Always Timely & True

Focus on your breath. Know when it’s coming in, know when it’s coming out. Notice where you feel it in the body, because you may feel it in places you might not expect. So make a survey of your body as you breathe in, survey of the body as you breathe out. Find a place that’s comfortable with the in-breath, with the out-breath. Or you can change the way you breathe to find a way of breathing that feels good for the body and is just right for the mind.

These are instructions we repeat over and over again. The teachings are things we repeat over and over again. They’ve been around for 2,600 years—all about how to find happiness through being generous, through being virtuous, through meditating. But you have to realize that the problems they solve have been around a lot longer than that. And they haven’t changed.

Greed now is not that much different from greed 2,600 years ago, or 5,000 or 10,000 years ago. The objects may change, but the quality of greed is the same.

The same with anger. It’s the same thing over and over again.

So when you hear teachings about virtue, generosity, and meditation, don’t think “over and over again.” There’s nothing really tedious about these teachings. They’re showing you the way out. The question is, when are you going to get tired of the other things that come over and over again?—greed, aversion, and delusion. The methods the Buddha discovered for curing these things still work today, because it’s the same problem. The solution is the same. It’s simply up to us to decide that we’re going to take the Buddha seriously, follow his teachings with as much sincerity as we can. That’s what’s going to make all the difference.

The Buddha asked for a student who is honest and observant. That means you have to be sincere in doing the practice and observing what the results are. When you report them to the teacher, or when you contemplate them yourself, you want to be true in what you see, true in what you decide—because it’s when we are true that we find the truth.

So be true when you’re generous. When you give something, really give it up. When you’re virtuous, don’t keep making excuses for breaking this precept or that precept. When the precepts say no killing, no stealing, absolutely none. Full stop. Then see how you can live your life in a way that you don’t harm anybody, you don’t harm yourself at the same time, you’re not killing, you’re not stealing. Some people say, “Well, if I don’t kill pests, they’re going to take over the house.” There are ways of getting rid of the pests that don’t involve killing them. It requires some ingenuity. It requires that you take the precepts seriously.

But remember, the Buddha was serious when he said there is an end to suffering. He wasn’t grim. He was offering good news, actually. He wasn’t not playing games. The end of suffering is true. The path to the end of suffering is true. But the suffering that we experience for not following the path, that’s true. too. So which kind of truth do you want?

When you’re true to the practice, the practice will show its true results. And as the Buddha said, they’re akāliko. They’re not limited to any particular time. His teachings were true then; they’re true now. They’ll be true for thousands of years, through many, many more universes, many more eons. The question is, do you want to hang around for all those eons? Or would you rather find a happiness that doesn’t require any kind of suffering at all?

The choice is yours. It’s the same choice that the Buddha offered then, and it’s still offered now.