Harmony

Try to bring your mind in harmony with the body. The body is sitting right here, but the mind is running around all over the place. So. Get it to sit right here, too.

And as you sit right here, don’t put too much pressure on the body. Don’t put too little. The Buddha’s image of too much pressure is holding a baby chick in your hand. You hold it too tight and it dies. If you hold it too loosely, it flies away. So try to find just the right amount of pressure to focus on the breath and keep things constant, keep things together. When they’re in harmony like this, the mind can stay with the body; the body can stay with the mind. And they can help each other.

It’s like the owner of a house. Say you’re staying in the house. You begin to notice if a pipe is leaking, or rot is beginning to develop here or there, or insects or rodents have moved into the house. You can take care of them right away, before they do a lot of damage. If the owner is off someplace else and these things happen, he comes back and the place is a mess.

So look after your body, and the body will look after you. It gives you a good, safe place to stay. It’s like having a child that you keep in the house. You don’t lock the child in the house, but you give the child things to do in the house. Like here, we play with the breath, work with the breath. Try to find a way of breathing that feels right for right now, and then let that sensation flow through the whole body. Think of the whole nervous system breathing in, the whole nervous system breathing out—all your blood vessels breathing in and out.

As Ajaan Lee says, it’s like having four dolls to play with: earth, water, wind, fire. When you’re entertained in the house, then you don’t go wandering off. You don’t get kidnapped by strangers. You don’t get rained on. You don’t get exposed to the sun.

So keep the mind and body in harmony. If there’s a lack of harmony in the house, you know what’s going to happen. Everybody leaves. Then they’re all scattered all over the place. But if we can work together in harmony—the body with the mind, the mind with the body—then it sets a good example for our outside activities as well. We have a couple days of busy activity now. The more harmony we can bring to the activity, the more smoothly things will go—the more quickly they’ll go. And the activities really will be meritorious. They really will be good because we bring a good state of mind to them.