Don’t Be Swept Away

There’s that chant that we repeat, “The world is swept away.” You want to make sure that your mind isn’t swept away. Because it’s so easy to say other people are misbehaving, and you start misbehaving too. Then that becomes your karma.

You can’t take as an excuse, “Well, other people did this first.” You have the choice to behave in a skillful way or an unskillful way. And although you may feel that you’re losing out to other people sometimes when you stick to the precepts, what are you losing? You’re not losing your virtue. That’s something that’s very important.

As the Buddha said, there are five kinds of loss in life. There’s loss of relatives, loss of wealth, loss of health. He says those things are not important. You lose these things, you get them back again. Often you lose them because of forces beyond your control. But you don’t go to hell for losing those things.

What you do suffer from, really, is from losing your virtue and losing your right view. These things are your most important possessions. If you lose your virtue, you start behaving in ways that are not really appropriate for a human being. And that pulls you down, even while you’re here in this lifetime.

If you lose your right view, then you believe that it doesn’t matter what you do. You can do anything you want, because right view is basically teaching you that what you do makes a difference. You have the choice to act on skillful intentions or unskillful intentions. Wrong view would basically say you don’t have the choice, or your actions don’t make any difference anyhow, in which case you get careless. So you develop right view that your actions do make a difference and that you should pay careful attention to them. This is when you become heedful. And that, the Buddha said, is the basis of all skillful qualities.

The important thing about your virtue and your right view is that nobody else can take them away from you. You may throw them away, which would be sad. But nobody takes them away from you. They’re yours. So keep them. Those are your true valuables.

When you don’t lose those, then you maintain your status as a good human being and lift the level of your mind. Other people may be heading on a downward path, but you’re heading upward. There comes a point where you have to decide whether or not you can influence other people to go on the upward path, too. But the important thing is that you’re on that path. You can’t get people to go on an upward path when you’re going down. So make sure that your path is going up, up, up—to the practice of virtue, concentration.

Because for your virtue and your right view to remain solid, you need to have a well-concentrated mind—a good, solid, steady mind—which is why we meditate. Then your actions become a gift, not only to yourself, but also to the people around you. So make sure you take care of your genuine valuables.

As for other losses that are going to happen in the world, as Ajaan Fuang used to say, “If you can lose something, it’s not really yours.” And when you do lose other things, make sure that you don’t lose the quality of your mind. Make that your top priority.