Your Selves Are Your Own Mainstays

Close your eyes; focus on your breath. Know when it’s coming in. Know when it’s going out—all the way in, all the way out. And make sure you stay here. This is the role of alertness in the meditation: watching over the object of your meditation, watching over the breath. You can ask yourself, is long breathing comfortable? Would another way of breathing be more comfortable? Well you can try shorter breathing; or in short, out long; in long, out short. Fast, slow. Heavy, light. Deep, shallow. Experiment for a while to see what breathing feels good right now.

At the same time, you have to be alert to your mind. If your mind is beginning to wander off, you’ve got to bring it back. Wanders off again? Bring it back again. You have to watch over yourself. This is why the Buddha said that the self is its own mainstay: Attahi attano natho. There’s nobody else who’s going to come and say, “Okay, you’ve wandered off. Bring your mind back. Whoops. There it goes again. Bring it back again.” You have to be one who watches.

This is part of your self that’s going to be your mainstay. We have lots of different “selves” inside, and the question is which “selves” can you rely on.

You have three types all together. They can be either skillful or unskillful. There’s a self that’s going to enjoy the results of the practice. There’s a self that’s going to do the practice. Then there’s the self that’s going to watch over the doer, making sure that what you do is in line with what the Buddha taught and what you’ve learned from the past—and also watching over the consumer of the pleasures.

Make sure that your internal consumer has high standards. If we settle for less than the best, we’re never going to get to the best. So we only want to aim at the best, insist on the best. That’s when we’re going to find it.

So you’ve got these three functions inside. Sometimes they’re skillful; sometimes they’re not. Especially this commentator, or the observer: You’ve got to be very careful to make sure that it’s a wise observer, helpful, because sometimes it can start getting so critical that it gets you discouraged. Other times, it doesn’t really care: “Do whatever you want. Be free to wander around.” That’s not very compassionate or wise, either. You want all your internal selves to be compassionate and wise and, as the Buddha says, pure—in other words, actually following through with the principles of what you know is right.

So for the self to be its own mainstay, you have to create a reliable self inside. And it’s up to you to decide what you’re going to go for. Nobody is forcing you to practice. But as Ajaan Fuang said once, “You do practice. You’re not here because anybody else forced you to. You’re here of your own free will.” And you can make the best that you can out of it.

The Buddha offers all kinds of things. His teachings are like a buffet with all kinds of foods. They’re all good for you, but some of them are better than others. There are the foods that would lead to a good rebirth. There are foods that lead to you to be happy in this lifetime. And there are foods that lead you beyond birth and lifetimes. They’re all good.

But you want to choose the best, because only then will you find the best. That means you have to be your best self inside, as the consumer, the producer, and the commentator. All three of those have to be functioning at their highest level. Your effort, your ardency, in training them is what’s going to make all the difference.