Seclusion

We come to the monastery to find some peace and quiet, to get away from our entanglements in the world, to gain some physical seclusion. It’s an important part of the practice. If you want to see your own mind, understand your own mind, train your own mind, you have to get away from other people for a while. Otherwise, all you see are their affairs, their demands, their desires. And there’s a battle inside between yours and theirs. But if you want to see what your mind’s real issues are, you have to get away, so that the battle is just between you and you.

So think about that for a bit. All the responsibilities of the world are someplace else right now. It’s just you in nature.

Then you try to develop what the Buddha calls mental seclusion. Usually, even though we may be away from other people, and we don’t have to listen to what they have to say, there’s a lot of conversation going on in the mind. And you have to sort that out: which kind of conversation is useful and which kind is not.

Our minds are like engines in a car. We turn the engine on and then we just leave it on all the time, whether we want to go someplace or not, with the idea that “If I ever want to go someplace, I can just hop in the car and go.” That’s very wasteful. If you actually ran your car like that, it wouldn’t last very long. It’s pretty amazing that our minds have lasted this long, because we keep using, using, using them all the time. We don’t get a chance to really rest.

So give the mind one thing to think about right now: just the breath. Any other thoughts, you don’t have to entertain. You don’t have to pay any attention to them at all. No matter how insistent they may be, no matter how strong they may be, tell yourself: “This is not time for them. They have plenty of opportunity to make inroads in your mind some other time. Right now is some time for some quiet inside.” Even though there may be something to think about in terms of the breath, and you may have a lot to think about as you survey the feelings of the breath energy in the body, you’re still focused on one thing, and that’s much more restful than thinking about your responsibilities outside. And the fact that your thinking is focused on what you’re experiencing and doing right here, right now, means that you don’t have to wear yourself out, traveling far.

When you breathe in, how does it feel in your head? How does it feel in your torso? How does it feel in your arms and legs? Could it feel better? What kind of breathing would feel really satisfying right now? You don’t have to tell yourself you’re meditating, because sometimes that sounds too serious. Tell yourself, “I’m going to be here for a while and just enjoy breathing. What kind of breathing would be enjoyable?”

Fill your lungs. Expand your chest. Energize the whole body. As long as that feels good, keep it up. If it feels tiresome after a while, you can let things calm down. But keep that in mind: that you’re here to enjoy the breathing.

Still, you don’t want to get so carried away with enjoyment that you forget what you’re here for. You’re here to keep the mind with the breath. So remind yourself, each time you breathe in, to stay with the whole body as you breathe in. Each time you breathe out, stay with the whole body as you breathe out. If you want, you can make a survey of the different parts of the body first. Any places where there’s any tension or tightness, think of relaxing it. See if you can keep it relaxed all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-. Then try to get more and more sensitive to subtler and subtler levels of tension anywhere in the body.

As you breathe out, don’t think that you’re squeezing the breath out of the body. After all, we’re trying to create a sense of fullness here, and if you keep squeezing the breath out, it’s not going to get full. Try to maintain a sense of fullness even as the breath goes out. Think of breath breathing breath.

If you can take an interest in the breath like this, it makes it a lot easier to stay with one topic. If the topic is not interesting, you’re going to find other things to focus on. But then what are you focusing on? It’s the same old stuff you’ve usually thought about in the past. Here you’re trying to develop a new kind of skill: the skill of making up your mind to stay with one thing and really following through with that.

This is the sort of thing that you should learn how to do not only while you’re here at the monastery, but also as you’re at home. The Buddha talks about the five qualities that are good to develop to create a good environment for your practice at home, and seclusion is one of them. Find some time, even though you may be with other people in the house, to find a quiet corner and just tell everybody you want to be quiet for a while. Put aside all the other concerns, all the other responsibilities of the day. This is your time to deal with the mind directly on its own.

Now, there are other aspects of this environment for your practice as well. As I said, there are five in all. The first is that you observe the precepts. As you go through the day, make sure you don’t break any of the five precepts. Maintain the intention to behave in a harmless way with other people.

As we meditate, we want to have the mind open up to itself. And if you harm other people, then when the time comes to meditate, that harm will come up in your mind, making it hard to be honest with yourself. Either you feel wounded by the harm you’ve done, in which case you run away from it, or you tell yourself it doesn’t matter. That’s like a wound covered with really hard scar tissue. It sets up a wall inside your mind. You’re just not going to think about that thing. When you have all these walls in the mind, how are you going to be aware? How are you going to learn anything?

So always try to act on intentions that you know are skillful. If it turns out that you caused some harm, at least the harm didn’t come from your intention. But you can also learn that maybe there was some ignorance in the intention. It was well-meaning but it wasn’t yet really skillful. Ferret out that ignorance and replace it with knowledge. In this way, you can learn from your mistakes, and you take them in stride. That’s the first quality, observing the precepts.

