A Home Inside
December 29, 2023

When you settle in with the breath, you’re trying to create a home for the mind—a place where it feels at ease, where it’s protected. So give yourself a sense of ease with the breath.

Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good for you right now. It might be long breathing or shorter breathing—faster, slower, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow. There’s lots to experiment with.

And you can experiment with your focus. You can focus at the tip of the nose. You can focus at the middle of the chest, down at the navel, anywhere in the body where you feel the breath. Here we’re not talking so much about the air coming in and out of through the nose—but the movement of energy through the body. That affects the whole nervous system.

So. Settle in. Make some adjustments so that this house you have here becomes a home. And, as I said, it’s also protected. You have a clear sense of where you want your mind to be right now: with the breath. Any other thought that comes up that’s not related to the breath gets put aside, no matter how interesting it may seem or how compelling. You have to tell yourself, “I’ve got more important things to do right now. I’ve got to develop this skill of creating a home wherever I am.”

That’s the good thing about the breath—that wherever you go, it’s there with you. You can always make it your home. And it’s right next to the mind. Of the aspects of the body, the breath is the one you feel most immediately. So take time to settle in. Have a clear sense that anything not related to the breath right now is none of your business. And it has no business coming in to interfere.

The affairs of the world may be screaming at you, but just let them scream. You don’t have to take them inside. You can close the windows, close the doors. Ajaan Lee makes this point—that when you have a sense of restraint over what you look at, what you think about, what you listen to, it’s like having windows and doors that you can open and close to your house. Good things come to the door—okay let them in. Bad things come to the door—you don’t have to let them in. As for bad things inside you, you don’t have to let them out, because when they go outside, they get food and they get stronger and stronger. But when you keep them inside, you can starve them—all your unskillful mental qualities. Keep them down in the basement. And even though we have a precept against killing, allowing these things to starve to death doesn’t count as killing. It’s actually a gift to yourself and a gift to the people around you. You have a good-neighbor policy.

So keep looking after this house. Make it your home. When you have a home like this, you feel secure wherever you go. You feel that you have a good solid foundation inside.

When we go through the world without this sense of foundation, we go running around trying to find what other people are thinking about us, what other people are saying about us, what they can say to us that make us feel good. In other words, we’re looking for our nourishment—we’re looking for our protection—outside, in a place that’s not likely to give it.

The world can be very fickle, so you can’t really depend on things outside. You’ve got to learn how to depend on yourself inside—how to deal with the fickleness of your own mind. You start out by giving it a good place to stay. When it feels secure and at home, it’s going to behave a lot better. And you’re going to have a sense of really belonging right here.