Gain Control

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing most prominently in the body. Focus your attention there. Then watch it for a while to see if it feels good. If long breathing does feel good, then keep it up. If it doesn’t, you can change. Make it shorter, more shallow, faster, slower, heavier, lighter. Try to see what kind of rhythm of breathing feels good for the body right now. And try to stay with the breath as continually as you can, all the way in, all the way out. And then the next in, next out—just stay with it. You don’t have to go anywhere else right now. Try to get the mind under some control.

We need to get control over the mind. We chant, almost every day, “We’re subject to aging, illness, and death.” The Thai translation is, “Aging, illness, and death are normal.” But for most of us, they’re not normal. When they come, they seem out of the ordinary. We don’t prepare.

Sometimes we think that there’s nothing we can do to prepare. But the state of your mind when you go is going to be very important. You can develop all kinds of good karma, and then the state of your mind just flips. It goes someplace else. That doesn’t mean the good karma doesn’t give its results. It just means that they’re delayed.

So you want to keep your mind on good things and stay with good things. Other thoughts can come up, but you don’t have to pay them any attention. You don’t have to go with them.

Sometimes when a thought comes, we think it’s a little present wrapped with a nice bow, covered with wrapping paper, so we want to see what’s inside the box. But then we fall into the box, and who knows where it’s going to take us. You can go to one thought and then the next, and then the next, and then you find yourself on the other side of the world—all while you’re determined to stay with the breath.

So each time you breathe in, remind yourself that this is where you want to be. This is why we have to practice mindfulness again and again and again—to get some more control over the mind while the body is still healthy. Imagine, when the body is no longer healthy, what it’s going to be like. It’s going to be difficult to stay in the present moment. There’ll be pain and there’ll be fear of loss. You have to be able to resist those things, not focus your attention there. Focus your attention on the things that will be good right now, like keeping your mind quiet and aware, alert right here in the present moment. That way, the good things you’ve done can show their results. And you can be more confident that you live well, and you go well.

But it depends on getting the mind under some control. So if it does wander off, don’t just follow it. Bring it back. Just drop whatever the thought was, even if it’s unfinished, and you will be back at the breath. That way, when you’re in control, then the mind can take you to places you want to go—places that are worth going to. If it’s not under control, it’s like handing the keys to your car over to a crazy person. You have no idea where the crazy person is going to go, who he’s going to run into, what trouble he’ll cause.

So. You keep the keys. You be the driver. And that way you’ll arrive safe.