Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat
September 23, 2024

There’s a passage where the Buddha compares the different aspects of the path to the parts of a chariot. A lot of the comparisons don’t mean much to us now because we’re not familiar with chariots, but some of the parts can correspond to what we know about cars, trucks, and other vehicles. One of them is that the chariot has a driver—a charioteer—and the charioteer is mindfulness. Mindfulness is what directs everything else.

It’s a very dynamic picture. The mindfulness has to keep in mind where you’re supposed to be going and watch where you’re actually going.

Seeing where you’re actually going, of course, is the function of alertness. The charioteer has to then compare that with the question: Are we going where we want to go? Then he has to steer the chariot in the right direction.

As I said, this gives a very dynamic picture. Sometimes mindfulness has a very static image: You just note whatever’s coming up in the present moment. You accept it, and let it go, accept, let it go, without any sense that you’re going anywhere, or that the things you’re watching are going anywhere, either.

But actually, everything you do, say, and think, is going someplace. It has its consequences. That’s what the teaching on karma is all about. Our thoughts have arrows in them. They’re pointing in a direction. So we want to make sure we’re going in the right direction. That’s what mindfulness is for.

It starts as a faculty of the memory. If you think of the charioteer, he has to keep a map in mind of where the different roads go. He also has to remember to recognize what’s coming up: where the obstacles are, where the problems are, so that he can work his way around them, recognizing what needs to be done.

It’s like that story that Mark Twain tells of when he was learning to be a captain on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. At the end of his first day, the captain came to him and said, “Okay, now tell me how many bends we went through in the river and where the sandbars were.” Mark Twain was taken aback, because there were a lot of bends. The captain said, “Look, if you’re going to steer a steamboat down the river, you have to recognize each bend, because each bend has its own characteristics. It has sandbars here, sandbars there. The current runs here, the current runs there. You have to recognize that for each bend in the river.”

In the same way, as you practice you have to recognize, when something comes up in the mind: Is it a skillful quality, is it an unskillful quality? If it’s unskillful, what kind of unskillful quality is it? You’ve got all those different hindrances that could get in the way, and that’s just a basic list. There are lots of other things that can get in the way as well.

Then you have to remember what to do: When sensual desire comes up, how do you handle it? How have you handled it in the past? What’s gotten good results? Try that again. If it doesn’t get good results this time, use your ingenuity. Work on a new solution to the problem.

You can’t just let the problem fester there and you can’t just accept it. You can watch it for a while, but with the purpose of figuring out where the allure is. Sometimes when desire comes up, the allure is for the object of your desire. Sometimes it has to do more with your perception—or lots of different perceptions around the object. Or your perception of your relationship to the object. Or just the desire for desire itself. Once you can locate the focal point of the desire, then you can figure out what to do.

So, you have to be observant, you have to be alert, and you have to have a fund of knowledge. This is what we build up as we practice. Remember the Buddha’s definition of mindfulness: the ability to remember what was done and said even a long time ago. In this case, what was done was what you learned from others and what you’ve done in the past as you’ve meditated.

Similarly with ill will: Sometimes the cure for ill will is trying to develop goodwill, and sometimes that’s scratching where it doesn’t itch. So you have to figure out exactly where the ill will is located. And why would you have any ill will for someone? Why would you want somebody to suffer?

You could think of all the bad things they’ve done, but then you ask yourself, “What good comes out of seeing somebody suffer, even if they’ve done bad things?”

There are a lot of people who, when they get punished for their bad deeds, don’t take it to heart. They have all kinds of excuses for arguing as to why they shouldn’t have been punished that way. It’s a lot better if you can think of the person suddenly coming to his or her senses and realizing that it was a mistake—whatever they did—and then resolving not to repeat that mistake. That’s what goodwill means: hoping that people can voluntarily come to their senses. If there’s anything you can do to help in that direction, you’re happy to do it. That way, you make the world a better place.

Otherwise, we have the back and forth that we see going on all around us. “So-and-so hit me, so I’ve got to hit them back harder.” And of course then they’re going to hit you harder. It just escalates. This is the way it is on a children’s playground, and this is the way it is in the world at large.

I knew a monk in Thailand one time who had a number of students who were very highly placed in the government. He said that when they’d come and talk to him about their problems, it was like listening to four-year-olds: “He did that to me. She did that to me. I’ve got to get back…”

That’s the mindset that’s going to ruin the world. You can see it played out on a large scale, and you look at your own mind and ask yourself, “Why do I play along with that game?”

So these are some of the things you keep in mind when you recognize that you’re actually getting involved in ill will.

Similarly with sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, and doubt about the Buddha’s teachings, doubt about yourself: You’ve encountered these hindrances before, and it’s good to remember how you’ve gotten past them.

If they’re coming on really strong this time and they don’t respond to your old methods, well, use your ingenuity. The important thing is that you learn to recognize a problem as a problem, and that something has to be done about it. You don’t just let things fester in the mind.

Some people have the attitude that when an emotion comes up, you have to allow yourself to really feel it, “get into it.” Well, the Buddha’s actually saying, No, you’ve got to get out.

But there are skillful and unskillful ways of getting out. The unskillful way is to deny it. The skillful way is to be willing to watch it, but from the outside. See where it came from, see where it’s going, and ask yourself, “Is this really where I want to go?” You’re going to need this ability to step out as much as you can as you go through life. Otherwise, your emotions take over. They color everything you see as you “get into” them. That’s what becoming is: getting into a hindrance, getting into an emotion.

You’ve got to realize that they’ll take you places you don’t want to go. So you basically say, “Okay, stop the car. I want to get out, or change the direction we’re going in.” This is mindfulness in the driver’s seat, making sure you’re going in the right direction.

Just ask yourself, “Here you are. Your body is relatively healthy. You’re relatively alert. Whatever pains there may be in the body are not overwhelming. What are you going to do when things do get really bad, and the mind will tend to slip away? Who’s going to be in charge?” You have to have mindfulness in charge. You have to have mindfulness in the driver’s seat.

So, you’ve got to develop this quality of stepping out of your mind states and seeing where they’re going. If they’re going in the wrong direction, direct them in a new way. As I said, every mind state is going to take you someplace. They’re not just static bubbles welling up and then bursting. They’re currents, like the currents of a river. Or you can compare them to the engine of your car: You turn on the engine, and it’s going to go someplace.

So with all your actions, you have to see them as part of a process. They come from someplace in the mind and they go someplace out into the world. You’ve got to decide: Are they going to the right place? Get used to developing this habit now of putting mindfulness in the driver’s seat, and it will serve you well when things get more difficult in life.

Just imagine when you’re on your deathbed. Or imagine if you have a sudden death, but you don’t have the luxury of a deathbed. Either way, when you realize that you can’t stay here anymore, the mind is going to run off in every direction, like the story of the man who jumped on a horse and rode off in all four directions at once. You need a part of the mind that’s trained not to go along with those things, that can step back and say, “I’ve got to direct this chariot, I’ve got to direct this car in a good direction, at the very least make sure it stays on the road to a good rebirth where I can continue practicing.”

So, tend to this quality in the mind—this ability to step back—to see where you’re going, and to change direction when you have to, mindful of the fact that we’re always going, going, going. You want to make sure you’re going in the right direction.