Selves with Skills

There’s a principle that the things you know best are the things you do, the things you make. If you’re a builder—you’ve had experience building houses, ordination halls—you see another house, you see another ordination hall, and you have an appreciation for what was done. If you’re a writer, you see someone else do a really good piece of writing and you recognize why it’s good.

Of course, the things you actually do yourself, you know those very well. You can look at every detail: “I did this; I did that; this is how this fits together.”

The problem is that we do certain things so continuously, so frequently, that we’re no longer conscious of what we’re doing. As the Buddha pointed out, we construct our experience of the present moment through the way we breathe, through the way we talk to ourselves, through the feelings we focus on, the perceptions we use—in other words, the mental labels and images we use to identify things.

We use these processes, what he calls fabrications, to put together the raw material that comes from our past kamma. We’re doing it all the time but, as the Buddha points out, we do it in ignorance, so we’re barely aware of it. That’s why we don’t get the best results out of it.

One of the reasons why we meditate is to get good at being more conscious of these processes. As you’re trying to get the mind into a state of concentration, you have to use those same processes to gather around your object. To begin with, you’ve got the breath that you’re focusing on. Where in the body are you feeling it right now? Focus your attention there. Try to keep it there. That’s going to require that you talk to yourself about it. In other words, if you notice that the mind is wandering off, you remind yourself to come right back. Then you try to figure out ways to keep it here.

Ajaan Lee gives some good examples: Think of the breath not just as the air coming in and out through the nose but as the flow of energy through the body. Where do you feel that? Can it be comfortable? Is there a way of breathing that makes it comfortable? Short or long; fast or slow; deep, shallow; or in-long, out-short; in-short, out-long? Talk to yourself about this. And don’t just talk, of course. Experiment.

This will require that you use certain perceptions, certain images of how the breath flows in the body. Which images are most useful? Try to think of your experience of the body right now as totally breath. If there’s any sense of blockage, remind yourself that the breath was there first and it can still flow—so it doesn’t have to tense up here to push its way through or to detour over there. It can flow easily through the body—easily as you breathe in, easily as you breathe out. In this way, you can create a feeling of ease.

You become more conscious that this is how you put an experience together in the present moment. Then you begin to notice how you do it at other times of the day as well. And you notice that lot of the ways that you process your experience of the world have a lot of identification around them: your way of doing things. This is the part of you that has an instinctive sense that, Yes, you are constructing your experience. You’re not just sitting here watching things happen on their own without any participation on your part. You’re playing a role.

And you tend to identify yourself with the things that you do well or things that come easily to you. But some of the things you do well may not necessarily be really skillful. We do greed well. We do anger well. Delusion—we’re experts. And we have a very strong sense of self around this: “It’s just the way I am. It comes naturally.” In fact, you don’t even think that you’re doing it so much—it just comes. But actually, you are putting these things together.

One of the important insights of the meditation is that even though you may be good at these things, and you have an instinctive sense of how to play these games, it’s not always good to be playing them. There are better ways of putting the present moment together.

We’re kind of like beavers. Beavers go into a forest and their idea of what’s missing in the forest is a lodge in the pond and a dam to create the pond. They’ve done studies of beavers who were orphaned as little tiny kits, brought into captivity, and raised by human beings. The question was, “Would they be able to build their dams and their lodges without having experienced those things in the wild?” Well, sure enough, when they were released into the forest, that was the first thing they did— build a lodge, build a dam, create a lake.

That’s the way we are, too. We instinctively do a process that the Buddha calls “becoming.” We get a sense of something we want, then we identify the world in which that desired object exists, and then we take on a role in that world. The role we assume has a lot to do with our sense of our skills. If you’re good at anger, good at greed, good at aversion, good at delusion, they will be part of the identity you’re going to take on.

The Buddha wants to teach you that there are other ways of doing things. But the first thing he does is to have you build a better sense of becoming. He talks about what he calls the four bases for success. They describe how we succeed in putting a state of concentration together, based on desire, persistence, intent, and your powers of analysis.

And just as we tend to identify with whatever skills we already have and we tend to use them, the Buddha wants to teach you how to create a state of concentration—and it doesn’t matter that you create a sense of identity around the steps that get you there. In fact, it’s going to be necessary. Just learn how to do it well.

The desire has to do with your sense of you as the person who’s going to enjoy the results of what you’re doing. This is a large part of your motivation. You hear people in some schools of meditation saying that they meditate without any purpose, without any goal. It’s as if they’re showing off. But maybe that’s their purpose: They’re meditating to show off.

We’re here because we have a purpose—that’s the nature of the mind. So you think about what a good goal it would be to find something inside that doesn’t change—a happiness that doesn’t disappoint or require that you do anything ignoble; and it doesn’t even require maintenance; it doesn’t depend on anybody suffering; nobody’s harmed by this. That’s a good goal.

The Buddha talks about that as delighting in the unafflicted, delighting in seclusion, and delighting in what he calls non-objectification—in other words, a goal that doesn’t involve a sense of identity. You realize the identities you take on are all strategies. Once you’ve reach the goal, you can put the strategies aside and there’s no conflict.

