Training Your Intentions

One of the features of the Buddha’s teachings on the aggregates that makes you stop and think is the role of fabrication.

On the one hand, fabrication—which the Buddha defines as intention—is one of the aggregates: basically, your intention is to fabricate thoughts. You start with perceptions of things, feelings about things, and then you make comments on them. Of course, you have a purpose in doing this. You may not be all that clear in your purpose, but the mind is always heading in a certain direction. That’s the nature of fabrication.

But then fabrication also covers all five of the aggregates. All five are fabricated. When the Buddha defines the aggregates in terms of verbs, he says: With fabrication, we fabricate form for the sake of form-ness; we fabricate feeling for the sake of feeling-ness; perceptions for the sake of perception-hood, I guess you’d say; consciousness for the sake of consciousness-ness. It’s a weird grammatical construction in Pali, which is why it sounds strange in English, too.

But the basic message is that we have raw materials coming from our past kamma for certain forms, feelings, perceptions, etc. We choose the ones we want to focus on and pay attention to, and we turn them into the actual experience of an aggregate. So we’re playing a very intentional and purposeful role in our engagement with these things—in fact, with our engagement of all our senses. It’s not the case that we’re just sitting here passively being bombarded by the input from the senses. We’re out on the prowl, intentionally shaping things. If it weren’t for our movement toward the senses, we wouldn’t experience them.

This is what the Buddha discovered on the night of his awakening: When there’s no intention in the present moment, there’s no present moment. It’s our intention that causes these things to be experienced. So we play a role.

Often we’re very little aware of that role, like the children who blame their parents for their being born: “Why did you impose life on me?” That’s the attitude they have. They’ve forgotten how much they wanted to be born as they came into the womb.

In the same way, we forget how much we’re pursuing sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, ideas; activities of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. We’re doing this with an intentional purpose.

As I said, though, we’re often very murky about what those intentions are. This is one of the reasons why we meditate. We set up the intention to stay with one object—one object that we find comfortable to stay with. Some people find the breath to be very comfortable because you can adjust it. Other people have trouble adjusting the breath in a way that feels comfortable. If that’s the case, you can choose another one of the topics that the Buddha recommends: the brahmavihāras, contemplation of the body, recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha—anything that gives rise to a sense of enjoyment in being here.

You need that sense of enjoyment because you’re going to be doing some serious work but you don’t want to be grim about it. And you don’t want to be defeated by the fact that the job is a large one. After all, we’ve been amassing our defilements for how long? How many eons? We have no idea. The Buddha said you can’t trace back to the point where ignorance began. The beginning is inconceivable—not just unknowable, inconceivable. So we’ve been building bad habits for a long time. We should accept that fact as a good sport. There’s a lot of work to be done.

Fortunately, though, we don’t have to go back and undo all those eons. All we have to do is see what we’re doing right now to maintain this process. As the Buddha said, the five hindrances are what keep ignorance going. So we work on those five hindrances, and concentration is the means. The texts often talk about how you have to get rid of the five hindrances first and then get the mind concentrated. Actually, it’s in the process of trying to get the mind to settle down that you run into these hindrances as hindrances. Otherwise, they just slosh around in the mind without seeming to be hindering you from anything. You’re hardly even aware of them, unless they come up in strong form, and even then, it’s only when you’re trying to still the mind that you realize they’re getting in your way. You need to get the mind as quiet as you can, and then you’ll see the subtler forms, because they’re a lot easier to deal with when they’re subtle and small. Yet that’s when we’re most complacent about them. That word “complacent,” pamāda, is the opposite of heedful, which is the ideal attitude we should have. In Thai, when they adopt the word pamāda into Thai as pramaat, it can also mean that you underestimate things. If you say, “Don’t pramaat this person,” it means, “Don’t underestimate this person. This person is potentially dangerous or potentially really important.”

So we have to learn how to get the mind as still as we can, and then notice any little things nibbling away at that stillness. Don’t underestimate those little nibbles. That’s what we’re here to see. And don’t get discouraged by them. The fact that you’re here with this purpose means you’re heading in the right direction—because your intentions are heading in the right direction. Now, you’re dealing with things you may not want to have to deal with, but that’s part of the job—cleaning up the mess you’ve made and having a good attitude toward what you’re doing right now.

