Grounded

You want to stay grounded in your body, because that’s when you know that you’re in the present moment. When you start getting into your thought worlds, you could be drifting into the past, drifting into the future, and you don’t realize it. You’re not seeing the mind in action, because that’s the important thing.

As the Buddha said, some of the things we experience right now come from past actions, but some of them come from our present actions, the intentions in the mind. So you want to see those clearly as you’re doing them, because that’s something you can change. You can’t go back and change your past actions. But if you’re doing something unskillful right now, and you catch yourself, you see yourself in action. You can change. So try to stay grounded right here.

Be careful to watch what decisions are being made—why they’re being made. And have some sense of where they’re going. If you catch yourself doing something unskillful, remind yourself that that’s not what you’re here for. Remind yourself also that you’re creating unnecessary suffering for yourself. We waste so much time in our lives creating suffering that doesn’t have to be there. You can’t blame anybody else. It’s something that you haven’t been very observant about: what you’re doing and the results that you’re getting from what you’re doing.

So. Keep watch right here. Think of that image of the civet cat inside a termite nest. The termite nests are really big over in India and Southeast Asia. You’ve got a whole civet cat in there. You want to catch it, so you have to close off all the other holes and leave one hole open. If the cat’s going to come in and go out, it’s going to have to come in and go out right there. So keep watch over your mind in the present moment because that’s where things are happening.

The world tells you that the important things are things that somebody else is doing someplace else. But the Dhamma tells you what’s important is what you’re doing right here, right now. So try to stay grounded in your body to make sure that you are right here, right now. Have a sense of the breath energy going all the way down to the feet, all the way down to the hands. You’re aware of your hands in your hands, your feet in your feet, your torso in your torso, your head in your head. When you’re grounded like this, then when the mind moves you can see it clearly.

Make this a pleasant place to be, so that you can stay here long periods of time, because it’s not the case that it’s going to be doing anything unskillful all the time. But you want to be here for the occasions when it does. That means you have to be alert but still: content to be here, content to be watching, content to have the opportunity to learn.