The Winds of the world

Try to get your mind firmly established here. Have a strong sense of how important it is to have the mind firmly established. Otherwise, it gets blown around. When it gets blown around like that, you have no idea where it’s going to end up.

I was reading the story one time of a tornado that swept through Missouri and Illinois. After the tornado had passed, one family found a dog lodged in their front door. They had no idea where it came from until years later, when a hobo came by. It was obviously a very smart dog. They looked after it. The hobo came by, and the dog recognized the hobo. So the hobo told the kids the story that he had been working for a circus in Missouri when the tornado came through, and this dog was a dog he had trained.

So there: from Missouri all the way into Illinois, winds can blow you around, and the mind can get blown around even more easily. You can get blown around the world several times in just the course of a few seconds. So try to get it firmly established, because when it’s firmly established, then you’re coming from a position of strength.

Ajaan Lee makes this point: When you’re walking along, where does the strength come in the walking? It it comes from the leg that’s planted on the ground, not from the leg that’s moving. So have this center spot inside. Make sure that you protect it, because it’s so easy for you to let in things that are going to be harmful, like opening up your windows when a windstorm comes through. You’ve got to keep the windows closed. You know the wind is there, you don’t deny it, but you have to protect yourself.

This is one of the strengths you can develop, the strength of concentration. It starts with the strength of conviction that your mind states are important because they control your actions and determine the results of your actions. If you believe in that, it’s a lot easier to do what you know is going to be good, especially when looking for the consequences of what your actions are going to be. You’re acting not on your likes or your dislikes, but on your understanding of what the potential is that you can do through your actions. Always keep that in mind. When you’ve got a position of strength like this—concentration, conviction, persistence, mindfulness, discernment—then you’ve got a strength that can’t be blown around.

In the course of the next few days, there are going to be a lot of winds blowing around here, a lot of activities, a lot of strange people with, to us, strange ideas. But don’t let yourself get blown around, whether out of desire or aversion or delusion or fear. Those are the things that blow you off course. You want to stay on course, doing what you know is skillful, doing what you know is right, trying to establish harmony among all different views and opinions that are going to be blowing through here. In that way, you can survive the storm and you won’t get blown around from one state to the next.