Not Fighting with the Fish

Close your eyes and watch your breath all the way in, all the way out. Start with some good, long breaths, deep down into the abdomen. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you can change. Make it shorter, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. Try to see what kind of breathing feels good for the body right now: energizing if you’re feeling tired, relaxing if you’re feeling tense, soothing if you’re feeling frazzled.

This is your place. This is your breath: free medicine for the mind, free nourishment for the mind. This is your territory.

The Buddha when he was young, before he went off in the wilderness, had a vision of the world as like a stream that’s drying up, and the fish were fighting one another over that last little bit of water. But regardless of who won, they were all going to die. He looked around, he saw everything where he might look for happiness was already laid claim to.

But then, after he gained awakening, he realized that there’s a big area where no one else has laid to any claim, where you can find happiness. You can find happiness in being virtuous, happiness in being generous, happiness in developing goodwill for all. You’re not taking anything away from anyone else. You’re not taking anything that anyone has laid claim to. With the things of the world people have laid claim to, if you want to find happiness there, you have to fight them off. But you don’t have to fight anybody off as you’re generous, as you’re virtuous, as you spread thoughts of goodwill. It’s totally free territory. So make the most of it.

As the Buddha found, “acts of merit” is another name for happiness: a happiness good in the planning, good in the doing, and good in the results—not like the happiness of the world, where sometimes you do something that’s really not all that skillful in order to get that happiness, to get that pleasure. Then the pleasure goes, and you’re left just holding the bag—in other words, you’re stuck with the bad karma you did. But this is good karma all the way through.

And with the pleasures of the world, after you’ve had them and then lost them, often you miss them and they make you sad. But by being generous, being virtuous, and spreading thoughts of goodwill, there’s nothing to regret afterwards. It’s good beforehand, it’s good as you’re doing it, and good afterwards. And it’s totally free. As the Buddha said, thoughts of goodwill are a kind of wealth: a good wealth you can create just from within you. You don’t have to depend on anything outside. It’s totally yours, and you can create as much as you want, as much happiness as you want.

So take advantage of this opportunity right here, right now. There are a lot of people out there don’t know about this. They have these opportunities, but they don’t know about them. They don’t have the time or they just don’t have the opportunity. You have the opportunity. And your happiness here: It’s not like you’re taking anything away from anyone else. You’re actually developing resources where you can help other people more readily. So it’s good all around. Learn how to appreciate it.

Here in the West, we don’t think much about thoughts or acts of merit; some people here would say it’s Child Buddhism. Well, it’s not. It’s the first answer to that question, “What when I do it would lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” That’s the question that lies at the beginning of wisdom. These are the first answers and they underlie everything else. After all, when you’re generous with things, learn how to give up things that you hold on to, after a while you learn how to give up your defilements. When you’re careful about your actions, then you become more and more careful about how you direct your mind. When you have goodwill for all, you realize you don’t want to do anything that causes any harm at all. So as meditation develops, you get more subtle in your powers of observation as to what’s harmful and what’s not; what’s a burden on the mind, what disturbs the mind, and what doesn’t.

It all begins right here. So make the most of this opportunity that you’ve got to find a happiness where you don’t have to fight other people off. It’s totally yours. Yet even though it’s yours, it spreads around as well.