So use that sense of the goal even though, by necessity, it’s going to be very sketchy. As the Buddha said, there’s no way you can anticipate what nibbana is going to be like before you really hit it. He gives you some general ideas, but he says that those are just arrows pointing in that direction: It’s the ultimate bliss, freedom, a state of consciousness that doesn’t depend on anything. It’s a truth—you can rely on it, it’s not going to change—and it’s the ultimate. There’s nothing better. Everything else in the world exists for the sake of something else. But here there’s no “for the sake of” anything—it’s totally arrived. So think about that as where you’re going.

And if you have any idea that you’ll be disappointed when you get there, the Buddha says that’s wrong view. So have some confidence in this desire. And do your best to create a sense of how much you would enjoy that. That’s you as the consumer.

The next step is persistence. You realize you can’t just sit here and want this to come. As the Buddha said, the desire for there to be no aging, illness, and death, if you just sit there and desire it, is going to be suffering. But if you act on the proper path, you actually find that you can attain what you desire. That’s you as the producer, you as the agent.

Here you take delight in developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. A large part of your identity as an agent lies in that delight—you enjoy doing these things. If it doesn’t come naturally, you learn how to make it more natural because that’s an important part of wisdom.

There are a lot of things that give good long-term results, but you may not like to do them. But if you have any sense, any discernment, at all, you’ll talk yourself into wanting to do them. The same with the things that you would like to do but give bad results: You learn to talk yourself into not wanting to do them.

The Buddha’s discernment is strategic. We’re not here just to accept things and be okay. We’re here to figure things out—and, especially, to figure out our own likes and dislikes; to learn how to train our likes in the right direction. So, learn how to enjoy that particular identity as well: the agent who wants to do this, who delights in being persistent, who delights in whatever is required by the path.

Then there’s the self as the observer. That goes with intent. You really want to pay careful attention to what you’re doing. It is possible to follow the Buddha’s instructions without really paying careful attention, but you’re not going to learn much. The Buddha never said that you can gain awakening simply by following steps A, B, C, D. The path requires that you put in your own willingness to really observe, all around, what you’re doing. That’s you as the observer.

And finally there’s you as the commentator. This goes with analysis. When you’ve done something, ask yourself, “How good are the results?” This analysis requires a value judgment. Sometimes you hear it said that the Buddha doesn’t want you to pass judgment on things, just accept them as they are—there’s inconstancy in life, and there’s stress in life, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s just not you, that you can’t control, so just accept it and be okay with it.

The Buddha never said that. That’s taking the three characteristics and making them the main issue. The main issue is actually in the four noble truths, starting with the fact that we suffer in our clinging, we cling because of craving, and we crave because of ignorance. However, it is possible to put an end to that ignorance, put an end to that craving, by following the path.

These are truths that carry duties: The suffering is to be comprehended; the craving and the ignorance are to be abandoned; the goal is to be realized, and that’s done by following and developing the path. That’s the framework for our analysis.

Then you look at what you’ve done: How does what you’ve done measure up? Are there things that you should be developing that you haven’t developed yet? Are there things you should be abandoning that you haven’t abandoned yet? When you get really good at this, you’re not just passing judgment, you’re also making suggestions. This is the self as commentator, which sends its messages back to the agent: “How about trying this? How about trying that?”

If your commentator is nothing but an inner critic—“This isn’t good enough, that’s not good enough”—but without offering suggestions, you really need to train that inner critic. Just tell it, “If you can’t offer anything positive, can’t offer any other options, then I’m not going to listen to you,” because you still want to maintain that desire—you as the consumer—and you want to develop that sense of competence in you as that agent.

So you as the observer and the commentator go very closely together. When you develop them well, you’re developing these bases for success: the desire, the persistence, intent, and your powers of analysis.

As you get better and better at this, you find that you’ve got some new selves inside, defined around these bases for success. These are the selves you want to encourage. As for the selves that are really good at greed, aversion, and delusion, ask yourself, “Do you really want to continue identifying with them? You’ve got something better inside.”

That’s one of the principles of the Buddha’s teachings all around. If he’s asking you to give up something, it’s not to deprive you of anything that’s really necessary or really good. It’s because he’s got better things to offer.

So you want to learn how to identify with the desire for the path, the desire for the goal. Identify with the willingness to do what’s needed, to be persistent in abandoning anything that’s going to get in the way, developing things that will move you further. Identify with the observer, to be really, really observant, and with the inner commentator, the analyst who both passes judgment on what’s done and then tries to figure out, if something’s wrong, what you can do to improve it.

In the beginning, because you’re not good at these skills, it’s going to require a lot of pep talks and a lot of encouragement. But as you get better and better, and it becomes more natural, it really does feel more and more like you: you the meditator. It’s an identity that becomes more and more second nature. The time will come when you have to put it down, but in the meantime, use it—all these roles of the new you.

As you see how you’re putting all this together and getting really skilled at it, the skill is what confirms the sense of wanting to identify with this path. It’s hard in the beginning when the path doesn’t go as smoothly as you’d like and you keep on thinking, “There are other things I can do more easily, other things I can do better.” But you have to remind yourself: This is the skill. These are the identities you want to develop. So take heart.

There are some people who say they can’t imagine themselves attaining any of the noble attainments. The response to that is, “You get changed by the path. You’ll become a different you.”

It’s like learning a foreign language. Depending on the nature of the language and the people who teach it to you, you find that you develop a new personality in that language—and it’s just as much you as your personality in your original language. So develop the personality of a meditator until you get really fluent at it.