Mindfulness at the Door

Sit up straight. Close your eyes.

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

You’re trying to create a home for yourself here inside—a place where the mind can rest, gather its strength. All too often, we’re like little children wandering around outside, unprotected. When the sun comes out, we get hot. When the rain falls, we get cold. Strangers come, offer us candy, and they spirit us away—all because the mind doesn’t have a safe place to stay. So you’ve got to create that place here inside, a home inside. And make sure you have a good gatekeeper at the door.

When the Buddha talks about the different aspects of the practice, mindfulness, he says, is like a gatekeeper. Now, the gatekeeper doesn’t just sit there and watch things coming and going. He’s a gatekeeper in a fortress at a frontier. There are enemies around, and there are friends. And he has to recognize who’s the enemy, who’s the friend, to let in the friends and keep the enemies out. So mindfulness has to be active to protect your concentration. Because of your concentration, the mind gets a chance to rest. It has a sense of well-being inside.

You can breathe in any way you want that feels good. And for the time being, you don’t have to concern yourself with things outside. When the time does come, you can look out the windows. In other words, you don’t have to leave your sense of the breath. You can maintain that sense of comfort as you go through the day and work from home. That way, when you need to rest, you can rest. When you need to work, you can work. You have a lot more freedom and, at the same time, a lot more strength inside—a sense of safety inside, a sense of well-being inside.

That’s an important part of the practice. All too often, we know the right thing to do, but we just don’t have the strength. Here’s a way of building up the strength of your mind by allowing it to rest—but not just rest. I mean, you can sleep and gain some rest, But here you’re resting and developing good qualities of the mind at the same time:

• mindfulness, the ability to keep something in mind—in this case, remembering that you’re going to stay with the breath;

• alertness, watching to see what you’re actually doing right now. Are you with the breath? Have you wandered away?

• and then ardency. If you’re with the breath, try to be as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels to make it even more comfortable. If you’re not with the breath, bring the mind right back.

The ardency, there, is the wisdom, realizing that it’s what you do that’s going to make a difference. So do it well. This way, you’re working from home. You have a chance to lie down and rest whenever you need to, and to get back up and work when you have to. You’re safe inside. When the sun comes out, you’re not subjected to the sun. When the rain falls, you’re not a victim of the rain. You’re safe here inside.