Ajaan Lee’s Birthday
January 31, 2024

Close your eyes; watch your breath. Or maybe watch isn’t the right word. *Feel *your breath as it comes in. Feel it as it goes out.

We’re not exercising our eyes so much as we’re exercising our sense of feeling in the body. So explore how the breath feels. As Ajaan Lee points out, there’s not just the in-and-out breath, but there are also other breath energies in the body. You can make use of them as you focus on the in-and-out breath.

As the Buddha said, try to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in, the whole body as you breathe out. You’ll find that there are feelings of energy in other parts of the body as well. You can make the body a really comfortable place to be by allowing those currents of energy to flow freely, smoothly. Give the mind a good place to settle down.

Today is Ajaan Lee’s birthday. If he were alive, he’d be 118 years old. It’s good to reflect on how much we owe to him. As the Buddha said, the entirety of the holy life is having admirable friends, having admirable friendship and Ajaan Lee was certainly an admirable friend. He did a lot to revive the practice of breath meditation, the practice of jhana—bringing them in line with the suttas.

I remember, before I learned of his teachings, I’d been told that you don’t adjust the breath, you don’t do anything with the breath, just let it come in and go out on its own. Pin the mind down to one spot right at the tip of the nose or the upper lip. And that was it. That’s all you were allowed to do.

The first time I read his instructions, they felt liberating. You can focus anywhere in the body. You can think of the breath being anywhere. And you’re allowed to adjust. This adjusting is an important part of getting the mind to right concentration. It’s called evaluation. You evaluate how the breath feels. If it doesn’t feel good enough, what can you do to make it feel good? You have that option.

The breath is a form of fabrication, saṅkhāra. It’s something that you intentionally do anyhow, so you might as well learn to intentionally do it well. And you can do it in a way that gives the mind a sense of well-being that can spread throughout the body.

But as I said, it’s both having admirable friends and engaging in admirable friendship that help. An admirable friendship is when you learn something good from someone who’s doing something good, and then you imitate it yourself. In other words, you take on their skills and make them your skills. You take their good habits and make them your good habits. That’s what keeps the Dharma alive. In addition to looking after your own needs, you’re keeping alive these traditions that sometimes disappear and then sometimes reappear.

We’re living in a world where now a lot of the genuine teachings have reappeared or are being brought out into the open. They’ve been there all along, but often they’ve been obscured. But now they’re brought out into the open. So take advantage of that fact. And in practicing them, you engage in admirable friendship and you help pass those good traditions along. So it’s not just us sitting here in this room meditating. We’re part of a long line of people in the past. We hope it’s a long line of people on into the future.

The important thing is that we don’t let the line stop with us. This way, we show our gratitude to the admirable friends we’ve been able to find. And then we can become an admirable friend to others.