A Home for the Mind

The mind spends its time wandering around. In fact, that’s what samsara means, “wandering on.” It’s not so much a place. It’s an activity. Of course, when you wander, after a while you get tired. You need to rest. On top of that, the places where we wander are not all that safe. All too often we’re like a child who doesn’t like to stay at home, likes wandering around the streets. Strangers can pick you up, and you’re exposed to the elements. All kinds of things can happen. You want a safe place inside.

This is one of the reasons why we meditate: to create a home inside. In Pali this is called vihāra-dhamma, the quality inside the mind that you can make your home.

So look inside. What kind of home do you have here? You can have a house, but it doesn’t feel like a home until you’ve made it really comfortable. So try to make it comfortable with the breath. Breathe in a way that feels energizing if you’re feeling tired; soothing if you’re feeling frazzled; relaxing if you’re feeling tense. You’ve got a potential here, just in the breath—coming in, going out—realizing the breath is not so much the air coming in and out through the nose, it’s the movement of energy in the body. It’s something we live with all the time. You can go without water for a while. You can go without food for a while—even sleep for a while. But you can’t go very long without the breath.

So. Give it some space. Give it some room in the body. It only stands to reason that, because this is the force of life, it’s going to be good for the different parts of the body if you allow it to flow freely. If it gets tight and constricted, then that force can get unhealthy, uncomfortable. So allow it some free space inside. Think of every cell in the body being open and wide, and the breath extending into every cell, so that you can make this house you’ve got here in the body and turn it into a home.

Of course, it’s not a permanent home, but it’s much more lasting than a lot of the other places where the mind likes to roam. When you leave the house, you leave because you have reasons to leave, not because you’re forced out. That child wanders around usually because the parents are not paying attention to it. The home is not a good place to be. But if you can make the home a good place, then you wander around only when you have to. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be thinking. You should think. But you should learn how and when to think and how and when to rest.

And there are ways in which you can work from home. Stay with the breath even as you go through the day so that you have your source of strength inside. When the time comes to rest, you’re right here. You have medicine here. You have food here. You have a good comfortable place to stay and rest. That’s an important source of strength. Without a place to rest, you’re just swimming around. It’s like trying to swim around in the ocean when the floor of the ocean is way too deep and you end up drowning.

But here you have a good, solid place to stay: solid floor underneath you, a roof overhead to protect you, windows and doors that you can open and close. In other words, you can choose to pay attention outside or, if not, you have a good place to stay inside. Most people spend all their lives paying attention outside. As a result, nothing much good is inside. When the time comes—i.e., when aging, illness, and death come—that’s all they have is what’s inside. They’re really going to suffer. So try to create a good space inside here where the mind can rest, gather its strength, do the work that needs to be done—and gain a sense of well-being that forms a strength that can withstand whatever the world has to throw at you.