From Start to Finish

We close our eyes when we meditate so that we can see our minds more clearly. We spend so much of our time looking at things outside. We know very little about our own minds. Who’s doing the looking? Why are they doing the looking? You have to turn around and look inside because, as the Buddha pointed out, this is where our suffering comes from.

We tend to blame things outside for not being good—that we’re upset about this, uncomfortable about that, stressed out about this, that, or the other thing. But as the Buddha said, the real stress comes from within. If there’s nothing coming out of the mind, the things of the world can’t touch you. The problem is we’re trying to feed off of the world and find our happiness out there. Then when it doesn’t satisfy us, we say, “There’s something wrong with the world out there.” We’ve got to turn and look at our own habits. We’re looking for happiness in the wrong place.

So. Turn around. Look inside. Start with your breath. We focus on the breath because it’s hard to focus directly on the mind itself. But once you get the mind focused on the breath, you can watch it, see how it relates to its object, and see how other objects come along. Yet you learn how not to go with those other objects. You stay with the breath all the way in, all the way out. When you get the mind focused steadily, you can see the breath continually; you can see your mind continually. It’s when you see things continually that you can understand the whole story.

Otherwise it’s like opening a book and reading a page here, and then going back and reading a page there, and then going forward and reading another page someplace else. You get some idea of what’s going on in the book. But there’s so much you miss that way. You have to read the book from start to finish.

In the same way, you have to read your mind from start to finish. When you do something, when you have an intention, what kind of intention do you have? Good? Bad? Do you expect any harm to come from it? If you do, don’t do it. If you don’t expect any harm, then you can take the next step which is to actually do the action. But while you’re doing the action, you keep watch over the results, because sometimes results come out right away. If you notice that you actually are causing harm to somebody, even though you didn’t mean to, you stop. You don’t have to say, “Well my intentions were good” and keep riding with your good intentions. They may be good, but they’re not skillful. So drop the action.

If there’s no harm, keep on doing it until you’re done. Then when it’s done, you look at the long-term results. And again, if it turned out that it did end up causing harm, you’ve learned something. You make up your mind you’re not going to repeat that mistake. If it didn’t cause any harm, then you take joy in the fact that you’re getting better at the training, and keep on training more.

So you learn how to see things from start to finish. That’s when you understand them, and that’s when you can make an intervention when you have to. And as the Buddha said, try to act only on your best intentions. When you act on your best intentions: That’s when you learn. If you start out with an intention you know isn’t good and you get bad results—well, what did you expect? It’s when you act on your best intentions and you find they’re still not good enough—then you’ve learned. It stretches you. You grow. You become more sensitive to what really is skillful, what really is not. And again, you see it from start to finish. That way, you understand what’s going on in the mind. And when you can see the mind creating suffering, say, “Why do this?” You have other choices.

Some people have habits that are ingrained and they can’t imagine anything else. Well, this is why we have the teachings: to help you imagine other ways of engaging in the world that don’t cause anybody any suffering.

So we take the Buddha seriously. When he says, for example, not to break the precepts, he really means it. When he says that you benefit from finding happiness inside through concentration, he really means it. You really learn by following these instructions.

So. Pay him careful attention. Give him the benefit of the doubt. And as he said, you’ll see what happens. You’ll be able to prove things for yourself that way. But to know what’s going on, you have to watch from start to finish. Start with your intentions, look at the results, and then try to take that knowledge and plow it back in, so that your intentions get better and better.

See if the results get better and better, too.