The second quality is having some restraint over the senses. When you look at something, when you listen to something, taste, touch, smell something, ask yourself: “Why? For what purpose? What does this do to the mind?” In other words, you look at your engagement with the senses as part of a causal process. Realize that you’re not just on the receiving end. You’re out looking for something. If you look for the sake of greed or for the sake of anger, you’re nourishing those defilements in your mind. They get strengthened, and then that’s going to have a bad effect on the mind.

It’s not the case that you can just look at what you like and listen to what you like. You have to ask yourself, “These things that I like, are they good for me? And what qualities am I encouraging in the mind?” That’s the second quality.

The third quality is some restraint on your conversation. Ajaan Fuang used to say, “Ask yourself before you open your mouth: Is what I’m going to say necessary? If it’s not necessary, why say it?” The Buddha would add some other tests as well: “Is it true?” Okay, if it’s true, then the next question is, “Is it beneficial? Does it serve a real purpose?” And then three, “Is this the right time?” We’re going to be dealing with the chatter in our minds, and a good way to put some restraint on it is to put some restraint on our outside chatter first.

Ajaan Suwat used to say that the sign of a stupid person is that as soon as something pops in your mind, it comes right out of your mouth. You should filter things first. Ask yourself, “What purpose does this serve? And is this the right time, right place for this?” Of course, that all follows on the big question: “Is this true?”

If you can put some restraint on your mouth in this way, then it’s easier to put some restraint on your own mind. You develop more mindfulness and alertness as well, all of which enable the mind to get still and be alert and mindful at the same time, so that you can protect your stillness. Even though there may be noises outside, there may be turmoil outside, if you know how to protect the stillness of your mind, then you can be secluded anywhere.

As the Buddha said, when you get the mind into concentration, it’s secluded from unskillful qualities, secluded from sensual fantasies. He doesn’t say you have to be secluded from other people. You can be with other people, yet your mind can be quiet as well. What’s important is you don’t have these inner hooks, these inner conversations that would pull you out of your stillness, pull you out of your seclusion. So learn to be careful about what you talk about.

As Ajaan Lee used to say, “You’ve worked so hard to become a human being with a human mouth. So bow down to your mouth every day.” In other words, use it to say good things. We’ve all been common animals in the past. What kind of things could we say? We could bark, we could meow, we could neigh, but we couldn’t communicate anything really important. Now that we have a human mouth, let’s use it to communicate really good things. Show some respect for it, and you’ll develop good qualities of the mind as well.

The final aspect of this environment for your practice is in developing right view—right view about what’s skillful, what’s not—and particularly, when there’s any suffering in the mind, asking yourself, “What am I doing?” We’re not placing blame on other people, even though other people may be misbehaving horribly.

Remember that arahants can live in the same world that you do, yet they don’t suffer. They have a skill so that they don’t suffer from what other people do. That’s because they don’t create any causes for suffering inside themselves. When they don’t feed on the causes of suffering inside, they don’t get sick. They can be with unskillful people and yet not suffer, not pick up any germs.

So ask yourself, if there’s suffering in the mind, “What am I clinging to? How am I clinging? What desires are being frustrated?” Then learn how to let go of those desires.

If everyone looked after their minds in this way, the world would be a much more peaceful place. Right now, though, everybody’s going around blaming everybody else for their problems. Very few people are looking inside. But you can set a good example. If there’s suffering inside, you look for the cause inside, you deal with the cause inside. By developing good qualities inside your mind, you take the good potentials you already have and work on them. That way, you get more benefit out of them.

If you develop these five qualities—virtue, restraint of the senses, restraint of your conversation, seclusion, and right view—then you have an environment in which your practice can grow. And it’s an environment you create.

We tend to blame the world out there. We’re surrounded by the Internet, surrounded by social media, surrounded by a lot of noise. But those things become an interference to your practice only if you let them in, if you let them determine everything.

You have to determine your environment. Show that you have some power inside. You can create a good environment for your practice so that even though someone may have their social media turned on, there may be noise outside, still you have a series of habits that protect your practice, that create a cushion around your practice. That way, the disturbances of the world don’t come barging in. It’s in this way that you maintain your seclusion.

So seclusion not just a matter of being secluded from people, it’s also being secluded from your own defilements—using your concentration, using your discernment, using your virtue, to free your mind from all the turmoil of the world outside, from all the entanglements of the world outside, and from the inside qualities that pull the outside in. When you take charge of your environment in this way, then your practice has a chance to grow.

Otherwise, you’re like a plant that’s growing in a city sidewalk. There’s a little tiny crack in the sidewalk, and the plant has to distort itself, contort itself, to fit into the crack. It doesn’t get to really flourish. But if you can create the environment, then the plant of your practice has more room, a chance to grow and to flourish—to be grounded and strong.