Right Here & Now

We close our eyes as we meditate because we want to look into the mind. We don’t want to be distracted by things outside. It is true that you want to be able to stay with the breath as an anchor as you go through the day, but it’s also good to give the mind time to just be by itself, so you can look into it.

Here it is, without anything much coming in from outside. There’s just the sound of the talk, the sensation of your body sitting here. And yet still the mind can stir up all kinds of things. Why is that? Where do they come from? To see that, you have to get the mind really still.

It’s like trying to listen to a faraway sound. You have to make yourself very, very still to detect when the sound is there, when it’s not. If you make any movement, the movement will cover up the sound. Then you’re not really sure whether there was a sound there or not.

So get the mind as quiet as you can with the breath, and then any movements of the mind will become a lot clearer. As the breath gets more and more calm, more and more soothing, more gentle, it, too, becomes less and less of a distraction. After all, we’re here not to get the breath. We use the breath as an aid in the practice. We can make the breath comfortable. It helps to give the mind a good place to stay here in the present moment. We think of that sense of comfort spreading through the body. It’s good for the health of the body, good for the health of the mind.

But there comes a point where you have to focus more attention on the mind itself, because the breath is not the problem. The breath is not the cause of suffering. The way you fabricate the breath contributes to your suffering, if you do it in ignorance. If you do it in knowledge, though, it’s part of the path. So look at how you talk to yourself about the breath, how the decisions are made in the mind when to breathe in, when to breathe out. They happen automatically, but they also happen because some decisions are being made on a subterranean level. To detect that level, you have to dig down.

So there’s a lot to understand here, a lot to know, a lot to discover. Some people say, “What is there to the breath? It’s just in and out, in and out.” But as Ajaan Lee once said, “If that’s all you see, then that’s all there is.” Yet there is more to see. In particular, you get to see how the mind gets involved in shaping the present moment, because that’s where the suffering is.

Sometimes we suffer from past karma. But it’s not so much the past karma that makes us suffer, it’s how we relate to the results of past karma. That’s something we can train. A thought comes into the mind without your having intended it: That’s past karma. What are you going to do with that thought? How do you deal with it? That’s your present karma. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, things come in through the senses. That’s past karma. Your responsibility is your present karma. What are you doing right now? Get to know that really well.

All too often we’re not fully here. We let things go on automatic pilot, like those self-driving cars. Sometimes they work okay, and sometimes they run over people without realizing it. So we want to be here to make conscious decisions about what you’re going to focus on, what you’re going to do, how you’re going to shape your present moment.

So get really interested in what’s going on right here, because there’s a lot going on that we tend to slough over, that we tend to hide. Yet there’s really a lot to learn—a lot of good things to learn. So settle in right here. Pay full attention, and you’ll get to see some things you never saw before.