Fear of Missing Out

The Buddha talks about the three kinds of fabrication on two levels.

One level is that of karma playing out across lifetimes. On this level, bodily fabrication is whatever you do intentionally with your body. Verbal fabrication is whatever you do intentionally with your words. And mental fabrication is what you intentionally do with your mind.

These actions can have influence in this lifetime and also in future lifetimes. So they have the potential to be powerful.

Then there are the three types of fabrication as you experience them right here and now as you’re meditating.

Bodily fabrication is the in-and-out breath.

Verbal fabrication is how you’re talking to yourself as you focus on the breath, asking yourself questions about it, trying to come up with answers as to how you can get the breath to settle down so that it’s smooth throughout the body, how you can get the mind to settle down so that it’s smooth throughout the body and they get together, stay together well.

Finally, mental fabrications are perceptions and feelings.

Perceptions are the labels you apply to things, the words or mental pictures you use to identify things—such as whatever mental pictures you have of the breath as it goes through the body, where it starts, how the breath is actually happening in the body, what way you can picture the breath to yourself so that it becomes easy to settle down throughout the whole body.

Then there are feelings: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. Of course, here you’re trying to create feelings of pleasure by the way you breathe, by the way you perceive the breath, by the way you talk to yourself about the breath.

Now, there’s a connection between the two levels of fabrication. What you’re seeing right here, right now, is the beginning of those larger types of fabrication. If you’re going to move the body, you start with the breath. When you’re going to speak, you start with directed thought and evaluation. When you’re going to think, you use perceptions and feelings.

So you’re working on some important ground here, the beginning of all your karma.

Now, in the passage where the Buddha talks about these large-frame types of fabrication, they’re kind of scary. You can engage in these larger fabrications either with alertness or without alertness. Either way, the fabrications have power. We know that karma has to be intentional, but many times our intentions are pretty murky. And even though they’re murky, they still have power. They can still shape the future.

That’s kind of scary. That’s something you don’t want to miss out on. There’s that phrase that’s become popular, FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. It’s usually applied to fear of not being up on the latest news in tech, in politics, in society.

That’s a losing battle, because this information keeps pouring out through the Net all the time, on many, many levels. There’s no way you’re going to know everything you need to know or that you tell yourself you need to know. Which is why FOMO is such a scary kind of sensation. There’s just too much information out there for you to absorb and evaluate.

Fortunately, though, that’s not where the big problem is. When you die, you’re not going to be quizzed on how well you kept up with current events in the tech world or the political world.

But your future course will be determined by the things you’ve done. And if the intentions behind what you’ve done are murky, that’s dangerous. That’s something you should really be afraid of missing out on.

What are your intentions right now? When you do something, why are you doing it? With intention, there’s the question, one, “Did you mean to do it?” and two, “What was your motivation for doing it?” These two things have a huge impact on the karmic consequences of your actions.

For most of us, they’re dark territory. When we meditate, we’re opening up that dark territory, bringing in some light. As dependent co-arising says, we start with ignorance, and then, through ignorance, we fashion fabrications.

Now, if we can bring some knowledge to those fabrications as we meditate, that makes us more secure. Then, from there, the sequence goes on to consciousness and from there, name and form.

And again, you have intention under name. You also have perceptions. You also have acts of attention. What are you paying attention to? How are you framing the issue?

These are things you should know. All these steps prior to sensory contact are things on which you should cast some light.

This is what we’re doing as we meditate. As we noted just now, the three forms of fabrication at the immediate level are things you’re doing right now. Of course, acts of attention are things you’re doing as well. The way you frame an issue, the way you ask questions about what’s going on, can make a huge difference.

As the Buddha said, appropriate attention is the most important internal factor for gaining awakening. You know how to ask questions in terms of the four noble truths.

Where is the suffering right now? Can you detect the clinging? What are you clinging to?

Why are you clinging? What’s the craving? Is it a sensual craving? Is it a craving for becoming, a craving for non-becoming?

