Intelligence of the Heart

A lot of Thai ajaans talk about using your mindfulness and your discernment to understand things. Now, it’s good to know that the combination mindfulness-discernment, when it’s put together as a compound in Thai, means intelligence. So the ajaans are saying that you have to use your intelligence. It’s also good to think about why that combination would mean intelligence.

You can think of Aristotle’s definition of intelligence, the ability to see connections that haven’t been pointed out to you, and that has a lot to do with both mindfulness and discernment: mindfulness in remembering things that you’ve done, so that when something comes up in the present moment, you can think, “Oh, yes, that’s the result of this action that I did back in the past.” The discernment is basically the ability to see distinctions and also see relationships between distinct things.

So mindfulness provides a larger context, as you remember contexts for what you’re doing and you remember things you’ve learned that you can apply.

The definition of mindfulness in the Canon is the ability to remember things that were said and done a long time ago. Now, the “said” there could be memorizing or remembering things that the Buddha said or that the ajaans have said. The “things that were done” could be things that you did, or good things you saw other people do, and you take those things as lessons.

The old training for monks throughout South and Southeast Asia involved a lot of memorization. Look at the books in this cabinet over here: 45 volumes of the Pali Canon. There are people who have memorized quite a few of the volumes. There are even a few people who are said to have memorized the whole thing. Now, you can imagine having all that in your head to draw on if you have an efficient way of drawing on the material. It’s like a computer that can or cannot draw on its random memory. But the fact that you have that store of knowledge to draw on, and the more mindful you are, you begin to see: The Buddha said this or that here, and he said that there, and you see how they connect. That would give you good background for looking at what you’re doing.

Then the discernment comes in and sees, “When I do this, what are the results I get right now?” Then you learn how to judge them. This is an important part of discernment that tends to get overlooked: the extent to which you’re making value judgments. I’ve heard Dhamma talks by some ajaans—Western ajaans, not the Thai ajaans —saying that you’re not supposed to judge anything at all, have no value judgments at all. But judgments are what discernment is all about: what’s worth doing, what’s not worth doing. “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” That’s a value judgment. You want welfare and happiness. You want it long-term. And you realize that it comes from your actions. So you want to learn how to judge which actions really are worth doing to provide that happiness. After all, we have only so much energy, only so much time, so what do you want to do with your energy and do with your time? What’s the best thing to do with these things?

The Buddha gives some advice: the noble eightfold path. Then it’s a question of learning actually how to do that. You get some ideas. You read. You listen. You think. Then you try to decide which qualities you have to develop, which ones you have to abandon. Discernment comes from putting these lessons into practice. That’s when the discernment becomes your own.

When it’s your own, that’s when it really goes to the heart. Otherwise, it’s just one more game that you play: “So-and-so says this. Well, let’s try that for a little while. So-and-so says that. Let’s try it on for a while.” You’re not fully committed. But when you see that certain types of behavior give certain types of results, and you see it clearly in your own experience, that’s when you realize that this is not a game.

The Buddha talked from what he had experienced. Some people have expressed surprise that in a teaching that talks so much about not-self, we have the Buddha’s autobiographies: his accounts of how he gained awakening. That may seem strange from that perspective. But when you realize that the real teaching—that is, the basic teaching the Buddha taught—is karma, then you realize why he gave his autobiographical accounts. He talked about what he had done, and the results he got, and how he was able to get the best possible results, and what it involved, as a lesson so you can get some idea of what you have to do—and also a lot of lessons about what not to do.

So the intelligence we’re talking about here is not so much book intelligence, it’s the intelligence that comes from doing things and learning from your actions—and particularly doing things to develop good qualities in the mind. Notice that when the Buddha talks about discernment, it’s not just right view, it also includes right resolve. There’s an understanding, but also an element of will. Given the understanding that the Buddha provides through the four noble truths, the wise thing is to act on those truths and to develop good qualities. The act of making a resolution is not just a passing whim in the mind. You want to make it stick. You want to make it consistent. Each time the potential comes up to do something unskillful, you say, “Nope, not going there.” Each time the potential for doing something skillful comes up, “Yes, let’s give it a try”—unless you can figure out something that’s even more skillful.

This is why when Ajaan Lee listed the qualities for mindfulness practice—mindfulness, ardency, alertness—he pinpointed ardency as being the wisdom faculty of those three. In other words, given your understanding of what’s involved in the path, the wise response is to try to develop, as much as you can, the qualities that the Buddha lists as skillful and to abandon the ones that he lists as unskillful. That’s what ardency is all about.

