Take Time

When you go around in the world outside, there are screens everywhere, telling you what to think, what to believe. And the fact that they’re telling you what to think—it’s not necessarily bad. If they were telling you wise things to think, it would be helpful. But you don’t know who these people are, what their motives are, why they want you to think the way they want you to think. It’s such an incessant barrage that you don’t have time to think for yourself.

This is what sets the Buddha apart. On the one hand, he does tell you what to think. That’s what right view is all about. But he also tells you that it’s for the sake of your own true happiness. Then you have time to check for yourself to see if it’s right. So take time. Try to be quiet. Turn off all your screens; turn off all your outside influences. Try to find a quiet place where you can be by yourself and watch your mind on its own. When you’re armed with the Buddha’s right view, you can see for yourself that you can get things straightened out inside.

Because the mind is not just one mind, it’s many minds. You have to figure out which minds inside are the ones you want to identify with. And you have the choice. You have been identifying with *all *of them in the past. Any thought that comes up is your thought. But now you get to choose. Which ones do you want to run with? Which ones do you want to drop? And you can ask yourself, “Why?”

As the Buddha said, it is possible, through your own efforts, to find true happiness, something that doesn’t change. That gives you a standard against which you can measure your other thoughts. Are they up to the standard? The big question is, what will these thoughts influence you to do? What will be the results of those actions? That’s what you’ve got to watch. That’s what you’ve got to judge. After all, we are passing judgement here. There are so many things you could be wanting right now, so many things you could be thinking right now, and you have to decide what’s worth thinking, what’s worth wanting—because our time is limited. We want to get the most out of our time.

So take time to test these things. Then you can be your own judge. And you learn how to be a judge who’s reliable, not going just by your moods or your emotions but going by what you know really is right, what really is useful, what really does lead to true happiness. That’s something you can know for yourself when you’re trained.