A Promise to Yourself
August 29, 2024

The practice is a promise that you make to yourself. When you take on the precepts, nobody forces you. The Buddha himself doesn’t force you—but you might say that your suffering forces you.

You realize that you’re suffering, and you’ve got to do something about it. If you just sit back and accept it, nothing’s going to happen. You’re certainly not on the path. The Buddha teaches a path where you do something about the problem of suffering. You look at what you’re doing and you ask yourself, “What am I doing wrong?”

He has you start with the precepts. There’s that passage in the beginning of the Karaniya Metta Sutta, “This is what should be done by those who appreciate the state of peace.”

I once sat in on a class being taught by someone else on that sutta, taking it apart line by line. As he got to the first line, a hand shot up, “I thought there were no shoulds in Buddhism.” The poor teacher had to spend the whole morning explaining how there could be a should in the Dhamma.

It’s really quite easy: If you want to put an end to suffering, if you appreciate the state of peace, this is what you’ve got to do. The should is conditional. Nobody’s enforcing it, unless you enforce yourself. That’s why the precepts require mindfulness, alertness, and ardency.

You’re mindful to keep the precept in mind. You’re alert to see what you’re actually doing. And if you see that your behavior is slipping away from the standard set by the precept, you have to be ardent in getting it back.

Ardency here is basically another word for right effort. And an important part of right effort is generating desire, motivating yourself.

This then applies to the practice of concentration. You don’t just sit here letting the mind decide whether it’s going to settle down on its own or not. You have to induce it. You have to direct it. Make up your mind that you’re going to stay here and watch over it. “Putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world”: Anything that comes in to pull you away from the breath right now, you’ve got to say No, No, No.

Sometimes you have to give yourself reasons. As you can imagine, discernment is also a promise you make to yourself. You could sit there and just bliss out in the concentration and decide, “Well, this is good enough for me.” But then you have to remember what the Buddha said about fabricated happiness.

The fact that you’re sitting here with the mind quiet, nothing happening, is not going to last. Either something outside will come to disturb it or you’ll get tired of being quiet and still. So you want to remember that there’s more work to be done. Even in a quiet mind, there are still little bits and blips of disturbance coming from within.

The way the mind maintains that state of stillness contains all kinds of aggregates and mental events, acts of attention, acts of intention. There are many levels of conversation going on inside. You get one level still, and then in the stillness you begin to realize there’s another conversation going on, more subtly. “I’ve got to look into that”: That’s the proper attitude.

So you’ve got to learn how to motivate yourself to stick with the promise you’ve made. The Buddha offers three ways of thinking about this. He calls them adhipateyya, which means governing principles—what you want to have in charge of your mind.

The first principle is yourself as a governing principle. You tell yourself, “I came to this path, I got on to this path, because I wanted to put an end to suffering. If I were to fall away, what does that say about what I think about myself? Am I really concerned about myself? Do I really have compassion for myself? Do I really love myself?”

Sometimes that thought is enough to get you back on the path. You realize that it is for your own good, and if you don’t look after your own good, who’s going to look after it for you?

The world wants you to look after them, but here’s something inside that they can’t do for you. There are things that other people can do for you to help you, but doing the actual work inside—sticking with the precepts, getting the mind to settle down, and then looking deeper into that settled down mind—that’s work that only you can do. And it’s work that’s got to be done.

Think about those reflections that we chant so often: “I’m subject to aging, illness, and death, subject to separation from all that I love, and I’ve got my karma.” Ajaan Suwat used to make a lot of that last statement. He said, “There are so many things the Buddha says are not-self, not-self, but then we get to karma and he says, ‘It’s yours.’” So that’s what you’ve got. That’s what you take with you. That’s what greets you when you go to the other side.

So what do you want to take? What do you want to have greet you? You have the choice. Again, nobody else can do this for you. Again Ajaan Suwat: He said “Each of us has one person.” In other words, we have ourselves that we’re really responsible for.

