Your Island Inside

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. And wherever you feel the breath clearly, focus your attention right there. Then try to stay there.

This is going to take some doing, because the mind’s tendency is to look around, not see too much, and then move on, move on, move on. But if you stay here, you find that things begin to develop. They may develop slowly to begin with, but it’s going to be something good inside once you get this developed. As the Buddha said, you have to make yourself your own island, make yourself your refuge—and you do that by establishing mindfulness right here. If you try to establish mindfulness outside, he says it’s like trying to establish a house in the middle of a river. It gets swept away.

But here’s an island. You can establish yourself here.

In the beginning, it seems like it gets swept away easily, too—but it doesn’t have to be. You develop the habits of coming back, coming back, coming back, and finally the mind gets used to being here. Then it’s a solid foundation inside. That’s what the mind needs. It needs a good, solid place to stand. Otherwise, it’s like standing on a boat in the river. You move a little bit and the boat moves. You move too much and you tip over. But if you’re on an island, you move; the island doesn’t move. The island is solid. You can depend on it. That’s the kind of quality we’re trying to develop inside.

So focus your attention right here. The Buddha didn’t deny that there are pleasures outside, but then they get swept away, swept away. You get swept away, too. And as you get swept away, you try to hold on to things. He says it’s like grass on the side of the river. Either the grass gets pulled away as you try to hold on to it, or else it cuts your hands.

Yet once you have your island inside, then however the world may change, you have something inside that doesn’t change. That’s your refuge. That’s your solid place inside.

So develop this solid place. Get used to being on this island, because it’s where true happiness can be found. As the Buddha said, there is no happiness other than peace. We’re used to the pleasures that come from things that flow past, flow past—grabbing a little bit and then having to let it go, grabbing a little bit and letting it go.

But with this, you grab, you hold on, and you stay. As you stay here and settle in, then the mind has a place where it can look around. When you’re still in the flow of the river, you get turned around and upside down. Sometimes you don’t know which way is north, which way is south. But if you’re on solid ground, then you can get your bearings—having an idea of what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s skillful, what’s not skillful—because there’s so much in the world right now that is full of wrong view: the way people are looking for happiness, harming one another, setting a bad example. And the happiness they find, again, gets swept away, swept away. In the meantime, they’ve harmed themselves along with everyone else.

So look for your true happiness inside. Have a strong sense of what’s skillful, what’s not skillful. Do only the things that are skillful—in other words, harmless. In that way, you’re safe. You’ve got a good solid foundation right here, and you’re not doing anything to destroy that foundation. That’s when you really have refuge.

We talk about taking Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha as our refuge. But as the Buddha said, you have to take yourself as your refuge. What this means, of course, is that you try to develop the qualities of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha within you. Those are the things you can depend on.