So the intelligence we’re talking about here is intelligence in action. It’s pragmatic. Strategic. Mindfulness helps with the strategy because it helps remind you of the different tools that the Buddha gives you. For instance, there are times to develop goodwill. When the mind can’t settle down with the breath, you look for other things to put the mind in the right mood. As the Buddha said, try an inspiring theme. You can think about goodwill in an inspiring way. Think about the fact that, as you’re practicing here, you’re observing the precepts, you’re living a harmless way, so your way of life doesn’t have to involve the suffering of anybody. Which means that your thoughts of goodwill are not just thoughts. They also inform your actions, and when you can see that your actions and your thoughts are harmless, a sense of well-being should come. And it’s good to remember that, so that when you extend thoughts of goodwill, it’s not a chore.

Some of the later texts recommend that you spread thoughts of goodwill starting with yourself, then with people you love and like, then people you’re neutral about, and then people you don’t like—spreading out and out in that way. In the suttas, though, they talk about spreading goodwill to specific directions: east, west, north, south. And you can think about that: You’re sitting here, and you can visualize a beam of light extending off to the east. All beings within that radius, okay, you have goodwill for them. Then to the west, to the north, and to the south: Is there anybody out there you can’t have goodwill for?

You can probably think of some people who are hard. And it’s good to think about this, and to think it through, because the whole point of developing goodwill is that it’s going to be expressed in your actions as well. So you’ve got to think about it: “Is there anybody out there that I have a hard time feeling goodwill for?” As I was saying this morning, goodwill is not just a willingness to be nice to people. It’s the wish that everybody be happy. So you think about that. What does it mean for people to be happy? Not necessarily on their terms or how they would define happiness: How would the Buddha define happiness for them? Of course, that would be everybody attaining nibbana, which is not very likely. But at least people can live their lives heading in that direction, which should involve observing the precepts, training the mind. For a lot of people, that would involve a huge change in the way they live.

Can you imagine a world in which everybody observed the precepts? Newspapers would go out of business. So much of the news is about greedy politicians or greedy businessmen, or angry people doing this, angry people doing that, people killing, stealing, lying, having illicit sex, getting drunk, doing stupid things. A lot of our news is just that: people breaking the precepts. Try to imagine a world in which everybody could observe the precepts and would want to observe the precepts, and would want to meditate. That’s what goodwill means.

But this is why goodwill has to be backed up by equanimity, because you realize that a lot of people are not going to do that. Yet if you can engage with people on the assumption that your engagement could push them in that direction or inspire them in that direction, then your engagement with other people is really useful. It’s something you can feel good about.

Now, whether they respond or not is their choice, but at least you’re not proposing that they go in another direction. So when you can work it out that you can feel this type of goodwill for everybody, in the East, in the West, in the North, in the South, above and below, out to infinity, then it gets easier and easier to think thoughts of goodwill in a more general way—but you’ve got to work through the details first.

It’s the same as when you work with the breath. In the beginning, it’s difficult trying to find ways of getting good breath energy to flow through the body. But as you get more and more used to how the breath channels are arranged in your body, and how you can allow the breath to spread, then you get more and more efficient at it. It involves less and less effort, to the point where all you have to do is think, “comfortable breath,” and it just spreads.

So in both cases, there’s work to be done in the beginning to clear things out. Then, as they get cleared out, the work gets easier. The results come more quickly. And you remember that.

But you also remember that if you get lazy about this—if you think, “Well, I can just tap into this anytime I want,” and then you stop tapping into it—then some of your old habits begin to take over again. It’s like a road you’ve cleared of vegetation. If you then you stop cutting back the weeds, they’re going to come back. So you have to be diligent. Part of the mind will say, “There are other things I’d rather do.” You have to ask yourself, “These other things, how many of them really are worth it?” There are some things that you have to do that require your full attention, so you give them your full attention. There are a lot of things you can do, though, that don’t require your full attention. In cases like that, you can meditate either on the breath or on goodwill, on the side. You want to keep these skills going. Don’t let them get covered by weeds.

So that’s it, a combination of mindfulness and discernment: It’s intelligence. You have a fund of knowledge, a fund of skills, that you can call on. And you want to be very careful to see: What is the situation right now and what does it require? Then you do that. That’s when you can see you’re really intelligent in your practice. It’s an intelligence, not just of your thinking abilities. It’s an intelligence of the heart, of the heart and mind together. Which is why it can be so satisfying.

So be careful not to lose your perspective. We had that question today about how this path is “good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end” when there are difficulties. Well, they’re difficulties in doing things you can be proud to do: the fact that you’re trying to do something honorable, something noble. This is a noble path, after all. Whether you’re getting immediate results or not, the fact that you’re trying at something noble: Don’t forget that. Appreciate that. Because there are so many people in the world right now who are being forced to do things that are not noble at all, yet you have the opportunity to get out of that situation and to cultivate the desire that other people get out, too. That’s something that’s good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end—something that’s intelligent all the way through.