Pavarana
October 29, 2023

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long deep in-and-out breaths. Wherever you feel the sensation of breathing in the body, focus your attention there. And just stay right there: all the way in with the in-breath, all the way out with the out -breath—and in the spaces in between. Then ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it is, keep it up. If not, you can change. Make the breath shorter, more shallow, faster, slower, heavier, lighter. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good right now.

Breathing is something we do all the time. We don’t think there’s a right way or wrong way of breathing, but there are skillful, and unskillful ways of breathing. You can breathe in a way that aggravates anger, in a way that aggravates fear, or you can breathe in a way that counteracts those emotions. It’s good to be sensitive to what you’re doing on this level. The Buddha calls this bodily fabrication, which means there’s an element of intention in this bodily process. We usually let it go on automatic pilot, yet there’s part of the mind that’s monitoring when it comes in, when it goes out. However, this monitoring work is usually done without any supervision, so oftentimes you wind up breathing in ways that are harmful to you. So here’s a good chance to get in touch with your breath and see what’s good for the body, good for the mind. It makes you more and more sensitive to what you’re doing.

This is the whole purpose of the Buddha’s teachings. He says you’re acting in ways that are causing suffering, but you could be acting in ways that put an end to suffering. So why cause suffering? Change your ways. And in order to change your ways, it’s important to see when you’ve been doing something wrong, so that you can correct yourself. If you don’t admit that you’ve been doing anything wrong, it’s hard to learn.

Today is the last day of the Rains Retreat. It’s the day of the Pavarana. The word pavarana literally means invitation. In this case, the monks invite criticism from one another. If someone has committed an offense, he hasn’t confessed it and you want to talk to him about it, normally he has the right to refuse to talk about it. But the Pavarana is the day when everybody has to talk. Everybody has to be open to criticism. After all, this is a good time for that. The monks have been together for three months. We know one another’s behavior. If someone is making an accusation, we know the accuser; we know the accused. If there’s any controversy that comes from bringing up an accusation, well, tomorrow we can leave.

So now’s a good time to air things out if they have to be aired out. If nothing has to be aired out, then it’s a sign that we’ve lived together, and we can guarantee one another’s behavior. When monks leave a monastery, back in the old days, you’d find a monk out in the forest. You had no idea whether he was a good monk or a bad monk. But if he could claim that he’d been in a monastery for the three months and had gone through the Pavarana without any problem, that was a sign that his behavior was acceptable to his fellow monks.

The important thing about all this is that you have to have at least some time every year when you’re open to criticism. Actually, the Buddha says it’s good to be open to criticism at all times. He says you should regard people who point out your faults as people who are pointing out treasure to you because you’re able to see faults that you didn’t even know about.

Being open about your faults with other people means you’re also going to be open about them with yourself. That’s how you can learn.

The Buddha himself learned that way. He didn’t start out perfect. He started out with a lot of imperfections, a lot of misunderstandings. But he was able to act on what he thought was best, and if it wasn’t good enough, he tried to find something even better. He was always willing to make corrections to his behavior—always willing to see his mistakes, admit his mistakes, and then learn from them. That was how he grew in the Dhamma.

So you have to remember when you’re learning the Dhamma that it’s not just a matter of learning what’s in the books. You’re learning about your own behavior through your own behavior. Because, as I said, the Buddha’s main teaching, the four noble truths, teach you that you’re causing suffering. He’s pointing out exactly where what you’re doing is causing suffering and how you can change. If you can admit, “Yes, I do behave in those wrong ways,” that’s a major step in getting your behavior right. As the Buddha said, when you see your own foolishness, to that extent you’re wise.

So always be open to criticism. If someone is wrong in their criticism, well, you’ve learned something about them. If they’re right, well you’ve learned something about you. Either way, you’ve learned. And it’s through learning like this that we grow—that we learn how to be better and better in our behavior, so that we cause less and less suffering for ourselves and for the people around us.