Strong Through Commitment

When the Buddha describes the steps that lead up to suffering, he starts with ignorance—a particular kind of ignorance: not looking at things in terms of the four noble truths. In other words, you may know about the truths, but if you actually don’t use them to frame your experience, you’re still ignorant.

Then, based on that ignorance, he says, the next step is that you engage in fabrication—saṅkhārā is the Pali word. You put things together. In particular, you put together the present moment. You’ve got some raw material coming in from your past kamma and then you engage in this process of fabrication to turn that material into something that’s coherent, that you can actually use. The problem is, if you do this with ignorance, you put things together in a pretty bad way.

So a lot of the Buddha’s teachings are specific instructions in how to fabricate more skillfully. They’re all pretty basic things: bodily fabrication—the way you breathe; verbal fabrication—the way you talk to yourself; and then, mental fabrication—the perceptions, the labels and images that give meaning to things, as when we say, “This is this and that’s that.” As with a stoplight: You label the red as “red.” In the next step, part of you asks, “What does it mean?” “It means ‘Stop!’” The next question is, “Is it worth listening to?” And the voice that says, “Yes, listen to this, pay attention”—that’s also perception. We go through life, applying perceptions to things.

We have to remember that these perceptions are only partial. They’re true to some extent. They’re like sketches of reality. We spend our lives dealing with sketches. Hopefully, we find some that are true enough that they can serve our purposes. But then you have to look back and ask yourself, “What are your purposes?”

If the four noble truths are informing your purposes, you say, “I want to understand my suffering. Why is it that there’s this suffering going on? If I can find the cause, I want to abandon the cause. I want to know how to do that.” As we practice, those are our standards for figuring out which perceptions are true enough and which ones are not.

But, as I said, we tend to do this in ignorance. So here the Buddha is giving us some advice. He talks about how to breathe. “Breathe,” he says, “in a way that gives rise to rapture.” “Breathe in a way where you’re aware of the whole body.” “Breathe in a way that gives rise to a sense of pleasure.” “Breathe in a way where you’re sensitive to these mental fabrications going on in the mind.” “Try to calm these things down.” When the mind is calm, then it gets strong—strong enough to see what’s going on and to make changes if things are not skillful.

When we look at the Buddha’s instructions on how to talk to yourself, some of them seem pretty far away from the way we actually talk to ourselves now. It may seem foreign, or at least outside of the realm of “who-I-am” or “who-you-are.” As when he describes monks talking to themselves: You go for alms and, say, you don’t get any food that day. He says, “Tell yourself that not getting food is also good because, then, you’re lighter. You’re not spending all that energy digesting the stuff down in your stomach. The body’s lighter, it’s not weighed down.” Now, that kind of thinking doesn’t usually occur to most of us, but it’s an important part of the training.

This is one of the reasons why we read the suttas more than the Abhidhamma. The Abhidhamma just lists concepts, but it doesn’t tell us what to do with them very much. The suttas are what put things together and tell us, “This is how you breathe; this is how you talk to yourself; these are some useful perceptions to hold in mind.”

This is how we get the mind into concentration to begin with. You breathe in a way that’s comfortable, that feels soothing inside. You take some time to allow the breath to be soothing. All too often, we go through the meditation with little check boxes: Check off that box; check off this box; okay, mind settled down; okay, what’s next?

The “what’s next” is: You stay. That’s a skill we have to learn, and in order to master it, we have to learn how to talk to ourselves.

You may have noticed that the mind does have the tendency to do something and then comment on what it just did, and then it comments on its comments on its comments, and it comments on that—like reflections in a hall of mirrors that go way back. So you have to tell yourself you’re going to commit to being with the breath. Then, when it’s ready and it comments on what it’s like to be with the breath—if the comments are helpful, pay attention; if they’re not helpful, put them aside, let them go, let them evaporate. Commit yourself to the sensation of the breathing. That’s the reflection right now.

As you’re settling in, you don’t have to do much reflection. Just ask yourself, “Are you here? Does it feel good? Do you feel centered? Can you maintain this sensation you have here for a while?” If it’s easy to maintain, then fine, stick with it. If it’s not, you might want to make some adjustments.

You’re giving yourself something to talk about right here. And you’re holding in mind the perceptions that inform what you’re doing, such as: Where does the breath come in? Where does it go out? You have a wide range of choices. There’s one sense in which the breath does come in from the outside; there’s another sense in which the breath energy originates inside the body. You can focus on either one. They both have their advantages.

When you think of the breath coming in from outside, you can think of it airing out the body with something new, something fresh. When you think of it coming from within, you begin to realize that you’re not so totally dependent on things outside. The source of energy is inside. So choose whichever perception you find most helpful right now.

As for the source inside, where does it originate? You might focus on one spot. Say, you have a pain in the back. Don’t focus on the back. Focus on the front of your body. Then, see if the pain is actually caused by some weird breath movement in the front of the body—that happens, you know. The same with left and right: Sometimes if there’s a pain on the right side of the body, it’s because the breath energy is not flowing well on the left.

So you can play around and talk to yourself about this. Give yourself something useful to talk about. Be very deliberate and make the effort to keep the conversation on topic. That’s how you commit. And it’s in the committing that things begin to change inside.

