Fools Inside
January 06, 2024

Close your eyes; make up your mind you’re going to stay with the intention to be with the breath—all the way in, all the way out—each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. As for any other thoughts that come up in the mind, you can regard them as fools. Right now they don’t know what you’re doing.

You’re trying to develop good qualities in the mind—qualities like mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration, discernment—and that requires that you be very careful about who you associate with in your mind. That’s one of the first blessings that the Buddha talked about.

One of the titles for the Buddha, Bhagavan, is often translated as “blessed one.” People sometimes ask: Well, who blessed him? The answer is that he blessed himself. The blessing came from within. It sets an example for us. The best blessings come from inside. It’s good to get blessings from outside—they’re encouraging. But the real ones come from within, based on what you do.

And in the sutta on blessings, the Buddha starts out with not consorting with fools, andconsorting with wise people instead. That applies both to fools and wise people outside and fools and wise people inside.

The fools inside, of course, are greed, aversion, delusion, lust. The wise people inside are the voices that tell you to think about the long-term consequences of what you’re thinking about, what you’re doing, what you’re saying, and to act only in cases where you’re sure that the long-term consequences will be good.

Now, it may turn out that you’re wrong, but at least you can learn. That’s how you develop your discernment inside, how you begin to recognize the fools from the wise people. The fools lead you to do things that have long-term bad consequences. So you don’t want to associate with them. The problem is that these fools think they’re pretty clever. And they get you to think they’re pretty clever, too.

Lust thinks it’s very clever. It thinks of ways in which other people will satisfy its fantasies. Anger thinks it’s pretty clever because it threatens people and gets them to act out of fear and to do what you want them to do. Delusion just doesn’t know. It sees right as wrong and wrong as right. But all these defilements come along, and they present themselves as wise people, clever people. And you have to be alert to see that it’s not the case.

So you listen to the Buddha; you listen to the wise people you know outside. Then you try to bring those principles and use them inside. You’re the one who has to use them. You’re the one who’s going to be blessing yourself. And as I said, that’s the blessing that’s most lasting, the blessing that’s most worth having. Blessings from other people come and then they just wash off. But the blessings that come from inside become habits that look after you throughout the new year.

So you’re looking for an auspicious new year? This is how you do it. You try to find who inside is wise and who’s not. And be very careful about those voices inside that present themselves as being clever but actually are the voices of greed, aversion, delusion, lust, jealousy, whatever. You’ve got to watch out for them because they do think they’re smart. And they want you to think you’re smart by following them.

So you’ve got to realize that they’re telling you the wrong things. You learn that by seeing the long-term consequences of which thoughts you follow on and which ones you don’t.

Like right now you’re following the thoughts that want to meditate, because that’s how you develop skills in the mind. You’re not here just to enjoy the present moment. You’re here to learn important skills that you’re going to need now and on into the future.

So the voices that tell you to stay right here, to be sensitive to the breath, to breathe in ways that are comfortable so that you’d be happy to be here: Those are the voices of the wise people inside. Those are the ones you want to consort with.