Like a Hunter

Close your eyes. Breathe in, breathe out, and notice where you feel the breath. Focus your attention there and then stay there. You have to be alert and very still. First you’re going to be observing the breath and then you’ll be observing the mind.

Beginning with observing the breath, you want to ask yourself, “If I try long breathing, what does that feel like? If I try short breathing, what does that feel like?” Experiment for a while: heavy, light, fast, slow, deep, shallow. There’s plenty to play with here. Then, when the breath gets comfortable, you can think of it spreading out throughout the body—down the spine, out the legs, down the shoulders, out the arms—all throughout the body. Make this a pleasant place to stay.

The ajaans compare being a meditator to being a hunter. You have an idea of where the animals tend to go so you go there and you sit there very quietly. If you make any noise, they’ll run away. So you have to be very still. But at the same time, you have to be alert. If you’re very still, you might fall asleep, and then they can go right beneath your nose and you won’t see them.

We’re here hunting our defilements. We’re hunting our greed, aversion, and delusion—not because we want to eat them, but because they’ve been causing trouble in the mind. So think of yourself as hunting them down, and that requires that you be very quiet, because when the mind is running around, they can run around too, and you wouldn’t know they were there. You’re making a lot of noise. You’re running around. Everything is a blur, and they can be right in front of you, but you don’t know.

So you have to be very quiet so that they don’t know you’re there. But you also have to be alert, because when they start coming, they come in very subtle ways. For the most part, we’re aware of our anger, our lust, or our greed when it’s full-blown. By that time, it’s taken hold. You want to get these things right at the very beginning, where there’s a little thought: Maybe you want to go there? And another part of the mind says, “Yes, let’s go there.” And then you’re off.

Well, before that happens, you want to get the sense of when the subtle movements in the mind that could turn into defilements get going. Then you can breathe right through them; nip them in the bud.

So think of yourself as a hunter. Here in the West, we don’t have much experience in the skills of hunting, because most hunters go out with really heavy equipment. But in the old days, the hunters didn’t have that much equipment, so they had to be very skillful.

Anthropologists studying hunting cultures have found that they can’t master the skills of hunting because it requires a lot of concentration and a lot of poise—a lot of circumspection. So try to revive that set of skills here with your mind. Then when the defilements come, in little bits and pieces, or in little, tiny forms, you can wipe them out—breathe right through. Wherever there’s any tension in the body that corresponds with the thought, just breathe right through it. And the thought won’t have a place to hold on.

You’re here to wipe out your defilements, and it’s easiest when they’re small. So you have to be very, very alert, so that you don’t scare them away. In that way, you catch them. Then you’ll be free from the harassment that they’ve been dishing out to you, the power they’ve had over the mind.