Conviction & Confidence

Ajaan Suwat would often begin the meditation session by saying to develop an attitude of conviction and confidence: conviction that this is a good path you’re on, a worthwhile path, an honorable path. Are you being asked to do anything dishonorable at all? Are you having to sell your dignity in order to get by? Well, no. These are nothing but honorable things that you’re doing, honorable qualities you’re developing in your mind.

As for confidence, that means the confidence that you can do it. As the Buddha said, if people couldn’t abandon unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones, there would have been no point in his teaching.

The fact that he taught means that people can do this, and it’s a path for human beings. It’s a path for devas as well, but it is something that human beings can do. This is why we have the verses of the elder monks, elder nuns, to give us encouragement. They weren’t all elders at the time when they composed their verses. Some of them were quite young. Even children can do this if they set their minds to it. And the fact that you’re meditating means that you have some merit, you have some goodness to you, goodness in your background. It’s something you can do. There are times when it may seem difficult and long, but you can’t really gauge how much longer the path is going to be for you.

There’s that image of the adze, or the image of the chicken on her eggs. It’s good to think about what those images mean. Because we don’t use adzes much anymore, think of it instead as a pickaxe or a hoe. You use the pickaxe again and again, and you don’t see it wearing down. But then there comes a day when the handle breaks. It looks like it did at the very beginning, but the stresses inside are invisible. The same with the handle of the hoe: You use the hoe to dig here and dig there, and all of a sudden, the handle breaks. Just looking at the handles, you can’t tell how much longer they’re going to last. Or the chicken on her eggs: The shell of an egg looks whole all the way until it suddenly cracks. You can’t tell from its appearance how soon it’s going to break open. In the same way, you can’t look at your practice and figure out how much longer it’s going to take.

So you keep at it. And don’t have the attitude that says, “I want to get this out of the way so that I can get on with my life.” What kind of life would you get on to? Arahants continue practicing. They don’t need to wash away any defilements anymore, but they practice contemplating the aggregates, they practice establishing mindfulness, they practice concentration as a pleasant abiding. It’s a good thing to be doing. So even though they don’t need these activities, they’ve figured out that these are the best things you can do with your life afterwards, after you’ve reached the goal.

So don’t get impatient to move on. Where would you move on to? Being on the path is one of the best things a human being can do. You’re looking for happiness in a way that doesn’t harm anybody, doesn’t place a weight on the world. So have some conviction in what you’re doing, have some confidence: conviction that this a good thing, confidence that you can do it. Then approach all the puzzles of the path, all the difficulties of the path, with the attitude that they’re good problems to be solving.

After all, what could be more interesting than your own greed, aversion, delusion, and the mind’s tendency to lie to itself? You want to figure out why it likes to lie and why it likes to be lied to. What’s going on there? You’re creating suffering for yourself, and you’re doing it willingly, largely because you don’t see the connection between your actions and their results. But here’s a chance to develop your powers of mindfulness, your powers of concentration, so that you can see the connections. After all, the lies that we tell ourselves are not just little white lies. They’re lies with consequences. People can suffer whole lifetimes based on a lie. You want to dig these things out, understand what’s going on. So it’s a good problem to be solving.

And if it seems that you’re not solving it as fast as you’d like, ask yourself how much time you’ve been lying to yourself over these many, many lifetimes. Devoting some time in this lifetime to solving the problem—it’s not much. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha has you think about the inconceivable beginning of saṁsāra, how long this has been going on, so that the path doesn’t seem all that long after all.

They often say in the Canon that someone hears the Dhamma from the Buddha, goes off, and then in no long time becomes an arahant. How long is that: “no long time”?

Think of the case of Raṭṭhapāla. He wants to ordain. His parents are against his ordaining. He goes on a hunger strike. Finally, his friends convince the parents, “Look, it would be much better to have him alive as a monk than dead.” So the parents give in. Raṭṭhapāla ordains, goes off, and in no long time becomes an arahant. He comes back home, and his father doesn’t recognize him. Time must have passed. The commentary says 14 years. In comparison with the inconceivable beginning of saṁsāra, that is no long time.

So get some perspective on what you’re doing. You’re doing something really good, and when you’ve mastered it, you’ll just want to keep on doing it. In the meantime, you’ve been given the tools for solving the problems that your mind creates for itself.

And you’re free to do it, and you’re doing it freely. No one’s forcing you. In this world of ours where so much force is used to make people do things they really would rather not do, where so many lures are set out in terms of wealth, status, praise, and sensual pleasures to get people to do things that are actually bad for them, here you’re not being lured by anything like that at all. You’re being lured by the possibility of a harmless happiness, an unconditioned happiness, a happiness that harms nobody. That’s an honorable lure.

So have some conviction that this is a good thing, and confidence that you can do it. Approach the whole practice with that attitude, and it won’t seem long. It’s when you step away from the practice, get out of the practice, and look down at the length of time you imagine: That’s when it seems long. So when the mind is talking to itself in those ways, remind yourself, “Okay, that’s the mind off the path. Get back on”—because the path is a good place to be.