Be Present

Close your eyes and take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body and focus your attention there. As you stay with the breath, the next question is, does it feel good? If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you can change. Make it shorter, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. Try to find what rhythm and texture of breathing feels good for you right now. Try to stay in the present moment, because important things are happening here.

The media say that the important things in the world are things that other people are doing someplace else. But for the sake of your own happiness, the most important things are what you’re doing right now, what your intentions are, because your intentions determine what you’re going to do, and what you do is going to determine the happiness and the pain that’s going to come your way. So. Pay attention to the source.

If the mind is in good shape, if it’s clear, alert, mindful, then you’re much more likely to be able to see what’s the right thing to do. And when you’re coming from a sense of well-being, it’s a lot easier to do the right thing. When you’re feeling starved or tired, sometimes it’s hard to see straight and think straight. Even when you can think straight, you just tell yourself, “Well, I don’t have the energy to do that.” So here you’re giving yourself energy; you’re giving yourself a sense of well-being. This is where the work has to be done.

This kind of work you can do at home, you can do in the car, you can do it anywhere you are, because the breath is always there with you. And that’s a good thing, because your intentions are always coming out all the time. All too often we’re not aware of them.

Sometimes you ask someone, “Why did you do that?” and they have to stop and think. If they were fully alert, they’d know why they did it. They’d be able to say Yes or No when they saw that the intention was actually good or bad. But if you’re not paying attention, all kinds of bad things can slip out. So try to be right here, because this is where things are happening, where choices are being made. And you want to make them well, because they shape your life.

It’s when you take responsibility for your happiness like this that you find you really can create the causes for happiness. Otherwise, we think happiness is something that comes and goes with the weather or, like the weather, is beyond our control. But actually, you can play a role in giving rise to the causes of happiness. In some cases, it’ll yield happiness right away; in other cases, it takes time. When you do things like practicing generosity, observing the precepts, meditating, sometimes there are difficulties, but there’s also a sense of well-being. You know you’re doing something good. You want to nourish that sense of doing something good, because that gives you the energy to do it more.

So. Give your mind a place to stand right here. As you develop your awareness of the present moment, you’ll be developing qualities of mindfulness, alertness, and the ardency that wants to do this well. You want to have the attitude, “I’m going to learn how to breathe well, be alert well.” That spreads out to your other activities in life. Whatever roles you have to play in your family, at work, you want to do them well, too.

Everything starts from right here, so make sure that the source is good. Pay attention right here, and that’ll take care of a lot of things down the line.