Heedful of Dangers

Before you close your eyes, you can look out at the hillsides. Everything is green, peaceful. The birds are singing. But then off in the distance there’s the sound of the artillery guns. The sound of the helicopters and planes. People are practicing to kill.

This is the human realm. It has a lot of enticements, but also a lot of dangers. So we have to protect ourselves. We have to be heedful, as the Buddha said. This is the basis of all skillful qualities, heedfulness, realizing that there are dangers but that you can protect yourself from those dangers. If there were no dangers, there’d be no need to be heedful. If you couldn’t do anything about the dangers that do exist, heedfulness wouldn’t make any difference there. But heedfulness does make a difference. We can protect ourselves.

The most important thing we protect, of course, is our virtue and our right view. Other people may be practicing to kill, but we’re not going to kill. At all. Other people break the other precepts, but we make up our minds we’re not going to break the precepts at all. That’s our safety. As the Buddha said, when you observe the precepts without exception, then you’re giving the gift of safety to the rest of the world. At least you’re posing no danger to them. And then you have a share in that universal safety as well.

The fact that we’re born here means that we’re exposed to dangers, physically at least. And there are mental dangers: people who would like to influence us to have wrong view—or to believe that there’s something to be gained by breaking the precepts. But as long as we protect our virtue, protect our precepts, protect our right view, then we’re safe. The body may not necessarily be safe. After all, it’s going to age, grow ill, and die anyhow. But you want to make sure that your mind is safe, your heart is safe. And that’s something that’s within your control.

When the body is going to die, you can’t stop it. When it’s ill, you can alleviate the symptoms somewhat, but illness finally takes over.

But loss of virtue, loss of right view: That happens only if you allow it to happen. And you can train yourself to be more and more reliable so that it won’t happen. That’s when you’re really safe.

So wherever you go, remember that you have to be heedful. You have to protect your true valuables: your virtue, your right view, all the other treasures that the Buddha said are noble treasures—a sense of shame and compunction, learning of the Dhamma, discernment, mindfulness. These things protect you, so stock up on these things as much as you can.