The Buddha’s Medicine

Close your eyes and take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. Focus your attention there and keep it there. And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change it. We’re here to find a comfortable place for the mind to stay in the present moment. And you can create that comfortable place by the way you breathe.

So. Try long breathing for a while, then short breathing—and then compare. Which feels better? Fast or slow. Which feels better? Heavy or light. Which feels better? Deep or shallow. Which feels better? Get a breath that feels really good right now, and as long as it continues feeling good, stay with it. If it gets so that it doesn’t feel so good anymore, you can change. Keep adjusting things so they’re just right.

The sense of well-being that we try to develop through the concentration is part of the Buddha’s program for treating our diseases. As he saw after he came out from his awakening experience, the beings of the world are on fire with fever—the fevers of greed, aversion, delusion. But we don’t recognize them as fevers. Oftentimes we like them. But it’s just that the mind is ill. It’s feverish. It needs medicine.

Like the medicines of the world, there are at least two kinds. There are medicines that develop your resistance and medicines that kill off the germs.

With concentration you’re trying to develop your resistance, so that you feel good inside. You have a sense of being well fed inside. You’re with a good object. If you want, you can even think Buddho together with the breath. You can develop a sense of well-being so that you’re not so hungry for things outside.

It’s when we’re hungry that we gobble down things that have lots of germs in them. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations are teeming with germs. If our resistance is up, we can deal with a lot of these things and not get sick. But then there are some things that no matter how good your resistance is, they’re going to make you sick. So you have to watch out for those.

That’s where you need the Buddha’s other medicine, which is the medicine of discernment—to see that when you take certain things in, you have to be very careful how you take them in. If something comes in and makes you a little feverish, try to notice that as quickly as you can. Then do something to counteract it: If something makes you greedy, look at its bad side. If something makes you angry, look at its good side. Have this ability to counteract whatever problems are coming up in the mind.

The Buddha gives you lots of recommendations. Like when we have the contemplation of the parts of the body: That’s for dealing with pride, that’s for dealing with lust. When we have goodwill, that’s for dealing with feelings of anger and ill will. The chants are part of the medicine. The meditation is part of the medicine.

So learn how to treat the diseases you have in the mind. Recognize that they are diseases. Greed is a disease. Anger is a disease. Delusion is a disease. Learn how to recognize them. See that they are diseases. Make full use of the Buddha’s system of treatment. If you do just the building up of the resistance, without killing off the germs, the germs are going to come in and infect you sometimes, no matter how good your concentration is. But if you just do the contemplation without the concentration, the medicine can be strong, but it won’t be able to help the body because the body isn’t cooperating.

So. Build up your resistance and learn how to take your medicine. The Buddha set forth this course of treatment 2,600 years ago and it’s still effective. It’s been proven again and again and again that it really works—if you follow the course. So take the Buddha seriously. He set out the Dhamma and Vinaya. He said that when he was gone, this would be our teacher in his stead. So show respect for the Dhamma; show respect for the Vinaya. Use them to treat the illnesses of your mind. That’s when you realize the value of these medicines.

He was kind enough to set this out, and we should be wise enough to accept his help. When we accept his help and get benefits from it, then we can pass it on to other people as well—with our certificate that, yes, this does work.