You might say, “Well, I’m responsible for other members of my family, other responsibilities I have out in society.” But the really big issue is inside. You can do only so much for other people on that level; other people can do only so much for you. The real work has to be your work. And if you can’t be true to this one person that you’re responsible for, who are you going to be true to?

That’s the self as the governing principle.

Then there’s the world as the governing principle. This is not the world you ordinarily think about: the world of commerce, the world of the media. It’s the world of people who meditate. Some of those meditators have psychic powers, and some of them can read your mind. If they see you falling away from the path, what are they going to think?

Fortunately, these people tend to be people of compassion. They’re not just going to judge you as bad, but they really are concerned about you. Here you are—you’ve started on the path, and now you’re falling away. What are you doing to yourself? Think about what their perspective would be—especially those who’ve already gained awakening. They’ve seen how good awakening is.

As Ajaan Maha Boowa once said, “If you could take awakening out and show it to other people, nobody would want anything else. Nothing else would be able to sell in any market anywhere. People would just be going for awakening.”

Awakened people have seen that, and they look at you as you’re making your effort to go there. They want to encourage you. They would be behind you if they could. But if you fall away, what are they going to think?

This should give you a sense of healthy shame, and stir up also your sense of honor. Here you are: a human being, you have these abilities. Why are you not making use of them?

The texts talk about people who have virtues that are pleasing to the noble ones. Well, the whole path is pleasing to the noble ones. You think about their standards, and how it would be good to live up to their standards. We live in this world where so often we’re motivated by what other people think of us. Well, think about them. You don’t need to think about what your boss thinks about you, or what your neighbors think about you. Think about what the noble ones think about you, because they’re the ones who have your true well-being in mind, at heart.

So that’s the world as a governing principle.

Then there’s the Dhamma as a governing principle. Think about how fortunate you are that you live in a place where the Dhamma is available. The people in the Buddha’s time, on first hearing the Dhamma, would exclaim at how magnificent it was. The things that used to be murky are now clear. Things that were in the dark are now brought to light. Things that were over-turned—in other words, all upside down—have now been turned upright.

Now, this Dhamma is true at all times, but it’s not available at all times, it’s not being taught at all times. So when you’ve found the Dhamma, take advantage of the opportunity, because you don’t know how much longer that opportunity is going to last.

So these are ways of motivating yourself, of keeping your promise to yourself.

“The world is too much with us”: That’s a line from Wordsworth, and he was talking about the world of commerce. It’s just too oppressive. It fills up too much of our minds. They’re getting so they want the whole educational system to be geared toward commerce.

Here the Buddha’s offering an alternative educational system, one that’s geared toward your genuine needs—the things that only you can do for yourself. Take advantage of that opportunity.

So whether you think in terms of yourself, think in terms of the world, or think in terms of the Dhamma, there are lots of good reasons for making a good promise to yourself and then keeping it—and making it a point of honor. Realize this is a genuine expression of compassion. In light of Ajaan Suwat’s statement that the only person we really have in this world is ourselves, you want to look after yourself wisely.

There was a monk in Thailand who boiled the Buddhist teaching down to, “Don’t be selfish.” In Thai that was, yaa hen kae tua, which means, “Don’t look after yourself. Don’t be concerned about yourself.”

Ajaan Suwat would argue with that. He’d say, “If you’re really concerned with yourself—in the right way—then other people will benefit. After all, you’re not going to harm them if you’re really are wise in how you look after yourself.”

So look after yourself wisely. The people around you will benefit. They may not benefit as much as you do, but then, who else can look after you?

You’re not totally on your own. The Dhamma is there to support you. The wise people of the world are there to encourage you. But if you don’t do the work, nobody else can do it for you.

So keep at it. Learn how to keep motivating yourself so that when you hit dry periods, when things are really hard, or at other times when nothing much is happening, everything seems pretty peaceful: Whatever the situation, realize, “There’s work to be done.” There’s work that *you can do, *and it’s all good work.