Monotasking

When you have time to meditate like this, try to give yourself 100 percent to the meditation. We’re so used to multitasking, talking on the phone, looking at the computer, having several windows open all at once. And nothing much gets done well.

So when are you going to look after your mind?

You’ve got to give it top priority. And you want to do the job well, which means you have to engage in monotasking. Stay right here, because everything you need to know is going to come right here. When you’re with the breath in the present moment, all the different conversations of the mind will eventually show up here. You get to see them clearly.

It’s like taking a documentary of the wildlife in the savanna. You don’t have to go riding all over the savanna. You go to the waterhole. In the course of 24 hours, every animal in the savanna will have to come to the waterhole. There you get to photograph the animals one by one without having to wander here or there.

In the same way, all the different voices in your mind are going to show up here. So don’t let them pull you away into other things. It’s when the mind gets gathered around one object like this that it can really see itself.

You may say that, “My thoughts aren’t harmful.” But if you wander around with harmless thoughts for a while, even harmless thoughts get you tired. When the mind is tired, then it starts going for things that are not so harmless, not so skillful. So the mind needs a place to rest. This means you’ll be resting here and working here.

But the fact that you’re not wandering around minimizes the amount of work you have to do. You can focus it all on understanding what kind of animals are coming: which animals are good, which are bad. That’s because you’re not just making a documentary. You’re trying to clean out the savanna, because it has some pretty nasty animals out there. And you’ve got some pretty nasty animals inside you.

So. They’re going to show up here. And if you come with a good, solid foundation, it’s a lot easier to deal with them. So focus here. Stay right here. Resist the temptation to go someplace else. And have a period like this every day when you can monotask on your mind. That way, the work that needs to get done gets done well, gets done thoroughly. And you know it’s done well because you’re fully here.

A lot of times we think that the work we do as we multitask is okay. That’s because the mind that’s judging is also multitasking. It sees only glimpses. It doesn’t see things clearly. So when the mind can settle down like this, you can get a better sense of what’s right and what’s wrong inside, and what to do about it. This is the most important thing you can do. As you go through life, you pick up all kinds of things. You need to sort them out if you’re not going to be taking a lot of garbage with you.