A Sense of Yourself

This is the time of year when people reflect on themselves, to think about what they can do for the rains retreat, what they need to do in order to improve themselves. It’s based on what the Buddha calls having a sense of yourself. And he gives you six things to think about.

First is conviction. How is your conviction in the Buddha’s awakening? Is it strong? Is it enough to get you up early in the morning? Is it enough to keep you meditating late at night? Is it enough to make you want to keep on meditating in the little cracks that are provided in the course of the day?

The second topic is your virtue. How are you in the five precepts? Can you take time to take the eight precepts and see what that does? That adds the principle of restraint, which is a good skill to master.

The third topic is your generosity. Are there ways that you can be more generous, not only with your material things, but also with your time, your energy, your forgiveness?

How about your learning? That’s another topic. What more could you do to learn about the Dhamma? What areas are you weak in?

The fifth topic is your ingenuity. How are you at taking the Dhamma teachings and applying them to your life in a way that really is appropriate for what you’re doing, what your weaknesses are, what your strengths are?

And then, finally, discernment: How good are you at discerning when the mind is clinging to something, when the mind has let go of that clinging, and when it’s started to cling to something else? A lot of times people say, “I’ve let go. I’ve let go,” and then they start clinging to that identity as a letting-go-er. So you have to be very careful about that, which is why the Buddha compares the discernment of the four noble truths to an archer who can fire shots in rapid succession. When an instance of clinging or craving comes up, you see it immediately. When one has been dropped and another one’s been picked up, you see that immediately, too.

So how are you on these different qualities? These are the areas where the Buddha says that if you really want to practice well, look at yourself in terms of these six topics: conviction, virtue, generosity, learning, ingenuity, and discernment. See where you’re lacking and use this next period of three months as a good time to work on that, so you can bring them all up to a high level—even though the rains retreat is very much a convention here in the West because it’s not raining.

Over in India, the people really did have to stop for the rains. The roads were all muddy, and sometimes people would actually plant rice in what would usually be a road. So they didn’t like people traveling around. they forced the merchants to stop traveling. The monks would stop, stay in place. And as long as they were going to stay in place, they figured, well, let’s make a special time out of this to benefit from one another’s company, to give some extra oomph to the practice.

Here in the West, our roads are clear. Nobody’s planting rice in the roads. But still, it’s good to adopt that custom to give yourself three months when you’re trying to make a special effort. Three months is not too long a time to see if this effort is going be good for you.

So as long as we have the convention, let’s make good use of it. We get a better sense of what our strengths and what our weaknesses are and how we can use our strengths in order to compensate for our weaknesses and bring our weaknesses up to being strong as well.