Stand Outside Your Thoughts

Close your eyes. 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 then get interested in the question of whether the breath is comfortable. What does the body need right now? If you’re tired, you want to breathe in a way that’s more energizing. If you’re tense, you want to breathe in a way that’s more relaxing. So see what the body needs right now. Try to provide it with the breath. Take an interest in the breath right here. As for any other thoughts that come along, you don’t have to get interested in them.

This is often our problem. We start out with a few breaths, and then we’re off with something else because we find our thoughts so interesting, and the breath is not interesting at all. But you have to realize the breath is going to be your safe place. The mind can churn up all kinds of things, skillful and unskillful, and if you don’t have a place to step outside, then you just fall into whatever the thought may be, especially if there’s an emotion that goes with the thought, like desire or anger.

You have to be able to step out and see: To what extent is that thought right? And if you follow through with it, what will the consequences be? This is how the Buddha got on his path, stepping back from his thoughts and then sorting them out—not in terms of whether he liked them or even whether he believed them. The question was, is this a skillful thought to follow? Where does it come from in the mind? What kind of qualities in the mind does it come from? And what does it lead you to do if you were to act on it?

You want to be able to step away from your thoughts and pass judgment on them, examine them, inspect them, not just jump right into them. All too often, say, anger comes up, and we jump right into the anger. Then we have added thoughts that say you’re justified in being angry. It really is something that is outrageous. And you have this long, long, long conversation about whatever it is that’s got you worked up.

You have to ask yourself, “If I continue with this conversation, where is it going to lead?” Sometimes you say, “It’s because I’m angry, I see what’s wrong, and I can do something about it.” But it’s very rare that, when you’re angry, you can see clearly what’s going on. It looks clear because you’re focused on one, little thing, and you lose the larger picture. Then, after you’ve acted on the anger and the anger is gone, you look back and you realize how stupid you were. Well, learn how to not be stupid to begin with. We’ve seen anger many times before. We know what it does.

Sometimes you say, “It’s through anger that things get done in the world.” But look at what gets done through anger in the world. People get killed on a massive scale just because of anger. So you have to see the drawbacks of that kind of thinking. Then ask yourself: What’s the allure? Why do people like anger? It gives them a sense of power. But if you have power and then you misuse it, then it’s not worth having it to begin with.

If you’re going to do something useful about things that are wrong with the world, you have to get the anger out of the way so that you can see the situation clearly and think strategically about what needs to be done—what would be the best thing to do or say—rather than just jumping into the anger.

So learn how to step back, learn how to talk to yourself about anger in a new way, as something you don’t want to get involved with. If it’s right that something is really wrong, then you have to get the anger out of the way to see clearly what the cause is and what the possible solution might be. So either way, whether it’s justified anger or not justified anger, you’ve got to get out of it.

The breath provides you a place where you can get out, step back, be with a sense of well-being in the way you breathe and then see what the anger looks like from the outside. Learn how to look at all your thoughts from the outside, and you’ll be in a much better position to find the path that leads to the end of suffering, rather than just continuing on with your old ways again and again and again.

Anger is easy because we’re used to creating it. It’s like a language. If the language is something you grow up with, you’re fluent in it, then it’s very easy to say things in that language, even though it may not be the language that’s needed right now. So even though the new language you’re learning may be more difficult, but if it’s a language that’s going to be really helpful where you are, you’ll learn how to look at things through the prism of that language, express it in that language.

The same way with the practice of the Dhamma: You have to step out of your thoughts, see them from the perspective of: What would the Buddha do? What would he say?

Someone once asked him, “Is there anything, anyone that he would recommend killing?”

He said, “Yes. Kill your anger.” That was it.

So. Look at your anger from the outside. Don’t jump into it. And provide yourself with a good place to stay outside. Otherwise, if you’re staying outside and it’s not comfortable, there’s no sense of security or ease. Then you’re going to jump into whatever comes along. In that way, you lose control. You want to be in charge of what thoughts you think, what thoughts you don’t think, and develop a good set of standards for which things are worth thinking and which things are not worth thinking. Then you’re safe not only from dangers outside, but also from the dangers that can come welling up from within.