Are you developing the path to know these things better so that you can abandon the craving and comprehend the clinging? Which parts of the path need to be developed?

If you bring that kind of attention to what you’re doing right here, then you’re really secure. You’ve gained knowledge about the things that are really worth finding out, the things you genuinely don’t want to miss.

You may miss out on all kinds of other things, but don’t miss out on this level of what’s going on in your mind. This is why when we meditate, we’re not meditating only when we sit here with our eyes closed. We want to be aware of what our intentions are as we go through the day. We meditate with our eyes closed so that we can focus on these issues directly, with minimum interference.

But you want to carry that sensitivity into your daily life—and not just a sensitivity, but also a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate, so that you’re not acting on things without alertness. You’re not acting on murky impulses, murky motivations. You want to be clear about what you’re doing and why. Only then can you exert some intelligent control.

This issue of what’s really worth knowing goes way back. Ajaan Lee talks about how when he was first bringing the forest tradition into central Thailand, people would make fun of the forest tradition. Scholarly monks in particular would say, “Here we are with our eyes open, reading texts, but still there are a lot of things we don’t understand. But you: You’re just sitting out there with your eyes closed in the forest. What can you know?”

The response, of course, is, “You know what’s going on in your mind.” After all, the problems are not there in the books; the problems are in the mind.

Now, it’s good to know about the books. It’s not the case that the forest monks didn’t read books at all. Ajaan Lee, in particular, was an inquisitive autodidact. He subscribed to a magazine that was put out by the scholarly monks called Dhammacaksu, “The Dhamma Eye,” which had sutta translations and articles on the meaning of the suttas. The magazine would arrive once a month.

Ajaan Fuang said that when the magazine arrived, the evening sit that night was dedicated to Ajaan Lee’s reading the magazine out loud to everybody. So it’s not the case that the forest monks were uneducated.

As for Ajaan MahaBua: The word “Maha” in his name means that he had passed the first three levels of the Pali exams. Even Ajaan Chah read a lot.

So the real question is, what do you do with your reading? Do you just argue about it, have theories about it, or do you actually use it as a guide to what to look for inside?

You can sit here with your eyes closed and not learn anything at all. But if you’re alert to the fact that fabrication is going on, acts of intention, acts of attention are going on, your perceptions are shaping your experience, then you know what to look for.

When the mind really does get quiet, there’s a tendency to say, “Well, what’s next?” What’s next is looking carefully at what you’ve got in a quiet mind to see where there’s still fabrication going on. What intentions are holding you here? What ways are you paying attention to what you’re doing?

We read so that we can develop appropriate attention, asking the right questions. But we have to get the mind really still in order to see these things directly to answer those questions. Otherwise, our fabrications keep getting put together in an area where we’re not really alert, and they still have their power.

So don’t be afraid of missing out on anything outside. Be afraid of missing out on this, what you’re doing inside, because this is the big factor shaping your life: the steps in dependent co-arising prior to sensory contact. You see them directly as you meditate, not that they simply appear, but you’re actually using them to get the mind to settle down.

You’re using directed thought and evaluation. You’re using perceptions. You’re using your intentions. The things you use, the things you make, are the things you know best. So when the mind does settle down, ask yourself, “What am I doing right now to make this stay?”

Sometimes, if you ask that question in the beginning, everything falls apart, which is a sign you’re not ready for it yet. But when things are solid, that’s what you’re going to be looking for.

As for the world outside, there’s a lot you can miss out on and it’s not going to make any difference. But what you do inside here is going to shape the potentials you have for the rest of your life. Even when we die, the impact of our past karma will open up potentials, opportunities.

Some opportunities are pretty bad. They take you down. Other opportunities take you up, all depending on what you’ve been doing. So, you want to be really alert to what you’re doing, what your motivation is, what your intentions are, so that you can keep yourself safe, on the up-going path. Make sure you don’t miss out on this.