Ajaan Suwat tells of the time when he was staying with Mun. He was a young monk at the time. He told me that he had studied with Ajaan Funn first, and Ajaan Funn kept saying, “You’ve got to go and stay with Ajaan Mun.” Ajaan Suwat said to himself, “Well, aren’t all meditation monks all the same?” He finally followed Ajaan Funn’s advice and discovered that, no, Ajaan Mun was a lot stronger presence. He felt quite intimidated by him, but also inspired.

One day, he happened to find himself one-on-one with Ajaan Mun. At a loss for words, he asked, “Did you sleep well last night?” Ajaan Mun said, “For people who have jhāna, there’s no question about sleeping well. It’s no problem.” Then Ajaan Mun asked him, “How is your meditation going?” And Ajaan Suwat said truthfully, “I just see a lot of defilements coming up.” Ajaan Mun said, “Well, that’s part of the practice of mindfulness: knowing when a hindrance has arisen, knowing that it’s arisen; when a hindrance passes away, knowing that it’s passed away.”

Now, Ajaan Suwat was wise enough not to let that praise go to his head. There was nothing really good about the fact that these hindrances were arising. What was good was that he was trying to be mindful and not give in to the hindrances. That’s the important thing.

So maintain the intention that you’re here to figure things out, and don’t let other intentions come in and take its place, because this is how you deal with those unskillful intentions—those unskillful potentials. Make a strong intention to do something good. In the beginning, you want to understand them. Understanding them requires that you get the mind as still as you can to notice them. So, that’s a double intention: stillness for the sake of understanding.

Which requires not just stillness. If you want to just be still, you can easily end up going to sleep. What you want is to be still and alert so that you can see these things, to watch out for the little things, and happy that you’re able to notice the little things. There are so many people in the world who have no time at all, no opportunity, to clean out their minds. Here you’ve got this opportunity right now, so make the most of it. Otherwise, those little things turn into big things, and they get harder and harder to deal with.

A lot of people are in a position where they don’t really care about dealing with them. They’ve got other issues they think are more important. At least you’ve got your priorities straight in coming here. The big problem in your life is your mind out of control. You want to bring it under your control in a wise way, not in a control-freak way. Show some wisdom in your practice. Show some discernment. We all have some discernment, it’s just a matter of putting it to use. As you put it to use, it begins to grow. It’s like a muscle that you haven’t used very much—it may be weak, but it’s there. If you exercise it, it gets stronger and stronger.

So whatever the issues you’re dealing with, whether they’re large or small, whether you feel good about yourself seeing that you have certain tendencies in your mind or not, put that aside. Just notice: This is an issue in getting the mind to settle down, and if this is what has to be dealt with, this is what has to be dealt with—because your basic intention is right.

Now, there may be some doubts in your mind, but you want to hold to this intention and make it stronger. You make it stronger by sticking with it. We’re not asking you to come here with a totally pure intention, just make the intention to train your mind the dominant intention. As you give it more and more attention, more and more time, more and more space in your life, it’s going to grow stronger and squeeze those other intentions out. First by making it clear that they’re there: You’re not going to be able to deal with your defilements without seeing them. It may be unpleasant to see them, but you’re seeing them with this purpose. If you don’t see them with this purpose, they’ll take over—they become the intentions that are dominant.

After all, the mind is always dealing with intentions. Without intentions, as I said, there would be no experience of the present moment. No time, no space.

So, as long as you’re intending, hold on to the best intentions you can find. Start out with the ones that you see are good, and then begin to notice: If you act on good intentions, sometimes the results are good, sometimes they’re not so good. Which means they’re not yet skillful. Try to figure out where they went wrong. Here we get back to that old theme of commitment and reflection. You do your best, and then when your best is not good enough, you reflect on why. When it is good enough, you remember it.

If you figure out why it’s not working even when it seemed good, then the next time around, that intention will be trained, less deluded, more informed, closer and closer to skillful.

This takes patience, but the kind of patience where you’re not just waiting for things to happen. It’s the kind of patience where you keep working on things again and again and again, learning to energize yourself so that you’re happy to be working on these things. This is good work. You may not be able to straighten out the world, but you can straighten out your own mind.

That’s where you’re responsible. That’s where you’re potentially capable. Let that thought lift your spirits and keep you on the path.