It’s up to You

The Buddha wasn’t the sort of person who would go out and pick fights with other people, start a debate—in general. There were, though, three cases when he did just that. He’d heard that people were teaching things that were really detrimental to the practice, that would get in the way of putting an end to suffering. He sought them out and he asked them, “Do you really teach this?” When they said they did, then he would point out the obstacles they were creating.

One of the cases was a teacher who said that everything you experience in the present moment is the result of past actions. It’s odd that nowadays this belief is actually attributed to the Buddha himself, when he actually went out of his way to argue with it.

As he had seen, what you do right now has an impact in shaping right now. Past actions do have an influence. They provide the raw material from which you construct your experience of the present moment. But your present actions, and your freedom to choose your actions in the present, are what allow for there to be an end of suffering. That’s because you can choose to act in ways that lead to suffering, or you can see that your actions are leading to suffering and you can change your ways. And you get results right away. You have that freedom of choice. That’s something that’s not determined by the past. It comes from your ability to sense things right in the present moment.

When the Buddha talks about the luminosity of the mind, that’s what he means, I think: the mind’s ability to observe itself and then to learn from its actions.

Another view that the Buddha would argue with is the idea that whatever you experience in the present moment is totally random and has no real cause. Everything just happens spontaneously. If that were the case, there’d be no way that you could develop a skill, no way to see any pattern for figuring out what actions would lead to suffering and what actions would not lead to suffering. If suffering and not-suffering were spontaneous, there’d be no path of practice.

The third view that he argued with was that there was a creator god who determined your experience of pleasure or pain. Again, he said, if that were the case, then everything would be in the hands of the creator god. There’d be nothing you could do about it.

So those are views that the Buddha said were totally antithetical to the path, because the path is premised on the fact that you do have freedom of choice in the present moment. When you observe yourself as you’re sitting here meditating, you can see that you’re breathing in certain ways, or you’re focusing on the breath in certain ways, or you’re thinking about things in certain ways that lead to suffering, that lead to stress. You realize you don’t have to do that. You have the freedom not to do that. That’s what insight is all about: catching yourself doing something that’s adding to stress right here in the present moment, and realizing that it’s better not to do that, because you’re not weighing yourself down if you don’t do that. And you have that freedom not to do that.

As you try to get the mind to settle down, you follow the question, “What can I do right now that would lead the mind to settle down?” Once it’s settled down, “Am I doing anything that’s unnecessary, that adds unnecessary stress to the moment?” You watch yourself. You watch your stillness of mind. And you see if there’s any rise in the level of disturbance, you ask yourself, “What did I just do?” Or it seems that the level of stress goes down, ask yourself, “What did I just do? What did I let go of just now?” You follow that lead.

The Buddha talks about this in lots of different suttas. There’s the sutta on emptiness, where you look at your mind and you realize that as you’re sitting here, you don’t have the responsibilities of being at home. You don’t have the responsibilities of being out in the world. You don’t have those disturbances. You’re here in wilderness. This wilderness is empty of those disturbances. So you appreciate the fact that your field of perception is empty of those disturbances.

Then you ask yourself, “Is there any disturbance still there?” If you’re sitting out in the forest, as the Buddha said, there are the disturbances of wilderness. After all, the wilderness is a dangerous place. The Romantic idea that it’s a wonderful place where you can go and commune with God or whatever, they didn’t have that back in those days. Wilderness was a scary place with lots of diseases, lots of dangerous animals, lots of obstreperous non-human beings. The Buddha talks about the dangers of being a monk out in the forest, and they include the fact that there are criminals living in the forest. That’s where they tended to hide out. They may not like the idea that there’s a monk hanging around.

Ajaan Lee tells a couple of stories where hunters really don’t like the fact that monks are in the forest, because monks, of course, are spreading goodwill to all the animals, which means the animals are protected. They’d be more likely to escape from the traps, escape from being shot. So there are cases where hunters actually try to drive the monks away.

More recently, there were cases in Thailand where members of the Forestry Bureau were trying to cut down forests, but monks were living there. So they would threaten the monks with their guns.

So the wilderness is not necessarily a comfortable place to be, which means there’s some disturbance in your mind as you think, “Here I am in the wilderness, exposed to dangers.” The Buddha says to drop that perception. Hold on to the perception of earth. Or you can focus on the perception of breath. Think of the breath energy spreading everywhere. Or think of the fact that everything all around you is earth. Just earth. You don’t have to think of its being trees or rocks or whatever. Just the earth property. Those perceptions of breath and earth have a lot less of disturbance than the perception of wilderness.

From there, he would have you go into perceiving successively more subtle perceptions — space, consciousness, nothingness. Each is more empty of disturbance than the preceding one. You follow that, and you finally get the mind to where it sees that its greed, aversion, and delusion are the problem. They’re disturbing you. You let go of those. Then you stop your fabrication of the present moment. And as you stop that fabrication, something opens up inside: total freedom, totally unrestricted by space or time.

That’s the direction we’re heading to, the direction of less and less disturbance, based on the realization that the disturbances that are bothering your mind are actually coming from your mind itself. And if you weren’t playing a role in constructing the present moment, the fact that you stopped the fabrication of the present moment wouldn’t have any impact.