We have our normal conversations inside, but here the Buddha is introducing some new people into the conversation, people who want to direct the conversation in a new way. There will be parts of the mind that rebel or resist. They like doing things their own way, not because it’s especially productive or good, but just because it’s the familiar way of doing things. We have to change that attitude. After all, you can learn new things.

Think about yourself going over many, many lifetimes. To what extent do you think that you’re the same person that you were, say, in a previous eon? Who knows even if you were a person, a human being. You might have been some other kind of being, either on a higher level or a lower level. Your personality may have been very different. But over time, it gradually moved in this direction. You feel that this is the real you—the voices you’re used to. But they’re just as artificial as anything else. They’re fabrications, you know.

You have to ask yourself, “Is engaging in this kind of internal conversation really useful? Does it help me?” If you find that it’s not helpful, you’re going to have to change it. You’ll need some strength inside to stick with the change.

That’s another reason why we get the mind into concentration: You want to have a sense of well-being to give some strength to the mind. If you simply force new habits on the mind without a sense of well-being, the mind rebels. But if it comes from a sense of inner wealth, inner health, it’s more likely to stick—this new habit.

So try to take some time to make yourself at home. Commit to being at home right here—by the way you breathe, by the way you talk to yourself, by the perceptions you hold in mind, by the feelings you focus on. You’ve got a lot of choices here. As you’re doing this with knowledge rather than with ignorance, then this inner conversation has a chance to go in a direction it didn’t go before, i.e., in line with the path.

This is one of the reasons why the Buddha introduces the topic of not-self when he’s teaching Rahula how to meditate. Even before he mentions breath meditation, he talks about getting past your conceit of “I am,” because so many of the parts of the mind that resist getting to settle down have a very strong sense of “me” in them. This is the problem with dealing with the committee of the mind. If you ask, “Which one in there is you?” they say, “All of us are you. All of us are me.”

It’s like that story that Ajaan Lee tells about Ven. Cūla Panthaka. He was a monk who was not all that bright. But, one day, when he was embarrassed by his older brother, he went off and meditated and developed psychic powers. One of the powers he developed was that he could multiply himself many, many times. All the other monks had gone off for a meal. Cūla Pantaka was left alone in the monastery. But then he filled the monastery with versions of himself. A servant was sent to invite him to join the meal as well—and there were monks filling the monastery. He, the servant, would ask, “Who is Cūla Panthaka?” and that Cūla Panthaka would point to another one over there. He goes to that one over there, who said, “No, he’s the one over there.” “No, he’s the one over there.” Every one of them was Cūla Panthaka, but none of them really were. It’s the same with your mind.

One of the things we have to is that just because something inside claims to be you doesn’t mean that it really is you. That’s why the Buddha taught not-self to Rahula very early on. It’s a useful concept to use as a tool when you’re arguing with your mind, or your mind is arguing with you. Sometimes there’s a civil war inside. But if you realize, “This voice is unskillful. I don’t have to identify with it anymore. It may have been hanging around for a long, long time, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that it’s like an old habit. It doesn’t have any special claims.”

Ajaan Suwat made the comparison: He said that it’s like a cave full of darkness, and you bring a light into the cave. The darkness doesn’t have the right to say, “Well, I was here first, so the light can’t come in.” Wherever there’s light, it penetrates the darkness, chases the darkness away. So just because some of your voices inside are old friends—or let’s put it, “old acquaintances,” old versions of you—that doesn’t mean that they should have any special rights.

You have to ask yourself, “These voices, or what they’re telling me: Does that have anything to do with my true well-being?” If not, why listen? Why let them have power? They can whisper, and they can come and go really quick—like those subliminal messages on TV—but that doesn’t mean that they should have power.

You’re trying to give more power to the skillful voices, again, by learning how to breathe, how to talk to yourself, what images to hold in mind. Listen to what the Buddha has to say. Throughout the suttas, there are so many times he says, “This is how you should train yourself; tell yourself this; tell yourself that; hold these images in mind.”

This is why there are so many analogies and similes: to give you images and perceptions you can hold in mind. These things are all there to help you fabricate in knowledge. When you fabricate in knowledge, it doesn’t lead to suffering. It becomes part of the path to the end of suffering, which is what we’re here for.

It’s just a question of really committing yourself and making it stick. There will be struggles. There will be parts of the mind that really like having power and don’t like to have their power challenged. But why should you give in to them? Can they offer you true happiness? The answer usually is No. So why hang around with them? Oh, they’re familiar.

But if they’re familiar and yet they’re chewing on you, maybe it’s time to end the relationship, which is why the Buddha gives you new ways of talking, so that you can have some new relationships in the mind, relationships that are much more healthful, healthy, skillful, based on your ability to get the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being—so that you can strengthen those skillful voices.

Whichever voice has control of the breath at any moment, that’s the one that’s in power. So let’s give your skillful voices some control over the breath, some power over the breath, by looking into how this breath energy flows in the body and how it can be made to flow in the most productive and helpful way. That way, you can change the balance of power inside, give strength to the part of the mind that’s willing to commit to the practice.

When you’re thoroughly committed, when you’re really strong like this, then you can withstand not only the onslaughts of your own defilements, but also of things outside, with a lot more skill.

That’s the skill that the Buddha is offering to us. So you can ask yourself, “Are you willing to commit to it? If you don’t commit, what do you have?”