Encourage Yourself

When the Buddha would give Dhamma talks, it’s said that he urged, roused, encouraged, and instructed his students. The instruction was to give them information. The urging and the rousing were to tell them: You’ve got to work harder. You can, and you’ll benefit. After all, that was the Buddha’s attitude. He was always looking for where his skills were not yet good enough and where he could improve them. So he had a very live sense that there was still work to be done.

The encouraging was to give them the confidence that, yes, they can do the work. And part of the encouraging was to have them think about the good things they’d done in the past. So you recognize that you have done good, but you could do better, yet still, you have to have that sense of confidence that, “Yes, I can do better.” That comes from reflecting on the good things you’ve done.

This is especially important when your energy level is low, because the mind tends to get depressed then, and it’s very easy to start thinking about the bad things you’ve done.

There’s a story that was told by the woman who sponsored my ordination in Thailand—she told me when I was a young monk. There was one time when Ajaan Lee was leading a group of people in meditation, and he told everybody to make a vow that tonight they wanted to see the results of their good past actions. Yet in the midst of the meditation, this one monk started shaking very violently.

They found out afterwards that he’d taken a contrary vow. He wanted to see the results of his past bad actions. He’d had a vision of himself beating up a dog and killing it. Now, it’s sometimes good to know that you have some bad karma in the past, so that it gives you some encouragement: “I’ve got to do something good.” But at the same time, you don’t want that to become a habit of focusing on your bad actions in the past, because when your energy level is down, you do need encouragement. You do need more energy.

Think about when you’re sick or when you’re dying. Imagine when you’re dying. Your energy level is going to be down. You’re not necessarily in a good mood. And whoever is in charge of your mind at that time has to have the habit of saying, “Okay, don’t focus on the bad things; focus on the good things.” You want to make that a constant habit so that you do have encouragement. Otherwise, if you keep pulling yourself down, then when you have to leave this body, that habit of pulling yourself down will continue. And you don’t want to do that. You want to pull yourself up as much as you can.

So make it a habit now of thinking of the good things you’ve done. Imprint them well in your mind, in all the different passageways in the mind. We do tend to lose some of the passageways in the mind as we get older. They say that babies when they’re born have an immense number of backup systems in their brain, and then we start losing them as we get older. So we want to make sure that all the passageways are well marked. If you’re down a bad passageway, there should be a good sign to say, This is how you get out. If you’re on a good passageway, This is how you stay on track. Imprint these things in your mind.

It’s an important part of the meditation. Sometimes we think meditation is just being aware of the present moment and that’s enough. But no, it’s not enough. You’ve got to develop good qualities, develop good habits in the mind. As your energy level gets down, make sure it’s just the bodily energy that gets down, that your mind’s energy stays solid. It can be independent of the body’s energy. And part of that is knowing how to talk to yourself, putting good people in charge of the committee inside. Make sure that they have the right attitude. Keep imprinting that habit again and again and again, because the force of habit will become quite strong as everything else falls away.

You want there to be good habits in the mind that you can depend on. That way, you become your own refuge.