But the fact is that your fabrications, your intentions in the present moment, are a necessary part of your experiencing the six senses. That’s why the Buddha was able to teach people and have them gain awakening while they were listening to his talk, because they would progressively let go of this, let go of that, whatever they were doing in the present moment. And because they were letting go, dropping their fabrications of the present, things would open up inside.

This is why the practice is one of focusing on what you’re doing, getting sensitive to what you’re doing, and getting more skillful in what you do. The fact is, your suffering is not caused by anybody else. It’s caused by your own lack of skill. This is why each of us has to practice.

When the Buddha first approached the five brethren to give the talk that we chanted just now, before he gave the talk, he had to convince them that it was worth listening to him. They had been his attendants when he was undergoing austerities. When he gave up on the austerities, they got discouraged. They lost their faith in him. So he had to restore that faith. But the first thing he told them was, “The deathless has been attained. And if you do as I tell you, you can attain it too.” He didn’t say, “I’ll do it for you,” or that “It’s going to happen naturally on its own,” or that “Some outside power is going to come and do it for you.” You’ve got to do it.

At first they resisted, but then he asked them, “Have I ever made a claim like this before?” They realized that he was a very truthful person, and that realization was what opened their minds to be willing to listen. And being willing to listen, they started taking apart their own experience as they were listening and seeing how it applied to what they were doing in the present moment. That’s how Kondañña became the first noble disciple: He stopped doing something he’d been doing in the present moment.

So, one: Nobody else can do this for you, because you’re the one who’s doing this, causing the suffering. But two, you have the choice, you have the freedom, not to do that. There are influences coming in from the past, but you do have freedom of choice in the present moment as to what you do with those influences. That’s what makes all the difference.

This is why we sit here meditating, looking at our breath. This breath is part of the way we fabricate the present moment. We talk to ourselves about the breath, because talking to ourselves is another part of how we fabricate the present moment. We’re going to be holding perceptions and feelings in mind: labels for how the breath goes in the body, how we’re related to the breath. Where are you in relationship to your breath right now? Are you above it? Behind it? Surrounded by it? Which of those perceptions is most useful? I’ve found that the perception of being surrounded by the breath, being bathed by the breath, helps to center the mind. So you can try that. But the perceptions are an important part of how you put everything together in the present moment.

So everything you’re doing right here, right now, as you meditate, is meant to get you sensitive to what you’re doing with every present moment in general. It’s not that you breathe only while you’re meditating, or you talk to yourself only while you’re meditating, or that you deal with perceptions and feelings only while you’re meditating. You’re doing these things all the time. It’s simply a matter of learning how to do these things with knowledge. That’s what makes the difference. If you do it in ignorance, you’re going to suffer. If you do it with knowledge, it’s part of the path.

This is why the path is nothing that anybody else can do for you. They can give you advice. They can give you good examples. But it’s up to you to actually decide to follow their examples, to follow the advice and to see how it applies to your particular case. And it’s up to you to use your own discernment in applying it. It’s in this way that it’s each person for him or herself.

Even though the Buddha said that the whole of the holy life is admirable friendship, admirable friendship doesn’t mean the Buddha’s going to do this for us, because he can’t. Still, he can show us the way. If we hadn’t been shown the way, who knows where we’d be right now? Without him we wouldn’t be here, which is why admirable friendship is a necessary part of the path. But it’s not sufficient. We’ve got to add ourselves, add our own powers of observation, our own determination that we don’t want to suffer.

So we have to cultivate the desire. As the Buddha said, that’s one of the first bases for success: a desire that’s properly focused — not too strong, not too weak — focused on the causes. Noticing, realizing, of course, that the results are implicit in the desire. You really want the results. But you realize that to get the results, you’ve got to focus your desire on doing this right. So it’s up to you.

There are those cases in the Canon where the Buddha gives a Dhamma talk and some people follow along. They apply what’s called “appropriate attention.” They take what they learn from the talk and then they apply it to the issue of, “What am I doing right now that’s causing stress? What am I doing that I don’t have to do that’s causing stress?” As a result, they gain different levels of awakening. Other people listening to the same talk don’t gain awakening at all, because they’re not doing the work.

The Buddha, as he said, points out the way. It’s up to us to follow the instructions and to use our own ingenuity, use our own powers of observation, in seeing how those instructions apply to our particular case right here, right now, and to determine what we’re going to do right here, right now. That’s why we sit here focused on the present moment—not because it’s a wonderful moment, but it’s the moment where everything is being put together. Processes that cause suffering are acting out right here, right now, but you can convert them through knowledge to the path. Use the path to let go of whatever’s unnecessarily causing suffering. Then you let go of the path, too, but not until it’s done its work. In the meantime, you hold on.

As the Buddha said in that analogy of the raft: You put together the raft from the twigs and branches on this side of the river, you put the raft in the river, and then you make an effort with your hands and your feet as you swim across. These are things you have to do. It’s only at the very last moments of the path where you don’t do anything at all.

But in the meantime, learn to be skillful in observing your own actions right here, right now. The more clearly you see what you’re doing, the more clearly you’re going to see exactly where your actions are creating unnecessary stress and suffering right now. It’s only when you see that that you can do something about it. It’s all up to you.

The Buddha established the Dhamma and Vinaya, and as he left it behind, he said, “This will be your teacher in my absence.” So the Buddha has played his part. Now it’s up to you to play yours.