in the way.

Now, think about the Buddha: If you think you have narratives, he had eons and eons of past lifetimes that he could remember. But before he went straight to the present moment, he expanded his vision, he expanded the range of his mind. He was seeing universal patterns. All beings going through many, many lifetimes, many, many narratives. It was that ability to get out of himself that enabled him to see the larger patterns.

In the same way, if you want to see the larger patterns in your life, you have to get out of yourself. You have to take the larger view. That’s one of the reasons why every evening we have chants on goodwill for all beings, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity for all beings; reflecting on the facts of aging, illness, and death—again, for all beings. These are true across the board, not just for you, but for everybody.

So every time you meditate, think about the larger picture that puts everything in perspective. Then think about it in such a way that it reminds you of the importance of the present moment. If all beings are going to be happy, how is that going to happen? Through their actions. If all beings are going to get beyond aging, illness, and death, it has to be through their actions.

So, in seeing your life in perspective like this, that enables you to be more objective about what’s going on, so that the events of the day don’t loom so large in your mind, and a larger pattern takes over. You can step back and look at the patterns in your mind with a lot more objectivity. It helps you to deal with that large sense of the ‘me, me, me’ and ‘mine, mine, mine.’ It’s just one more instance of a lifetime. This is what it’s like to have a lifetime in this particular century, this particular time, this particular place. There are details that are particular to this time and place, but there are a lot of larger patterns that have been playing out, over and over and over again.

So think about that second knowledge before you go into the present moment. Use that to get some perspective on your life, on where you are and what you’re doing, so that you gain a good sense of what’s really important to do.

That’s what’s so amazing about the Buddha’s lifetime. He realized what the important issue was in life and he went for it. Then he taught other people to go for that as well. As he said later, the things he learned in his awakening and the days after his awakening were like the leaves in a forest. But what he actually taught was a handful of leaves—all about the four noble truths, because that was the useful part. The essential part.

So make sure that that’s your essential part as well, the part that means most to you: putting an end to suffering. The other issues that come up in life should pale in comparison.

As the Buddha said, after he gained his awakening, he saw the beings of the world on fire with greed, aversion, and delusion. And it’s this handful of leaves—the information in his handful of leaves: That’s what puts the fire out. This is water for your fires. Once these fires are put out, then you can turn your attention to other, less serious issues.

But for now, make sure you stay focused on what’s really important. That’s how the Buddha gained his awakening: He was focused on what was really important and gave it top priority. If there was anybody who was goal-oriented, it was him.

It’s just that he was really wise in pursuing a really good goal—wise both in the choice of the goal and wise in how he pursued it, how he attained it. Then he offered his handful of leaves so that we can have a share of his wisdom as well. We borrow his wisdom so that we can develop our own, so we can have a taste of the total freedom that he gained on that night.