Circumspection

Ajaan Lee compares alertness to having a rope over a pulley. You can pull it in one direction; you can pull it in the other direction. What he means is that when you’re focused on the breath, you’re watching the breath and you’re watching your mind at the same time.

If they have trouble settling down, then you focus on one, then on the other to see where the problem is coming from. Sometimes the breath is uncomfortable, so you focus on the breath. Sometimes the mind is just full of all kinds of other ideas, not willing to settle down. So you have to reason with it.

Instead of focusing on the breath, give it a topic to think about that makes it more inclined to want to settle down. You can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. You can think about the fact that death is approaching. Ask yourself, are you ready? Well, if you’re not ready, this is how you get prepared, by meditating. And see if the mind is willing to accept that reasoning. But the important thing is that you look at both sides.

When people get into strange insights, it’s usually because they’re not reflecting on what they’re doing as they hold on to the insight. There was a monk I knew who was in the forest one time, and he had a sudden realization everything in the world was perfect as it was. People shouldn’t try to change nature. So for a while, he was going around criticizing women who were wearing makeup or dressing themselves up, men who were riding around in big cars, telling them that they shouldn’t be doing that. Of course, he was neglecting to see that, well, he was trying to change nature, too.

He came to see Ajaan Fuang one time, and Ajaan Fuang pointed this out to him. He did it in a very diplomatic way. The monk realized he was looking at things with only one eye. You have to have two eyes. Or to use another analogy, you have to have a mirror. When you’re pointing at the world outside, also look at yourself pointing. When you have this perspective of looking both ways, you see a lot of things and can bring the mind back into balance.

Because, of course, the important issues are not in the breath or in the world outside, the important issues are in your mind. So keep reflecting. Look both ways and you’ll be safe all around. This is one of the reasons why the students who stayed with Ajaan Mun said that he was a special teacher. They used the word rop-khop in Thai, which means that he was circumspect, he looked at things from every angle. That’s how you begin to see through your blind spots. Because it’s in the blind spots that most of your problems are hiding—or the causes for your problems are hiding. This is how you can ferret them out.