Atthi Attano Natho

Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. Focus your attention there. And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. Make it shorter, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. See what rhythm and texture of breathing feels good for the body right now.

This is something you have to do on your own. Nobody else can do it for you. How you feel the body from within, how you feel your mind from within: Those are things that only you can know—and only you can train. This is why the Buddha said, “Attāhi attano nātho: The self is its own mainstay.” You have to depend on yourself to do the practice. Now, you get help from others. And you help them. It’s interesting that when the Buddha lists the different ways in which you create a mainstay for yourself, some of them have to do specifically with things you do on your own: You develop a sense of contentment with your material surroundings; you’re persistent in the practice; you’re mindful; you’re discerning.

But a lot of things have to do with how you relate to other people. On the one hand, you try to get as much Dhamma knowledge from them as you can—listening to the Dhamma, discussing the Dhamma, asking questions. Do you really understand what is the true Dhamma?—and also learning how to be helpful.

For the monks, this means learning the different skills that monks need to know to help the community. When you’re helpful like that, then other people are willing to step in and help you when your strength fails. The strength of the body will inevitably fail. Sometimes the strength of the mind will fail, too, and it’s good to know that you have people to back you up. They’re happier to back you up, of course, when you’ve been helpful to them. So that’s one way in which you create a mainstay for yourself that you might not have expected.

So you work on the qualities that only you can do, but you get information from outside. You get guidance from outside, encouragement from outside. And then you’re happy to share. In this way, you create a network that keeps you supported even in moments when you’re weak, that helps to keep you on track.

So look to yourself. You can depend on yourself only when you develop these good qualities inside. And if you don’t have these good qualities developed inside, what are you going to depend on? Who are you going to depend on? It all has to start from within. Fortunately, we have the Buddha, we have the noble disciples as our guides, as our examples. We have the help of our fellow practitioners. So we take advantage of that help. Then we provide help in return to keep this network going, so that you really can depend on yourself. Ultimately, you get to the point where you don’t need to depend on anybody else anymore. But at that point, whatever you’ve got, you’re happy to share.

So when the Buddha says, “The self is its own mainstay,” he’s not telling you just to go off and be by yourself and ignore the rest of the human race. Think about what you can do for them, and they’ll be happy to do what they can for you.