Delight in Goodness

Focus on the breath. Talk to yourself about the breath. Ask yourself what kind of breathing would feel good right now. Then think of the various ways you can breathe and try them out to decide which one you like best. Focus on that. Maintain that, as long as it feels good. If it stops feeling good, you can change it again.

This habit of talking to yourself in meditation is not a bad thing. It’s how you get the mind to settle down, to get the mind to fit with the breath, the breath to fit with the mind. Sometimes the problem is with the breath, but sometimes it’s with the mind, so you have to talk to yourself into being in the right mood to meditate, realizing that you’re fortunate you have a breath to come in and go out—and that you have this opportunity to get the mind still. It’s not an opportunity that comes all the time. So. Take advantage of it while you can. And delight in it while you can.

The Buddha talks about delighting in the Dhamma, and this is what it means. It means talking to yourself about how good it is that you have this Dhamma to practice, and you have the opportunity to practice it. All too often, we delight in the wrong things. We talk to ourselves all the time, but we don’t know how to do it properly. You can get yourself into a real mess talking to yourself in a very negative way—negative about the world, negative about yourself, negative about the people around you. There’s part of the mind that delights in that kind of negativity, but what does it accomplish?

You should give yourself something good to do and then delight in that—because the opportunity is there. It’s always there to do something good—opportunities for acts of virtue, acts of generosity, the opportunity to spread goodwill to people who may not be easy to spread goodwill to. Those opportunities are always there, and you want to delight in that, realizing that you’re fortunate you have this opportunity to do some good. And the more you delight in it, the more you want to do it. And the more good you do, the more good you have inside.

This is one of the reasons why the Buddha put directed thought and evaluation at the very beginning of dependent co-arising, right after ignorance in the three kinds of fabrication. There’s verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself. That can be one of the main causes for suffering if you do it in ignorance, which most of us do.

Our minds are constantly running. It’s like having your car running even when you are not planning to use it. You just keep it running in the garage. Of course, it’s going to build up exhaust fumes. You want to air out your mind. Remind yourself that you’re in a really good position right now to do good, so you want to do as much good as you can, whether it’s in terms of your thoughts, your words, your deeds. Make the most of that opportunity. And learn to talk to yourself in a way that’s encouraging.

There was the time when the Buddha taught the monks to be mindful of death, and he asked them how they were doing it. One monk said, “I tell myself, ‘May I live for another day so that I can have the opportunity to do some good.’” Another one said, “I tell that myself twice a day.” And it got down to the monk who said, “When I breathe in, I tell myself, ‘May I live to breathe out so I can do some good.’” And the Buddha said, “That last one is the one who’s heedful. All the rest are heedless.”

Each time you have the opportunity to do some good, delight in it. Take advantage of the opportunities you’ve got. They’re all around you. While you’re sitting here meditating, you’ve got this huge opportunity to get your own mind under control, to get to know your mind. What could be more fascinating than that? Of course, there are a lot of things in the mind we don’t like to see, but if you really want to get past the things you don’t like about the mind, first you have to admit that they’re there. Then you can do something about them: Tell yourself that you’re not going to be defeated by anything that comes up. When you have the right attitude, when you learn how to delight in what’s good, learn how to delight in the Dhamma, then you’ll find that the Dhamma will grow inside you and be there when you need it.