Cooperation

Close your eyes and take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body and then ask yourself if long breathing feels comfortable. If it does, keep it up. If it doesn’t you can change. Make it shorter—or in short, out long; in long, out short; faster, slower; lighter, heavier; deeper, more shallow. See what kind of breathing feels good right now. Give the mind a home base to stay.

Today is going to be a very active day, so it’s good to have a good place to be grounded inside. As the Buddha said, when you work together, your mind benefits, in the same way that when you work solely on your own mind, other people benefit as well. In this particular case, you want to do both: Be grounded inside; stay with the breath as much as you can as you go through the day. Make it comfortable.

There’s going to be work to do. That means there are going to be people, and when there are people, as the Thai phrase is—there’s a pun in Thai—the word for people, khon, can also mean “to stir.” There’s going to be a lot of stirring up, and you’ve got to keep your mind grounded so that it doesn’t get stirred up with everybody else. Try to develop the qualities the Buddha said benefit you and benefit the people around you, such as patience, goodwill, equanimity, and kindness to one another. As you develop these qualities as you go through the day, they come back and become part of your own virtue. Your mind becomes more patient, enduring, kind, well-meaning mind. It’s a good mind to be in.

So don’t say, “Well, today’s a busy day; I can’t meditate.” You can meditate, because what does meditation mean? It means to develop good qualities. So today’s good qualities are the social qualities that you learn as you work with other people, realizing that we’re all here for the same purpose, which is to make tomorrow a success. We may have different ideas about how to go about it and different abilities on how to go about it, but that’s simply the way human beings are.

As Ajaan Lee once pointed out, you look at the fingers on your hand—they’re not equal. If they were all equal, you’d have a monster’s hands. Or the same with an orchestra: If all the orchestra instruments were just the same instrument, and they all played the same note, nobody would pay to hear. It’s because there are lots of different notes, lots of different instruments, and the ability to make them all sound together nicely: That’s what people come to hear.

So try to make your note, your instrument, and whatever you have to contribute, part of a larger whole, which is harmonious, where everyone is cooperating. In that way, you develop good qualities inside, qualities that will carry back into your meditation. So in this way, inner activity and outer activity help each other along.

Songkran is a day for blessings. So make this day in preparation for Songkran a blessing, too, through your good acts.