Dangers Inside

We live in a dangerous world. Aging, illness, and death move in on us from all sides. The Buddha’s image is of mountains moving in from the four directions, crushing all living beings in their path. On top of that, we have greed, aversion, and delusion. Those aren’t moving in from the outside. They’re coming in from the inside. Those are dangerous, too. In fact, those are the real dangers. Without those dangers, aging, illness, and death wouldn’t have any impact on the mind at all. So we have to be prepared.

This is why the Buddha said that the root of all skillful actions is heedfulness. We’d like to hear that we’re innately good, that we can trust our innately good emotions. But if you trust them too much, they can deceive you. As the ajaans say, one of the first things you learn when you really watch your mind is how much it lies to you. We’re really good at that. So we have to learn how to be more honest with ourselves.

This is one of the reasons why we start with the precepts because they force honesty on us about what we’re doing, saying, and thinking: why we’re doing it, why we’re saying it, why we’re thinking it—and then we try to bring that honesty into the concentration. Get the mind really still and be very clear about what’s actually arising in the mind.

When the mind is in concentration, and you have a sense of well-being, it’s a lot easier to see negative things arising in your mind and not be blown away by them. If the mind’s foundation is weak, it’s easy to get knocked off course when you see that you have more greed than you thought, more aversion than you thought, more jealousy. But when your foundation is large, and your center of gravity is low, then you don’t get knocked over by these things. You can see them and you can understand them—why they come, why they go—and you’re in a position to do something about them.

So try to make your foundation strong. Make it large. One of the reasons why we emphasize full-body awareness as we get the mind concentrated is that if the mind is focused on one point, then if you change the point, you’ve changed your concentration. But if you have points within that larger frame, then you can move from one point to the other, but the larger frame keeps you in one conversation inside. So think of full-body awareness, full-body breath, full-body ease as your foundation. That puts you in a position where you can see the dangers more clearly, admit them for what they are, and then really do something about them.

We sometimes think when the Buddha says, “goodwill for all beings,” he’s talking about some other world. He’s talking about this world. And goodwill for all beings includes you. You’re a being, too. So have some goodwill for yourself. Try to be skillful. Watch out for the dangers you’re creating. When you take care of those inside dangers, then the outside dangers won’t have any impact on the mind at all.