Try This at Home

When you meditate away from the monastery, you’re both the teacher and the student: the student who’s being trained in how to meditate, and the teacher who gives the orders—“This is how it should be done.” But all too often our teacher is pretty weak, and the student is pretty rebellious—which means that we have to strengthen the teacher.

The teacher is basically mindfulness, reminding you not only of what needs to be done, but also of what’s happened in the past when you didn’t do it, when you let your meditation go; reminding you of the things you did in the past that worked when different unskillful emotions came up; things that didn’t work, so you don’t want to try those again; having this ability to keep these things in mind; and having a strong sense of their importance. That’s what’s going to keep you going.

Of course, the student has to notice what’s happening in your meditation when you’re able to sit still, when you’re not able to sit still. Sometimes there’s the urge just to get up. You have to ask yourself, “What is that urge, anyhow?” It’s just the blood flowing in the body some place. It’s running up against some walls of the blood vessels. There’s a sense of pressure. You can change that perception. Just think of wherever there’s any energy in the body, it can flow right through. There’s no obstacle. After all, the breath is energy. It can flow through anything. So wherever there’s any pressure, think of it dispersing in all directions. You’ll find that you’re able to sit more solidly, sit more consistently.

Sometimes these urges come up and they’re not really verbalized at all. There’s just a pressure in the body. We can deal with it on the level of pressure. Sometimes it gets verbalized, and you have to argue with the verbalization. But if you can get it first before it becomes verbalized, then it’s a lot easier to deal with.

But you learn these lessons, and then you try to remember them. In this way, the student is informing the teacher. “I did it this way, and this is what happened.” Now, if it was something that was good, then the teacher should remember. If it was not good, then the teacher can give further instructions about what to try. That way, there’s a dialogue inside. And more and more you find that the Dhamma informs the dialogue.

But there will be ups and downs, times when your old greed, aversion, and delusion want to take over. They’re so used to taking over, and they’ve got all kinds of tricks. They can hijack your breath so that it’s uncomfortable to sit there, and you’ve got to move. Just remember that you can reclaim your breath. You’ve done it in the past; you can do it again. Again, another message from the teacher.

So. Train your mindfulness. This is one of the reasons why we keep coming back, coming back, coming back to the breath, so that you get more and more used to staying with one thing and remembering where you really should be—and remembering to stay there. Use all your talents to keep that intention in mind and to follow through with it. That’s how the practice progresses. It’s not something you do only while you’re here at the monastery. This is something you’re actually encouraged to do at home. You know those advertisements that say, “Don’t try this at home.” Well, do try this at home. Keep trying. Because the nature of this skill is that it deals with whatever comes up in the mind at any time. And you want to have it at your fingertips whenever it’s needed.