Quality over Quantity

When we have a short meditation session like this, there’s not much in terms of quantity. So you have to make it up with quality: that you really are alert to what you’re doing, really are determined in what you’re doing. Sometimes, when you have a whole hour or two hours to meditate, there’s a tendency to be like a glider, gradually coming down, coming down. Just a few minutes before the session ends, you finally land. That’s a bad habit.

You want to develop the habit of focusing the mind as soon as you close your eyes. It’s there with the breath, solidly. And then you keep it there. Use whatever strategy you can devise for making the breath interesting, for making it a pleasant place to stay, a useful place to stay—useful in the sense of helping with any chronic illnesses or pains you may have in the body. That’s one of the ways of getting really interested in what’s going on here. If you have a chronic pain or chronic pattern of tension in the body, how can the breath help with that? Try to get in touch with that and explore what the breath can do.

When you notice that the mind settles down, notice where it’s focused when it likes to settle down—when it feels most at ease, feels most content. Then try to recreate those conditions the next time around. In other words, pay real attention to what you’re doing right here and try to get the mind to settle in as quickly as you can. In this way, the short meditation has a lot of value.

Ajaan Lee makes the comparison with paper. You can have bushels and bushels of newsprint, but it doesn’t buy much. But if you’ve got a little slip of paper with the government seal, you can buy at lot. It’s genuine money. And what’s genuine about it? Simply that it’s been given meaning—that you can buy all kinds of things with a little slip of paper like that.

So give some meaning to these short meditation sessions. Don’t treat them simply as a ceremony. These are times for you to get the mind to settle down really quickly and master the skill of getting it centered right away. Then when you have longer meditation sessions, you can deal with the other skills of learning to get it settled down right away—and then keep it there and do battle with whatever comes up to destroy your meditation. This way, you get the most out of your time.

After all, our time is short. As the Buddha said, even if you live a hundred years, it’s short compared with what you’ve been doing throughout samsara for who knows how long. So don’t throw these short periods away. Get the most out of them—because they have a lot to give.

Remember that statement about being heedful. When the Buddha told the monks to be heedful, one monk said, “I think about death once a day, realizing if I have one more day to live I could accomplish a lot.” Another monk says, “I think about it twice a day.” “Three times a day.” “Four times a day.” Finally, it gets down to one monk who says, “When I breathe in, I hope, ‘May I live to breathe out. I can accomplish a lot.’” And the Buddha said, “That last monk is the one who’s really heedful.”

So. Keep that kind of watch over your mind. Have that sense of the importance of each moment, each breath as it comes in and goes out. And you can accomplish a lot.