Be Consistent
January 17, 2024

Focus your attention inside. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. And wherever you feel the breath most clearly, focus your attention there: all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. It’s this quality of consistency that’s going to make a difference.

The mind can be with the breath many times during the day. But if it’s jumping around from the breath to something else, then something else again—then back to the breath—nothing has a chance to develop. It’s through consistency that you see things, understand things, and that good qualities of the mind can grow.

It’s like planting a tree. If you plant it here and then fifteen minutes later move it someplace else, and then tomorrow move it someplace else, you’re lucky if it’s not going to die. In any event, it doesn’t get a chance to grow very much. But if you plant it in one place, water it, and look after it, then it’ll grow in ways that it couldn’t have otherwise.

So. Treat the mind like a tree. Give it a good place to stay, look after it, and it’ll grow good qualities. The potentials for the good qualities are there. The problem is that there are also potentials for bad qualities in the mind. You want to be able to sort them out, because if the good qualities don’t get a chance to grow, then the bad qualities can take over. You want mindfulness to be in charge. You want your alertness to be in charge, watching what you’re doing, seeing the results of what you’re getting, and then judging the results, figuring out, if something’s not quite right yet, what you can do to change. After all, you’re looking inside not only to find a place for the mind to rest, but also to see the extent to which the mind is actually shaping your experience. It really is responsible—it’s the power in your life. So you want to catch it and point it in the right direction.

It’s like water in a river. If the water just flows down the river and out into the sea, it gets mixed up with the saltwater, and you don’t get much use out of it. But if you can direct it off into a canal to where you’re growing your trees, then you get the best use out of it. So direct your mind in the right direction. It’s by practicing generosity, practicing virtue, that we gain confidence in our own goodness, and we’re doing good things with a mind like that. It’s a lot easier to watch the mind when it’s doing good and to understand what’s going on.

So make sure your practice is complete—not just meditation, but also generosity and virtue. These are the causes for happiness, as the Buddha said, so you want to make sure they’re all complete.