What You’re Doing Right Now

Settle in with your breath. Get to be on friendly terms with it. Try to notice which parts of the body are already comfortable when you breathe in, when you breathe out. Focus your attention there. As for the other parts that are not so comfortable, you can leave them alone for the time being. You’re trying to gather your allies here. It’s an image that Ajaan Lee uses. If you’re dealing with a lot of thugs, thieves, and robbers, you want good strong people on your side.

So. Find your good, strong people, both in the mind and in the body. In the body, it’s the comfortable areas. In the mind, it’s the parts of the mind that really do want to do this. There will be parts that say, “I just want to wander around for a while. I can sit here with my eyes closed, and I can think about anything.” Those parts of the mind are not going to take you anywhere good. The best direction is into the present moment, because you get to see what’s going on, how the mind handles things inside. So. Find your allies and focus them on this question, “What are you doing, right now?” Pursue it further, further, further inside.

I received a message the other day from someone who was saying just learn how to get in the present moment. Accept the fact that things are inconstant, stressful, not self, and that’s all you have to do.

But there’s a lot more going on. We know that things are inconstant, but why do we keep going after inconstant things? Why do we keep creating inconstant things? What’s the motivation? That’s what you want to see. So you have to look inside, get the mind really quiet, and see that the problem is not with the things that you know. The problem is with the mind itself as it creates and then experiences the things it knows. Why is it doing this?

Because the mind is an agent. It is the one that makes decisions. This is why one of the Buddha’s main teachings was the teaching on karma. Because we’re agents, we have to be responsible for our actions, yet so often we abandon responsibility and just say, “Well, I just had to do it that way. Something made me do it. Something forced me to do it.” But that’s the wrong attitude. The right attitude is inquisitive: “Why did I make these choices?”

When you can see that you are the one making the choices, and you can make more and more skillful choices, that takes you deeper inside to understanding what’s going on—why the mind creates suffering for itself.

Remember the Buddha’s awakening was awakening through the four noble truths. When he talks about his awakening, he doesn’t talk about the three characteristics at all. It’s all about the truths and the duties with regard to them. So you have to do the duties; you don’t just sit there and accept, accept, accept. Some things you’re trying to comprehend. Some things you try to abandon. Some things you try to develop. And you’ve got to figure out which is which.

So. Get the mind really quiet, really still so that it can watch itself, inside. And keep directing your attention inside because that’s where all the issues are. There are so many messages we get from outside about who’s doing what to whom over there, over there. But we have to be responsible for what we’re doing right here, right now, so we can’t let ourselves get deflected from our real responsibility.