A Quiet Corner
March 18, 2024
Ajaan Suwat used to call this our “quiet corner.” We’re literally at the end of the road, with very little traffic coming our way. It’s a good place for physical seclusion. Of course, you want to develop mental seclusion as well, because even if you stay here for a long time, you can’t totally depend on things being quiet all the time. The world outside has its way of impinging on us. But if you can find some mental seclusion inside, then you can take that wherever you go. In other words, you know you have some defilements inside, but you don’t get involved with them. You learn how to separate yourself out.
This is an important part of wisdom: seeing these things as separate. They may appear in your mind, but you don’t have to get yourself entangled. Our problem is that whatever appears in the mind we gobble right down. Like a little child crawling across the floor. Everything he comes across he sticks in his mouth. No wonder we have mental stomach ache. We take things in and then we realize they’re not good. Sometimes we think, “Well that’s just the way it is. That’s the way food is.” And we keep on eating that kind of food.
But you can give yourself something better to feed on. Feed on the breath. Feed on the sense of well-being that you can create from the breath. Learn how to hold on here. That makes it easier to let go of other things. If you’re just told to let go, let go, let go but don’t have something good to hold on to, you’re going to turn around and start holding on to whatever comes past. So hold on to the breath; hold on to your sense of the body as you feel it from within. This allows you to separate yourself out from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations.
This is why the Buddha said that you want to have mindfulness immersed in the body as your post. Then you tie the senses to that post in the same way that you would tie animals to leashes and tie the leashes to a post. So no matter how far things will pull you in the other direction, the post is strong, and the animals end up lying right down next to the post.
In other words, you see things, you hear things—it’s not that you’re blind or deaf—but you don’t let them make inroads in the mind, and you don’t send your mind out after them. They’re there. You deal with them as you have to. But have a sense of being separate. Your awareness is one thing. The things of which you’re aware are something else. When you can have that attitude, then you can go through the world a lot more safely.
After all, you can’t take this quiet corner with you when you go. But you can take the skills that you develop inside. Those you can learn how to master not only while you’re sitting here with your eyes closed or doing walking meditation, but all throughout the day—centered right here, with a slight sense of being separate. You don’t have to gobble down the things that come your way.
Then you can experience things, as the Buddha said, disjoined from them. They’re there but they’re not going to lean on you. They’re not going to weigh you down. That way, you can have seclusion even in the midst of a lot of people, even in the midst of a lot of noise. You still have your quiet corner inside.