A Still Vantage Point

Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths and see how it feels. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good you can change. The breath is one of the few processes in the body that you can have some control over. So take advantage of that fact. See what kind of an impact long breathing has on the body. Or how about shorter breathing? Deeper or more shallow? Heavier or lighter, faster or slower? Take some time to explore this energy of the body, because there’s a lot that can be done with it.

Find a good place for the mind to stay in the present moment. When the mind can stay in a comfortable spot in the present moment, then it can watch itself. If it doesn’t have any sense of ease and wellbeing in the present moment, it’s going to go running off to the past, the future, this person, that thing—all kinds of things aside of where you are right here, right now. As a result, you never get to see your own mind. As the Buddha said, the big problem in life is that we cause ourselves suffering even though we don’t want to. And we keep doing it again and again and again. You’d think that we’d come to our senses. So that’s what we’re trying to do as we meditate: come to our senses.

Learn to watch the mind to see exactly where it’s causing the problem and what kind of ignorance is causing it to make itself suffer. In particular, you want to look at the intentions of the mind because those are the things that shape your life. It’s because of your intentions that you think certain things and do certain things and say certain things. So you want to be able to see them in action. How do they arise? How do they take hold? When intentions come up, some you go with and others you don’t. What’s the difference? Are you selective in what you go with or do you just go in line with your moods? You want to be able to see these things, and the only way you can see them is by staying in the present moment, trying to get as still as you can in the present moment. These movements of the mind are subtle, and if you’re moving around a lot, you can’t see their movements, either. But if you’re still, then you begin to see movements in the mind you never saw before.

So try to keep the mind still, here with the breath. Find a spot in the body that feels comfortable when you breathe in and keep it comfortable as you breathe out—and then breathing in again, breathing out again so that no new tension builds up as you breathe in, and you don’t hold on to any old tension as you breath out. That way it’s easier and easier for the mind to settle down; it’s going to like staying here. Actually, all the important things in life are happening right here, right now, but you’re distracted by other things. There are people out there that want your attention, and you yourself don’t really know where to focus your intention unless you train the mind to stay right here so that you can watch yourself—watch the mind in action. In that way, you can sort out its skillful actions from its unskillful habits.

So take some time to explore the breath. And as you explore the breath here in the present moment, the mind will begin to gather in right here. Then you can see that as well.