When Your Head Is on Fire

As the Buddha says, even if you can’t read the minds of other people, at least learn how to read your own mind, particularly if there are unskillful qualities there. When you notice them, you don’t just let them stay there. As the Buddha said, it’s as if your head is on fire. You have a turban, and the turban is on fire. You put forth extra desire, effort, endeavor, diligence, relentlessness, mindfulness, and alertness to put out the fire.

Notice the mindfulness there, the alertness there. This doesn’t fit in with the common picture of mindfulness as simply accepting things as they are. You remember what your duty is: You’ve got to put out the fire. You can’t let these unskillful qualities stay there. Of course, that sometimes means watching them carefully before you make a move. But you watch them for the sake of understanding them, seeing where their weak points are, where you can attack them. Then you attack with full force. Relentless. Diligent.

So mindfulness is proactive. This fits in with the picture we get when the Buddha says there are three qualities that revolve around every factor of the path. You have to have right view about what’s the right version of the factor, such as what’s right resolve, what’s wrong resolve. Then you have right mindfulness, being mindful to abandon what’s unskillful and develop what’s skillful. And then there’s the right effort that actually carries that duty out.

These three qualities — right view or discernment, right mindfulness, right effort or persistence — revolve around every factor of the path. This is why the first three factors for awakening are mindfulness, discernment — in other words, analysis of qualities — and effort. These are the qualities that create the foundations for all the remaining factors for awakening, which are the ones related to concentration: rapture, calm, concentration, and equanimity.

So have a strong sense that you’re here to be active. The duty of mindfulness is to remember what you’ve learned about right view in general, along with specific techniques that have and haven’t worked for you in the past. You’ll find that there are techniques that work for a while and then stop. But don’t throw them away. Just put them away in your toolbox for when you may need them again sometime, when they may be appropriate again.

You keep those things in mind as directions for what you have to do to develop what’s skillful and to abandon what’s not. After all, the practice does require effort.

There’s that passage that’s often quoted about how for someone whose virtue is consummate, there’s no need for an intention to be free from remorse. When you’re free from remorse, there’s no need for an effort, no need for an intention, for the mind to feel pleasure and ease. When the mind feels pleasure and ease, there’s no need for an act of will to get into concentration—and so on down the line, ultimately getting to knowledge and vision of release. It sounds as if once you’ve got the marble in the slot, you just let it go and it’s going to follow the slot without any effort on your part.

But the Buddha himself notes many times in the Canon that people’s practice doesn’t go automatically that way. Some people perfect their virtue and they get contented with that and they stop. Or you get concentration and you get contented with it and you stop there. You don’t get any insight.

The Buddha also notes that intention is part of every state of right concentration.

So that passage about not needing a further act of will beyond being consummate in virtue probably relates to the passage where the Buddha is asked whether having a wish for results in your practice is going to work or not: whether it’s going to get in the way or it’s going to help. As he points out, what you need to do is have the right method. Then the wish of getting the results is irrelevant. But there has to be a certain amount of desire to do the right method to begin with.

If you want to get milk out of a cow, you can twist the horn as much as you like with lots of wishes. But because it’s the wrong method, you’re not going to get any milk. If you pull on the udder, you’re going to get the milk. How many wishes you have is not going to determine how much milk you get. But you do have to have the desire to get the milk at some point, and to do what’s needed to get the milk.

For some people, that’s going to be easy. For some people, it’s going to be hard. Whether it’s easy or hard, it’s necessary. This is one of those skills you have to develop no matter what.

When we went through our educational system here in the States, we got divided up in line with our talents. People who were talented in one area tended to be put into that area. People who were not talented in that area tended got put someplace else. Which encourages you to focus on areas where you’re strong, but it doesn’t encourage you to make up for the areas where you’re weak. It doesn’t teach you how to develop skill in areas where you’re not naturally talented.

Now, in some cases, that doesn’t matter, because there are people who have that talent and they can perform services for you. But the skill to put an end to suffering: No one else can do that for you. The skill to find the deathless: No one can do that for you. This is something you have to learn how to do for yourself, whether you’re talented in this direction or not.

If you’re not talented, you have to be very careful about the basic steps. Master the basic steps. Be very, very observant. As the Buddha says, you commit yourself to doing this, and the commitment may be easy, it may be hard, but then you reflect. The purpose of these Dhamma talks is to help you see what areas you should reflect on, how you should measure progress. If you find that it’s easier and easier to get out of an unskillful state, you’re making progress. If it’s getting harder to get out of an unskillful state, something’s wrong. But the important thing is that you realize your head is on fire. There are things in those flames that are going to cause you suffering. You’ve got to put them out.

So don’t just say, “Well, I’ll just do the kind of practice that sounds good. There are four kinds of practices, you know: pleasant and slow, pleasant and fast, unpleasant and slow, unpleasant and fast.” We’d all like to order the pleasant one, either slow or fast, as long as it’s pleasant, along with a side order of fries. But it’s not the kind of thing you can choose. It’s not a menu that you choose from. A lot of it depends on your past karma.

If you’re the type that finds it easy, okay, fine. But don’t look down on the people who find it hard, because they may have some special characteristics that will come out later on in the practice. The important thing is that you accept the fact that there is something wrong in your mind, but you have the tools and the potential strengths to straighten yourself out.

The Buddha gives you advice and he also teaches you to be observant on your own. Look at your intentions, look at the actions that result from the intentions, look at the results that come from those actions. Make a connection between the results and the intention. If something comes out wrong, go back and re-examine that intention to begin with.

You’re not being asked to look at things that are abstract or far away. You’re looking at things that you’re doing right here, right now. And you want to learn from what you’re doing right here, right now. That’s how you put out the fires: with right view, with right mindfulness, with right effort. These three qualities circle around everything else.

So when you encounter a problem, ask yourself, “What is right view about this problem?” Step out of your mind for a bit. If the Buddha were looking in your mind, what would he say? Then keep that in mind to direct your actions as to what you should do. Now, your version of the Buddha may not be as wise as the real Buddha, but hopefully it’s wiser than you normally are. And it’ll give you some good perspective so you know what to do, how to put out those flames as quickly as you can.