Catch the Mind
April 16, 2024

I’ve had people ask me, “Why meditate on the breath? When the time comes that you’re going to die, the breath will leave you, which means that your meditation topic will abandon you right when you need it.”

But when we meditate on the breath, we’re not learning just about the breath. More importantly, we’re learning about the mind. We give the mind a topic to focus on, and only then can you really observe it. Otherwise, if you follow it as if it wanders around, you get lost, as it goes every which way. But if you focus in on one thing, then if there are any little movements in the mind away from that one thing, you can detect them, see which direction they’re pushing, and you can resist the push. That’s important. If you don’t resist the push, it’s hard to say that your meditation is really any kind of meditation at all. So, you’ve got to give the mind a good, solid place to stay—solid in the sense that it’s good to stay here, it feels good to stay here, you’re happy to stay here.

So, work with the breath and also work with your inner conversation as you talk to yourself about staying with the breath, encouraging yourself to stay. When you catch yourself wandering off, you can say, ‘No,’ because you’ll be saying, ‘Yes,’ to the breath. You won’t be saying, ‘No,’ all the time. If it’s nothing but No, No, No, No, No, then after a while the mind is going to rebel.

Say, ‘Yes,’ to any thoughts that deal with the breath. Explore the breath. Try to become alert to what’s going on in the mind around the breath, particularly the perceptions you build around the breath, the images you hold in mind about what the breath is doing in the body. You’ll notice the mental picture you have of the breathing is going to effect on the way your muscles breathe, so think of a picture that has everybody breathing together, and then try to stick with that perception. There will be a sense of well-being that comes as the whole body is breathing in harmony. Then, when the temptation comes to go someplace else, it’s a lot less tempting, because you’ve got a good place to stay right here.

It’s like someone driving up while you’re standing on the side of the road. It’s hot, the sun is blazing, you’re sweating, you’re thirsty, and someone drives up in an air-conditioned car and says, “Hey, come with me.” Under those conditions, you’re likely to jump in. But if you’re staying in an air-conditioned place yourself, you’ve got plenty of food, plenty of shade, plenty of things to drink, and someone comes by like that, you’ll say, “No, you’re a stranger. I don’t know where you’ll take me. I don’t want to go with you.”

Learn to see your thoughts as strangers, and you’ll begin to realize just how much you’re complicit in their formation. Little urges come up in the mind, and we give them names, we give them meanings, and then we go with them. Sometimes we give them names because they seem familiar, similar to other times when we thought about a topic, so we just pick up that topic and run with it some more. At other times, you’ve got an agenda right now that some part of the mind wants to think about, so when there’s an opportunity to go, you go and pick up that topic on the least pretext.

These are the things you want to watch, and you can see them more clearly as you stay focused here, as you stay settled here.

So, we’re with the breath not to catch the breath. We’re with the breath to catch the mind.

It’s like catching a thief. We get something for the thief to want to steal, and then we just stay right there, keeping an eye on it. In this case, the mind wants some pleasure, so give it some pleasure right here. Then when parts of the mind want to come and steal away, you’ve got them because you’re less tempted to go with them, you’re less tempted to side with them. This is how we really come to understand the mind and the processes of the mind that will be really important to know—not only as you’re sitting here, comfortably breathing, but also when the time comes when you stop breathing, when you have to leave the body. You’ll understand the processes that happen in the mind at that point because you’ve been doing this practice all along, and you’ll be in a lot more control.