A Mind like Earth, Water, Wind, & Fire

When the Buddha was giving meditation instructions to his son, he started out by telling him to make his mind like earth. People can throw disgusting things on top of the earth, but the earth doesn’t shrink away, doesn’t get disgusted. That’s the first step in the meditation, because if you want to observe your mind, you have to put up with the fact that there are things in the mind that you’re not going to like. You make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath; other things come in. Sometimes there are thoughts about important things, but other times they’re just garbage in the mind. If you’re going to deal with that garbage, you have to have the attitude that your mind is like earth.

He goes on to tell his son to make his mind like water, wind, fire. In each case, the image is of washing away. Water washes away dirty things, but it’s not disgusted. Fire burns trash, but it’s not disgusted by the trash. The wind blows trash away, but it’s not disgusted.

In other words, you don’t stop simply with seeing that there are unskillful thoughts in the mind: times you’re greedy when you realize you shouldn’t be greedy; when there’s lust but you realize you shouldn’t have lust; when there’s anger, and it gets in the way of your seeing things clearly. You’ve got to wash these things away, burn them up, blow them away—but without being disgusted by them, just seeing that this is not what you want in the mind. Have a matter-of-fact attitude about it.

There’s so much in the world outside that we pay attention to, and we tend to forget that we’re stashing away all kinds of things inside the mind—good things, bad things—and the bad things will take root inside. It’s like the dirt you leave in a house; after a while, it seems like it’s taking root in the house. You’ve got to get it out. But your attitude has to be matter-of-fact. If you let yourself get upset by the fact that you’ve got unskillful thoughts, then you shrink away from them, and you don’t want to deal with them. You don’t even want to admit that they’re unskillful.

If you make your mind like earth to see—yes, these thoughts in the mind do come from bad places in the mind, and they lead you to do things that you later are going to regret—then you can get rid of them. The important thing to see is that things in the mind don’t just sit there—they lead to action. Greed, aversion, delusion can lead to all kinds of unskillful actions, all kinds of things you can do, and say, and think that you’re later going to regret. You’ve got to get them out while you can.

So, accept that they’re there and deal with them in a clear-eyed way, clear-headed way. Then the mind becomes a much better place to live in, much more spacious, much more open—a good place to stay.