New Beginnings

Close your eyes; take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. It could be at the nose. It could be at the throat, the chest, the abdomen. Anywhere in the body where you feel the energy that lets the breath come in, lets the breath go out, focus your attention there—wherever it’s clearest. Then ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it is, keep it up. If not, you can change: shorter, faster, slower, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow. If the mind wanders off, just come right back. Start all over again. Wanders off? Come right back. Start all over again.

This is the time of year of new beginnings. The new year begins. We think about what we’re going to get out of the new year. Well, first we have to reflect on the past year. As the Buddha said, the Dhamma grows from commitment and reflection. You commit yourself to doing it. In other words, the Buddha teaches generosity; he teaches virtue; he teaches meditation. So you try it and you try your best. If you don’t try your best, you don’t learn. It’s when you try your best and then you reflect—and the results are still not good enough—that’s when you learn. There’s something new you need to know.

So you explore. You use your ingenuity to figure out what might be better. You can listen to Dhamma talks. You can read. Or you can use your own ingenuity. After all, that’s how the Buddha found the path. He tried various ways and he really committed himself to each path that he followed, so that he could be a true judge of how good that path was. When the path didn’t lead to the end of suffering, then he tried something new. He tried all the paths that were known at that time. None of them worked.

That’s when he had to try something new again—really new. He reflected on the time he got his mind into concentration when he was a young child. It just naturally settled in. The question is, could that be the path? And he realized that it could be, so he gave it a try.

So you look at what you want out of life. This is where discernment and determination comes in. What do you really want out of your life? You don’t want just little bits and pieces. You want a life that’s of solid worth, one that has something solid to show for it. After all, life requires a lot of effort, every day, every day. You have to keep on doing good. Otherwise, you’re just living off of your old goodness, and that gets worn out after a while. So you have to keep on creating goodness every day, every day.

So what are you going to get out of the goodness you’ve done every day? What’s going to be really worthwhile? Sometimes we take our goodness, and we apply it to all kinds of useless things. Ajaan Suwat used to comment that when he came to America, everyone said he was going to meet amazing things in America that you didn’t have in Thailand. He said he looked around and didn’t see anything amazing. People put all of their energies, all of their abilities, and all their ingenuity into material things—very little into affairs of the heart and mind. That wasn’t amazing at all.

What’s really amazing is when you can train the mind to find true happiness inside, a happiness that doesn’t have to depend on anything else outside, a happiness that lasts. That’s something really worthwhile. So ask yourself, to what extent is your life headed in that direction? Or does it go there a little bit, and then go some place else a little bit—just wander back and forth like dust motes in the air. They get pushed around. A little bit of sunlight comes—they get pushed in one direction. A little bit of breeze—they get pushed in another direction. They end up not going anywhere at all. You want a life that goes someplace. You want it to go someplace good.

Every life goes someplace. The question is where. The Buddha said there are many different paths. There are paths to the lower realms, paths to the higher realms. There’s the path to nibbana. It’s up to you to choose which path you want to follow. Sometimes you don’t know which path you’re on. This is why it’s good to have the Buddha to warn us, to put up signs: “This path leads down; this path leads up.” So ask yourself which path you want to follow and commit yourself to following that path. Then keep reflecting to make sure you’re on the path.

Say you’re headed to a mountain on the horizon. You know the mountain is in the right direction, so you head there. But you don’t focus on the mountain, you focus on what you’re doing, each step along the way. Make sure that each step is well made, and that each step you do takes you that much closer, closer, closer to where you really want to go.

So stop and reflect on your life so far. Has it been heading in that direction or is it just wandering around? You have the choice to head in that direction. We’ve got the Buddha to point out the way. And it’s not the case that his teachings will be available all the time. So now that they are available, make the most use of them. In that way, you make a good, new beginning. Then you stick with it. That’s how true happiness is found.