Self-restraint

When you focus on the breath, you have to keep watch over yourself to make sure that you stay, because you have to be responsible for your own actions. No one else can come in and help you with this. The Dhamma talk can help remind you. And when you have a guided meditation, you have the voice of the guide acting as your mindfulness. But that’s just a crutch. You want to be able to walk on your own.

Sometimes Theravada is accused of being selfish, that each person is looking after his own good or her own good. But we have to look after ourselves because suffering is something we do to ourselves, and no one else can undo it. No one else can make us skillful in the ways that we need to be skillful. But we can make ourselves skillful. So the work is inside. The work is yours. And you have to build up your good qualities inside so you really can depend on them.

When the Buddha says, Attahi attano nātho, the self is its own mainstay—he’s talking about this principle here: that you have to make yourself reliable. If you’re not reliable to yourself, who can you rely on? The work has to be done right here. The skills have to be developed right here. And you’re the one who can develop the skills. That’s the good news: You can do this. You can be self-reliant.

So as you’re sitting here, one of the duties of alertness is to keep watch over you, what you’re doing, what the results are. When you slip off the breath, you have to be ardent in coming back. When Ajaan Lee explains mindfulness practice, he puts the wisdom faculty in that quality of ardency. You want to do your best. You can be alert to all kinds of things, good or bad. You can be mindful of all kinds of things, good or bad. But the desire to do it well, the desire to do the practice well in the practice of virtue, concentration, discernment—that’s where the wisdom lies, realizing that’s an issue where you have to depend on yourself. You can’t depend on anyone else. You can get advice from other people. They can set a good example. But the actual doing is something you have to do yourself. And you realize that this is your only hope for happiness. That’s the wisdom.

So. Learn how to be self-reliant. When you can rely on yourself, then other people can rely on you as a help in their practice. It’s through helping ourselves that we help others. Always keep that principle in mind.