Truth
October 01, 2023

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body, focus your attention there, and then ask yourself if it’s comfortable. You can try experimenting with different rhythms of breathing to see what feels good right now, because sometimes the body likes long breathing; sometimes it likes short. Sometimes fast, slow—heavy, light. Different combinations of all these. So experiment to see what feels good for the body right now: energizing if you’re tired, calming if you’re tense. Think of the breath as medicine.

And stick with this. If any thoughts come wandering by, you tell them, “I’ve got work I’ve got to do right now. I don’t have time to think about those things.” The work here is developing strengths in the mind: mindfulness, alertness, ardency.

Mindfulness is the ability to keep something in mind.

Alertness is knowing what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

And ardency is trying to do it well.

These things need strengthening because they’re essential to any task you take on in this world. So for the time being, this is your priority. Try to be true to this priority. Otherwise it gets eaten up by other things. Think about the Buddha. The reason we bow to him so much is because he was a very true person. He developed the perfection of truth, which didn’t mean simply saying things that were true, but testing things to see what was actually true and what was actually false in this quest for the end of suffering. He put his life on the line. And he didn’t give up with his test until he’d proven to his satisfaction that this—whatever it was—was or was not the path.

And he had to train himself to be a reliable judge of what was true and what was not. It was these qualities of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency, combined with his honesty and truthfulness—that’s what enabled him to know the truth. So if we want to know the truth, we have to develop truth within ourselves.

The truth of the Dhamma is not simply the truth of words. It’s the truth of qualities in the mind, and in particular, the qualities of mind that lead to a quality that doesn’t change. It lies outside of space and time. You can know it only if you’ve been true in following the path.

So when the Buddha says certain things are to be developed, you try developing them. And you don’t just do it in a desultory way, you try to do it in an honest and sincere way. In other words, you’re testing his teachings at the same time you’re testing yourself. How true are you? How much can you rely on your powers of judgment? The more mindful you are, the more alert you are, the more ardent you are, the more you’ll see.

So it’s this quality of truthfulness that permits us to know the truth. This is why the Dhamma is special. People who are not true can’t know it. People who are true, no matter what their background otherwise, can know it. And this truth is something that we can develop within ourselves as we also develop this ability to test the truth, to rely on our powers of judgment.

That’s the good news of the teaching that the Buddha left behind. Other people teach us that you can’t depend on yourself, you have to depend on others. But the Buddha said, how can you depend on others if you can’t depend on yourself? Because who are these others? How do you know them?

This is why he said that the self is its own mainstay. Who else could be your mainstay? And you can be your own mainstay only if you’re really true. So when the Buddha says to develop the precepts, you truly develop the precepts. When he says to develop concentration, you’re true in your concentration. When he says to develop discernment, you’re true in your discernment. As for things he says to let go, you try letting them go and see what happens. That’s how you’ll know the truth. You’re willing to commit yourself to it and then reflect on the results.

It’s by being true that we find things that are of true value in life. Otherwise, if we’re not sincere in doing the practice, the results are not going to be sincere, either. So be as true as you want your results to be. And go all the way.