Make a Difference

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. And notice where you feel the breathing in the body. Focus your attention there. And then keep it there—all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, each breath as it comes in, each breath as it goes out.

Try to make a difference here. The mind wanders around so much in the course of the day. It doesn’t have much time to rest and know itself. It rests when it sleeps. But you don’t really get to know the mind when you sleep. You want to rest, and be awake and alert at the same time.

After all, your mind is your most important possession. There’s nothing in the world that’s nearly as important as the mind is, yet we neglect it. We brush our teeth every day. But do we meditate every day? Do we look after the mind? Clean things out inside?

Take some time. Make that your vow for the rains retreat, that you’re going to sit and meditate every day. See what a difference it makes. Of course, for the meditation to make a difference, you have to stick with it. This is why consistency is such an important principle in the practice. We do a little bit and run away. Do a little bit, run away. Nothing much changes. But the whole purpose of the Buddha’s teachings is to make a change in our lives. He sees that we’re creating suffering.

The story goes that after he gained his awakening, he looked at the world with the eye of a Buddha, someone who’d finally gained awakening. He saw that all the beings were on fire with greed, aversion, and delusion. But the fires could be put out. That’s why he taught. So here we are. Look—we’ve got fires burning in our minds right now.

And here’s the medicine: Be alert; watch what’s going on in your mind. Get to know your intentions really well, because everything comes out of your intentions. When you’re about to say something, about to do something, even about to think something, ask yourself, why? What do you expect out of it? If the intention doesn’t look good—if you know it’s going to harm yourself or harm other people—why do it? Why follow it? At the very least, you’re wasting your time.

We don’t have much time here on this world. We’re passing through. But we do have this human body while we’re here. We have this human mind. So let’s get the most out of them by making a difference. So when the mind has an inclination to wander off, you can say, “No.” You’ve wandered off how many times? That’s what samsara is. It’s just a wandering around. And where does it go? It goes nowhere. How about staying still for a while?—and staying still consistently. See what happens.

When you’re consistent, you get to see a lot of things you wouldn’t see otherwise. It’s like watching a movie on TV. If you walk into the room, look at it for five minutes, walk out for ten minutes, walk in again for five minutes, it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on because so much can happen in the ten minutes you’re away. If you really want to understand what’s going on, you have to watch the thing continually.

The same with your mind: You want to be continuous in how you watch your mind. Then you’re going to get to see things you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, the things that get done when you tend to turn your gaze away to something else. So take some time every day. Watch over your mind. Clean out your mind. You’ll find that by taking care of this most important possession of yours, you do really make a difference in your life.