Keeping the Buddha in Mind

All things, the Buddha said, are rooted in desire. Which means that things are always moving.

Our desires don’t just sit there. They have an aim, they want to go someplace—and this is where we need guidance, because all too often we aim in the wrong directions. It’s very easy to forget the good things we’ve learned, which is why, in addition to guidance, we need mindfulness, the ability to remember.

Mindfulness, you have to remember, is not just awareness. You’re not simply on the passive side receiving things. You’re acting on your desires—and you have to remember which kinds of desires are worth going with and which ones are not. This is why right mindfulness goes together with right effort and right view.

The Buddha says these three qualities circle around every factor of the path. Right view tells you what the right version of that factor is and what the wrong version is. Right effort tries to abandon the wrong version and develop the right one. And right mindfulness is there to remember how to do that.

In other words, you develop right view, and then right mindfulness keeps it in mind to give direction to your efforts.

This is one of the reasons why the Buddha has you focus on the breath, and develop mindfulness around the breath. It’s like a string around your finger. Every time you look at the string, you remember why you tied the string around the finger. And here, if you imbue your breath with mindfulness, it means that wherever you go, you’ve got the Buddha talking to you right here in the breath.

So learn to associate your breath with skillful mental qualities. Being alert in this way, you keep yourself on track because this is what we all have to do: We have to keep ourselves on track because nobody else is going to do it for us.

Other people give advice, but it’s up to us to agree with the advice and then to remember it. All too often, all the good things we’ve learned just go out the window as soon as a very strong emotion comes in. It’s like a wind that blows in, blowing all the Dhamma out of your mind.

Especially when you’re living in a world of wrong view, which most of the world is. What gets blown into your mind are attitudes that other people say are important, the issues they have.

Remember that the Buddha was very particular about which issues he would address and which ones he wouldn’t. He wasn’t the sort of person who’d take on all comers, who had established a philosophy that he was going to defend in the debating halls, because his teaching was not the kind of teaching designed for debating halls. It was designed to live with, and to offer guidance on what to do to make you happy.

Think of how wisdom begins with that question: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” Think about that.

That’s how the Buddha says wisdom begins—with the desire for long-term happiness. It’s wise in the sense that it realizes that happiness is going to depend on your actions, that long-term happiness is possible, and of course, that it’s better than short-term.

It’s a very basic principle, but again, it’s one of those ones that we tend to forget. It’s so easy to go for the quick fix. Remind yourself that genuine happiness has to have some wisdom about it. When it’s wise, then you can begin to trust it.

The same with compassion: You realize that if your happiness depends on other people’s suffering, it’s not going to last. Again, you would think this is something that people in the world would understand. But then you look at the world: People are going around very casually, wiping other people out, thinking that once those people are gone, they’re gone for good; not realizing that the kamma is going to come back at the people who wiped them out.

So you have to take the happiness of other people into consideration. You have to think about their happiness, too, to make sure that your happiness doesn’t harm them. Now, some of the things in your happiness may not please them, but as long as you don’t harm them, you’re okay. You’re wise, and you’re compassionate.

Then finally there’s the quality of purity: that once you decide that you want to be harmless, you really are careful to look at your actions. “Watch yourself”: It’s something we say to people when they’re going into a dangerous place, or they have dangerous tendencies inside themselves. Well, that’s the situation in the world.

One of the strangest phenomena you see in modern Buddhism is the idea that everything is interconnected and wonderful, and that somehow all we have to do is just embrace our interconnectedness. We’ll instinctively know the right thing to do and we’ll automatically be compassionate, kind, and good.

But the Buddha saw that the world is a dangerous place, and your mind is a dangerous mind. And many of our connections in the world with other people who are dangerous, too.

So if you’re going to look for happiness, try to do it in a way that’s wise and compassionate, and then really be careful about what you actually do: That’s how you’re pure.

This is where heedfulness comes in. The Buddha’s instructions to Rahula about looking at each action, starting with the intention, and then looking at the actual results you’re getting while you’re doing it, and then the long-term results, and then learning from that, stocking your mindfulness with better and better knowledge, better and better things to remember: That’s how you make yourself pure, he said.

In other words, you don’t just mouth words of wisdom or words of compassion. Your actions really are wise; they really are compassionate. And your good intentions are not just good, but they’re also skillful. This is a skill we have to master.

The Buddha’s basically saying that if you look for your happiness in the right way, you develop wisdom, compassion, purity—all the qualities of the Buddha himself. Then as you learn these lessons, you keep them in mind to make sure that your desires keep going in the right direction.

This is what we have to keep in mind as we go through the day. As I was saying this morning, you want to think of the daily life as something you do in the context of your practice, and not the other way around.

All too many people ask, “How do I fit the practice into my daily life?” As if daily life were made out of concrete, with little cracks, like a sidewalk, and you’ve got to fit the practice into those little cracks.

That’s not what you want. You want the practice to be large and encompassing. You want it to be the context, and then fit daily life into the practice. Anything that’s relevant to the training of your mind, you focus on that as having top priority. Anything that gets in the way of training your mind, you say, “I’ve got to just drop that.”

What this means, of course, is you have to look at your daily activities—your job, your family—as opportunities to develop the perfections. If there’s a situation in which you cannot develop the perfections, then you’ve got to get out. So, let the practice take priority. Always keep it in mind.

This is why it’s so important that we understand what the Buddha meant by mindfulness. The word sati comes from a Vedic term that means “to remember.” Some people say, “Well, when the Buddha picked up the term from the Vedas, he just used it in a totally different way. He meant people to pay attention, and Pali didn’t have a word for paying attention, so he had to use the word for remember.”

That’s not the case. Pali has a perfectly good word for attention, manasikāra. Every time we chant one of the Buddha’s sermons where he addresses the monks, he says, “Pay attention.” The word he uses there is not sati, it’s another word entirely. Sati is to remember. You’re trying to remember the many good lessons that the Buddha has given for what to do in different situations.

Some of the precepts cover all situations. Other aspects of his teaching cover specific issues that are likely to come up. And because everything you’re going to experience is based on a desire, you want the Buddha’s input into those desires, to make sure you’re on the right track.

So be mindful of what the Buddha taught, be mindful of where he recommends you go, because everything he taught was for the sake of going to happiness.

The difficulty of the path is that we have other ideas for happiness. We have to learn how to straighten out our ideas, to realize that the Buddha really was right. Give him the benefit of the doubt.

As he said, there was that time when the Jains said that happiness is found through pain, and they talked about King Pasenadi living a more pleasant life than the Buddha. The Buddha said, “How do you know that? Can King Pasenadi sit for seven days without moving and find happiness?” “Well, no.” Yet the Buddha could. Someone who can do that has really mastered the skill.

So give him the benefit of the doubt when he says, “Try to be generous. Try to be virtuous. Try to train your mind.” Look at every aspect of your life as a part of developing good qualities in the mind: When you’re kind, when you have good will for everybody you’re dealing with, when you’re patient, when you’re equanimous—the qualities you need to master when you’re dealing with other people—you’re also developing good qualities in your own mind. You’re going to benefit, too.

So fit your life into the practice. Keep the Buddha’s recommendations in mind for how you can find true happiness. Because they work.