The News Right Here & Now

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Try to be as sensitive as you can to where you feel the breathing in the body. Wherever it’s most prominent, focus your attention there. And stay right there. Then you can tell if long breathing is good. If it’s not, you can change. You can make it shorter, faster; slower; heavier, lighter; deeper, more shallow. Try to find a rhythm that feels really good right now.

You want to be anchored in the present moment, and when you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present moment. There’s no future breath you can watch, no past breath you can watch. All you can watch is what the breath is doing right now. When you’re watching that, your attention is here. Then if any thoughts or intentions come up in the mind, you can see them.

We spend so much time looking at our screens, knowing way too much about what’s going on in the world outside. You have to ask yourself: How certain is that knowledge? As the Buddha said, the really important things are not what other people are doing someplace else. The really important things are what are you doing right now? What’s going on in your mind, especially: That’s going to determine what you say, what you do.

So how is your mind processing things? How is your mind making decisions? Who’s making the decisions in there? All too often, we have intentions that we’re not even alert to. It’s as if they come out of the murk and do their damage, and you don’t know where they came from.

So we’re trying to clear away the murk. Get some light inside the mind so you can see—“Oh this intention came from that. And it’s going to be skillful or unskillful if I act on it.” But you can tell where it’s going to take you. Then you can make a decision as to whether you want to go with it or not.

When everything is dark and cloudy, you can’t see these things. You can’t make proper decisions. It’s as if someone else is making the decisions for you, and all you are is a puppet. Well, you’re trying to get control so that when a decision is made, you know why it was made, and you have a good idea of what results you can expect. That way, your life gets straightened out. You become more responsible for the things that really are worth being responsible for. You also gain knowledge that’s more reliable.

Our knowledge of the world outside goes through many, many filters—our own filters, other people’s filters. You read up on ancient history—not even so ancient, just a couple hundred years ago: Rumors would sweep through the countryside, having no basis in reality. You think, “Well nowadays we have news, cameras, and everything so we can see what’s actually going on.” But even now, you have no idea who’s behind the camera, why they’re sharing this information with you—what angle they’re taking. All this stuff is very uncertain.

Certain knowledge is: When you act in a certain way, you’re going to gain pleasure as a result. It can be long-term or short-term. Do you want just the short-term or would you rather have long-term? You can make that choice. This way, you get more control over the part of the world—i.e., your mind—that you really can control. And it’s all for the good. So many times with things outside you have no power to make any difference. But right inside here, you do have the power to make a difference. So you want to make a good difference, consistently.

So try to be with the breath. Make the breath comfortable so that it’s a good place to stay. And then watch. Carefully. You’ll get a better sense of what’s going on, and more control of what’s going on—because right here is what matters.