Stay Tuned

Try to give full attention to your breath—the breath coming in, the breath going out. As for other things aside from the breath right now, tell yourself they don’t mean anything. Just stay focused here on the breath. Stay tuned to the breath. It’s like tuning your radio. If the radio is well tuned, you can get the channel clearly. If it’s not well tuned, there’s a lot of static and interference.

It’s the same with the breath. Today’s going to be hot. You can think about how hot it is, but that doesn’t change the heat. It just makes the mind more upset.

So give the mind good work to do. Tune in to something else. Tune in to the breath. Or you can tune in to goodwill. Think of all the beings out there in the world and how you don’t want anybody to be suffering. You don’t want anybody to be doing the causes of suffering. That’s a refreshing thought—that you can sit here, even though it’s hot, but you’re generous enough to be thinking about others, not just about yourself right now.

In other words, when you’re meditating, you find the right frequency to tune in to. Stay tuned very clearly, very precisely, right there. After all, what are you going to do about the heat? You find a cooler place. Make sure you get enough salt today, enough water. Then give your mind something better to do than thinking about the heat.

You can think about goodwill. You can think about the breath. You can think about the bones in your body. Find a theme that you find interesting and stay right there. Stick with it. See what happens when you stick with it. We don’t really learn anything by going a little bit here, a little bit there, because that’s what the mind does all the time anyhow. You want to see what happens to the mind when you give it something good to focus in on and stay right there. So tune in. Stay tuned in.

As the Buddha said, a lot be accomplished if you don’t let yourself give in to the thoughts either that it’s too cold or too hot. There are still a lot of things you can do. You can get the mind more focused, more mindful, more alert. Even though the body may be weakened by the heat, the mind doesn’t have to be weakened by it. And you’re thinking of things that don’t require a lot of complicated reasoning. Just give yourself something good to tune in to. Stay tuned in, and you’ll have something good to show for the day.