No Boundaries

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. And notice where you feel the breathing in the body. It can be anywhere in the body. When the Buddha is talking about breath, he’s not talking about the air coming in and out, making contact at the nose. He’s talking about the feeling of energy flowing through the body. It’s part of the six elements in the body and mind. You can feel that anywhere inside the body. So wherever it’s most prominent, focus your attention there.

Then ask yourself, “Is it comfortable there?” If long breathing feels good there, keep it up. If not, you can change. You can try shorter, faster, slower, more shallow, heavier, lighter. There’s lots to experiment with the breath.

We’re trying to bring the mind into the present moment with a sense of interest, with a sense of wanting to belong here, because right here is where all the work has to be done. As the Buddha said, when we suffer, it’s not because of things outside. It’s because of the mind itself, what the mind does with things outside and things inside itself. You want to be able to watch that.

But all too often our attention is directed outside. We don’t even see what we’re doing. We just go through the motions, and everything seems to be on automatic pilot. Or like a factory that has been set into motion, and then the president of the factory goes away someplace else: The factory keeps on churning out products. Some of them are good; some of them are not so good. But there’s no quality control.

What we’re trying to do is bring some quality control into our lives, so that when you say something or do something or think something, it’s actually going to be for the purpose of true happiness and not for the purpose of greed, aversion, or delusion.

So try to settle in here.

This is one of the ways of making merit—the Pali word is puñña. Maybe “merit” is not the best translation—we’re doing goodness. When you can exert some quality control over your mind, then less greed, aversion, and delusion gets produced by the factory, and the world is not polluted with your greed, aversion, and delusion. You yourself maintain your integrity. You maintain your happiness. And the world benefits as a result.

So when you’re meditating, it’s not just for you. Other people benefit as well. And when you make merit, when you do good, you want to make sure the goodness is complete. We make donations—there’s generosity. We observe the precepts to be harmless. And then we straighten out our minds, developing thoughts of goodwill for all beings, so that our actions are motivated by the right intentions.

Then we go deeper into the mind to figure out: Why is it that there would be unskillful intentions to begin with? When we do this, everybody benefits.

The happiness that the Buddha teaches is not a happiness with boundaries. It doesn’t belong to this person and not that person, or this country and not that country. Everybody benefits. When you’re generous, you gain the benefit of generosity, the virtue of generosity in your own mind. The people who receive the fruits of your generosity benefit, too. When you observe the precepts, you develop the perfection of virtue, and the people around you are not subject to being harassed or harmed by you. When you train the mind, everybody benefits.

This is what’s special about the way the Buddha teaches happiness. It’s a happiness that doesn’t have any boundaries, a happiness that spreads around to all beings. Which is why when we develop thoughts of goodwill, we can do it without being embarrassed or feeling hypocritical, because we’re looking for happiness in a way that doesn’t take anything away from anyone else.

The Buddha saw, before he went out into the wilderness, that the way most people live in the world is they have to fight one another over dwindling resources. He says they’re like fish in a dwindling stream, fighting one another just to have a little bit of more water to swim around in. But in the end the stream is going to dry up, and everybody is going to die anyhow. So they create bad karma at the same time that they all lose out.

That’s the way it is with the happiness of the world where one person has to gain by making other people lose—which creates boundaries, creates conflict, creates strife—whereas the Buddha saw that there were ways of finding happiness so that the happiness spreads around. Everybody benefits.

We’re fortunate we have access to these teachings and that you can live your life in light of them. That way you benefit from the fact that there was a Buddha and he did gain awakening and he was able to teach the Dhamma. The Dhamma is still alive. Just make sure that you keep it alive in your own thoughts, words, and deeds, as well.