There When You Need It

We come here to this quiet corner, as Ajaan Suwat called it, to have some time to look at our minds, to train our minds with a minimum of distraction from outside. Of course, there are still distractions here, and people can focus on those. When big issues are gone, then little issues usually swell up to take their place. So we have to learn how to keep the issues small.

A lot of it has to do with how you talk to yourself. We focus on the breath, and one of the things we learn about is how the mind talks to itself. In fact, that’s one of the purposes of focusing on the breath: to see how the mind is talking to itself right here, right now.

Some people say, “When you meditate on your breath, you’re not really secure, because when the time comes to die, your breath is going to leave you, and then where are you going to go?” That’s because they don’t understand breath meditation. You’re learning about bodily fabrication, which is the breath, but you’re also learning about verbal fabrication—how you talk to yourself; mental fabrication—the perceptions you hold in mind, the feelings you focus on.

Tthe Buddha teaches meditation—breath meditation, specifically—to make you sensitive to those other kinds of fabrication, too, because those are the ones that will be the big problem when you die. How you talk to yourself, what you tell yourself at that point, can direct you to a good place or to a really bad place. So you want to get sensitive to the mind’s inner conversation and learn how to direct it in the right way.

Realize that if you’re talking to yourself in a way that gives rise to greed, aversion, or delusion, you can change the way you talk, develop some new habits inside. This is why we listen to the Dhamma; this is why we read the Dhamma: to get ideas about how a good inner conversation can be conducted.

The Buddha also teaches us good images to keep in mind, like his image of the turner. Back in those days, they didn’t have lathes to turn wood for you. If you wanted to make a banister, you had to turn it yourself. So you had a bow with a string, and the string went around the wood, and you could pull it back and forth, back and forth. With the other hand, you put the wood under your toe, and then you had a knife right near the toe. Then, depending on how deep you wanted the cut to go, you would take a long turn or a short turn. That meant you had to be aware of your whole body at the time, not just the spot where the blade hit the wood, but also your arm as you’re turning the wood, whether you wanted a long turn or a short turn.

That’s his image for doing breath meditation. You’re aware of the whole body. There may be one focal point where the breath is most prominent, but you have to be aware of the whole body all at once.

Keep that image in mind. And be very sensitive to the images that you hold in mind, because again, they can take you to good places or bad places when the breath leaves you, and all you’ve got is the verbal fabrication and the mental fabrication. But by that time, if you’ve been a good meditator, you’re going to be really good at directing your verbal fabrication in the right way. The things you think about, the images you hold in mind, the feelings you focus on: You realize you do have the choice.

As we practice meditation, we’re practicing making good choices, so that when the time comes to perform, we’re ready. So get to know the breath really well, and as you do, you get to know your mind really well as well. Then that can be your quiet corner inside that you can take with you wherever you go.