Sending Out Rays
May 30, 2017

Close your eyes and watch your breath: all the way in, all the way out. Try to be very quiet with the breath. The less commentary you have on the world outside, the better.

Because the more the mind can be quiet, the more it can see. Otherwise, it’s sending out rays of greed and anger, and that’s what we see: the greed and anger bounced back at us. We’ve got greed and all of sudden it picks out the things that you think are worth being greedy about. If you’re feeling angry, your anger picks out the things you’re going to feel angry about. Everything else gets blotted out.

It’s like going down the road at night. If you go down the road during the day, you’ve got the sunlight so you can see everything all around you. When you go down at night, though, all you’ve got are your headlights, and the headlights pick out things in a certain direction in a certain very restricted area. They may emphasize things you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise but you often they leave the larger picture in the dark.

And it’s the same with our minds. As we’re sending out greed, aversion, and delusion, it’s as if we’re sending out rays and they get bounced back at us. So be very careful about what you’re sending out. If you send out quiet rays, then you’re more likely to see what the things outside are actually sending in your direction. And when you can see things more clearly, then you’re apt to act in a more appropriate way as well.

So when you’re thinking thoughts, don’t think you’re the only ones being affected by it. It affects the world around you, and then as you change the world around you through your thinking, the things you do are going to be less or more skillful depending on what you’re sending out. So be careful what you send out.

One of the best ways of training the mind to be quiet is to give it something good to stay with here in the present moment, so that it can have a sense of well-being right here. This is why, when you’re focusing on the breath, you want to focus on a breath that feels good. When the breath doesn’t feel good, you can change it: shorter breathing, longer breathing; faster, slower; heavier, lighter. You’re free to choose whatever breath you want, whatever you like right now so that the mind can settle down with a sense of well-being. When it’s well-fed like this, then it’s quiet.

It’s like an animal that you raise at home. If you don’t feed it, it’s going to be running all over the place scratching everything because of its hunger. But if it’s well-fed, it’ll lie quietly.

So feed the mind well, so that it can be quiet. And then it can see what’s out there, like seeing in the middle of the day: All the rays of the sun bouncing off of everything come to you and you see everything for what it is and what its position is in relationship to other things. That allows your actions to be a lot more skillful, and you create less trouble in the world. The less trouble you create in the world, the less trouble you create for yourself.