One Thing Clear Through

People sometimes ask, “How can you sit here quietly while the rest of the world is going crazy?” Well, that’s how we don’t go crazy along with them. We sit quietly, find our goodness inside. As the Buddha said, “Mano-pubbangama dhamma—all things are preceded by the mind.” So whether you’re going to suffer from the world or not suffer from the world—whether you’re going to do good in the world or not do good in the world—comes from your mind.

This is why we train the mind, to find its own inner source of goodness. If our goodness depends on the world, well, look at the world. It goes up and down and spins around. When it spins a lot like this, people get dizzy. So we want to make our mind still, standing firm in place so that we can see what’s right and what’s wrong. We look inside ourselves to see what’s right and what’s wrong inside, straighten ourselves out inside, find our sources of goodness inside and develop them. That’s how we maintain our sanity. And that’s how we create at least a little space of peace here in this world.

The world has always been a crazy place, and history has been so much a history of wars, invasions, disease. If you want to make your mind free from disease, free from war, uninvaded, you’re going to create your own space right here. And you create the space through all the Buddha’s teachings.

They start with generosity. Luang Pu Dune, one of the famous teachers in the forest tradition, was visiting Ajaan Suwat one time. As he left, he said, “You know the world has things in pairs, but the Dhamma is one thing clear through.” That one thing is generosity, the ability to give up the things you hold on to.

You start with being generous with your material possessions, and you realize that a generous mind is a wealthy mind. The world measures wealth by how much you have. The Dhamma measures wealth by how much you’re able to give, because when you give, the whole world becomes part of your range of relatives. When you sell things, that creates a boundary. When you give things, that erases the boundary. Your mind becomes more expansive. It’s able to share. It has a sense it has more than enough. That’s a wealthy mind. People with a lot of things but who never have enough are poor.

The same with virtue: You realize there are some things you would want to do that would cause harm but you realize, okay, you’re better off not doing them, so you give them up.

When you sit here and meditate, there are other things you could be thinking about. But, no, you’re going to stay here with the breath. Any other thoughts that come in, you let them go. As you get the mind settled into oneness, that’s when the mind has value.

We tend to think of a valuable mind as one that has lots and lots of thoughts. But what’s the value of those thoughts? They’re so scattered. When you can get the mind to be one, it’s like having a fruit market where there’s only one fruit in the whole market. That fruit is going to have a huge price. If there are lots and lots of fruit all over the place, sometimes they get spoiled. They have to be thrown away.

So the value of the mind lies in its ability to find singleness. Then with discernment, you learn to let go of things that cause suffering. So it’s letting go and letting go and finding that there’s wealth in letting go. This is something we can all develop from within. It doesn’t have to depend on the world outside. They can throw bad things at us, but we don’t throw bad things back. We find good things to contribute, and that becomes our wealth.

So look for your wealth inside. Put your mind first, ahead of the affairs of the world. As long as your mind is in good shape, then no matter what happens to the world, you don’t have to suffer. And you’re not causing suffering for anyone else. That’s a big accomplishment right there.