Your Hair Is on Fire
August 25, 2022

The sun went down just a little while ago. Did you stop to think this could be your last sunset? The Buddha recommends that with every sunset, with every sunrise, you should reflect, “This could be my last day. Am I ready to go? Are there any obstacles in my mind that would make it hard to go?”

Then you survey your mind. If you see that there are any obstacles, then, as the Buddha said, act like a person whose head is on fire. You put forth extra endeavor, diligence, effort, and relentlessness—all of which are synonyms for strong effort or ardency—and then mindfulness and alertness, to get rid of those obstacles.

That right there teaches you something important about mindfulness and alertness. You’re not just here to watch things come and go, and to accept what’s coming and going. You try to be alert to notice what’s going on in the mind so that you can do something about it. Mindfulness reminds you that this should be your top priority, reminds you where to look, and of the techniques you may have learned in the past, so that you can apply the right effort.

We can pretty much assume that, yes, there are obstacles in the mind. So, what are they? What’s a good way to find them? This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration. Some people complain that concentration is a diversion, that you should go straight to insight to get rid of those problems. After all, we don’t have much time. Still, how are you going to see which movements in the mind are going to be unskillful unless you have a skillful, still place to stay. This is one of the reasons why we stay with the breath. It’s a good place to stay so that when the mind moves away from the breath, you can recognize that something’s wrong and that you need to do something about it.

So there’s an element of discernment that goes into concentration practice. You may remember, when the Buddha taught Rahula meditation, that he didn’t start right out with the sixteen steps for breath meditation. He first taught him some ways of approaching distractions with a mature state of mind. In other words, bring some wisdom to the way you deal with the distractions. We often think of meditation as something we do to make ourselves happy, to make ourselves wise. But you have to bring some happiness to the meditation. You have to bring some wisdom to the meditation so that these qualities can get developed.

In the case of Rahula, the Buddha taught him to, one, make his mind like earth. When you sit and meditate, you’re going to see some things about your mind that you don’t like. If you get upset by them, you get knocked off course. So, just as earth doesn’t react when disgusting things are thrown on it, your mind should be on an even keel when you begin to see, “Well, there’s this habit you have. You think this way. You get worked up in this way. You talk to yourself in these unskillful ways.” You can pull back. You don’t have to take on those roles. This is one of the reasons why we focus on the breath, to give the mind something else to do aside from its old habits.

Then the Buddha also taught Rahula to think about the theme of inconstancy, that these thoughts that appear in the mind are pretty unreliable. They come and they go. And they come again, and then they go again. Or they don’t come when you want them to. They’re pretty much the result of past karma, which means they could come at any time. So look at them as that: as past karma. Remind yourself that in terms of your present karma, you have the choice to run with them or not. When you can pull out of them like this, then if your concentration is strong enough, you can analyze them a little bit. See: “Where is the allure of that kind of thinking? Which member in my mind’s committee likes that kind of thinking? Is that someone I want to identify with?” That’s another choice you have.

As for the old issues that tend to get bubbling up to the surface as you’re meditating, this is where it’s good to think about the Buddha’s teachings on karma and rebirth. You could think about some cases where people really wronged you, get yourself all worked up, and you lose your foundation. So it’s therapeutic to think of these things in light of karma and rebirth. Someone mistreats you, well, you probably mistreated either them or somebody else in a previous lifetime. And someone else mistreated you, and you mistreated somebody else. It goes back and forth, back and forth, until you can’t really figure out who was first, and who was justified in their reaction, who was not justified in their reaction. It gets so that it doesn’t matter. That’s therapeutic.

So the practice of concentration is not an avoidance of the work that needs to be done. It’s your foundation for doing the work. It develops mindfulness, ardency, alertness—all the qualities you’re going to need. And it gives you a good place to stay so that you can fend off the thoughts that usually pull you in. If you create a sense of well-being in the body, well-being in the mind, by the way you breathe, by the way you relate to the breath, it makes it easier to deal with your distractions in a wise way.

So when the sun sets, remind yourself: You could go. And the best way to go is when the mind is centered. It’s able to fend off all the obstructions. When the sun rises, the same thing.

Once we were sitting on the porch of Ajaan Fuang’s hut when a monk was visiting from Bangkok. Late in the day, the golden sun was streaming across the fields and the hills around us. The monk commented to Ajaan Fuang that the view from the monastery was really beautiful. And Ajaan Fuang said, “Focus on what inside your mind is saying that it’s beautiful. That’s where the issues are.”

So as you look at the sunrise, look at the sunset, turn around and look inside, because there’s work to be done there, and you don’t know how much time you have left to do it.