Your Foremost Treasure
November 09, 2023

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. And wherever you feel the sensation of breathing in the body, settle your attention right there. Then ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it is, you can keep it up. If it’s not, you can change. Make it shorter, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. See what kind of breathing feels good for the body right now. And as your mind wanders off, just drop whatever the thought is and bring it back.

You’re training the mind in some good, basic skills. After all, when you look at all your possessions in the world, what do you have that’s more valuable than your own mind? The problem is, if the mind is untrained, it can create a lot of trouble. It’s like an animal we have in the house. If the animal isn’t trained, it makes messes everywhere, tears things up, has no idea of where it should and shouldn’t be. But if you train it, then you can get along and live together well.

It’s the same with the mind. If the mind isn’t trained, it can make a mess out of anything. You could have perfect circumstances outside and still be miserable. But if you train the mind, you can learn how to have a sense of well-being no matter what’s happening.

Even your body is not as valuable to you as the mind. We spend so much time looking after the needs of the body that all too often we forget the needs of the mind. So when we meditate, we’re trying to meet those needs and say that meditation is food for the mind. It gives you something nourishing to stay with. The mind can stay for a long time with the sensation of comfortable breathing like this—being alert, and mindful—and thrive. It gains a sense of strength and also learns the skills it’s going to need in order to be able to trust itself. If the mind can just wander off any old place while you’re healthy and strong, think of what it’s going to be like as you get ill, as your grow old, and as you approach death. The mind will wander all over the place because it knows it can’t stay in the body.

You want to make sure it doesn’t wander off to places that are going to be bad for you. So you learn to keep it with one thing and keep after it. Develop this skill of being able to observe your own mind. Keep it on course so that it can stay focused on things that are of real value: the good things it can do for itself—the good things it can do for other people. Those, too, are nourishment for the mind. As the ajaans say, meditation is medicine for the mind. When the mind is tired, you can give it a place to rest. When it’s confused, you can give it a place to stay still so that it can watch things carefully and see them clearly for what they are.

So give all your attention—or give your primary attention—to looking after the mind. Everything else in the world is secondary. When you go from this world, go from this body, what can you take with you, aside from the habits you’ve developed in your mind? So try to develop good habits: habits of being mindful, habits of being alert, habits of learning how to say “No” to itself when it knows it’s going off in the wrong direction and to encourage itself in the right direction. That way, when the mind is well trained, it can do all kinds of things for you.

Again, it’s like an animal you have that you train to do different tricks, to do different services for you. You can get along well. And instead of being a weight on you—or instead of being a danger to you—your own mind can become a refuge, a place you can really depend on. But it takes training to be dependable. So focus your attention, focus your energies here, above all else. In that way, you have a refuge that you can trust—a sense of safety that you know you can depend on because it’s coming from within.