The Big Question

Close your eyes; take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. Focus your attention there.

Then ask yourself, is long breathing comfortable. If it’s not, you can change. You can make it longer, shorter, faster, heavier, lighter, deeper, more shallow. There are all kinds of ways you can adjust the breath. Yet, all too often we just ignore this. We have this property in the body that we can take advantage of, and all too often we ignore it. We’re interested in other things outside.

Like right now, a lot of people are thinking about how hot it is outside. But the heat can take care of itself. You don’t have to look after it. You protect your body. Make sure you get plenty of fluids, plenty of electrolytes.

And so okay, that’s the affairs of the body. Now you’ve got to take care of the affairs of the mind. That’s because we burden ourselves with a lot of unnecessary things, and then the necessary work doesn’t get done. The necessary work is looking into why it is that we cause ourselves suffering, even though we mean to create happiness by what we do and say and think. Nobody plans to suffer from their actions, yet actions come out causing suffering. Why is that?

That’s a question you should ask yourself and it’s a question that is really worth looking into. The Buddha gave his whole life to that question. As a result, we have the teachings. He could have burdened himself with the affairs of his family, the affairs of state, but he realized that this was something more important and would have a more long-lasting value: to find out what’s going on in the mind—why we’re burdening ourselves with things we don’t need to burden ourselves with.

So look into your mind right now. Put aside all your other activities, all your other responsibilities, and get a sense of what’s going on in the mind. When the mind wanders away from the breath, why does it do that? Even though you tell it to stay, something inside doesn’t want to obey, looking for a chance to go out and think about this, think about that. Why is that?

Part of it is simply force of habit, and part of it is that there are members of the mind who don’t want to be trained. They want to wander around as they like. So this is something we have to look into. This is the big problem in our lives: Why do we cause ourselves suffering? Why do we weigh ourselves down with unnecessary burdens? We’re paying attention to all the wrong things in the world.

Here it is, the force that shapes your life, your own mind, and we’re more concerned about what other people are doing someplace else?

Give the mind some time to show itself, so that you can learn from what’s actually going on right here, right now. As the Buddha said, a wise person knows which burdens fall to him or her and which burdens don’t. You take on only the burdens that really are your burdens, and everything else you can let go. There are so many things out there that we clutter our minds with, carrying them around, and we don’t have any strength left to carry around the things that we really do need to look into.

So have a sense of priorities. Your mind is your number one possession. The world can be fine; you can have lots of wealth, lots of health—happy family, happy friends—but if the mind isn’t trained, it can take those things and turn them into suffering. Why is that? Look into that. That’s the big question in life.

The Buddha wants you to ask the big questions. He asked the big question and he came up with a good answer, a big answer, an answer that’s lasted now for more than 2,500 years. So look into it. What are you doing right now that’s placing an unnecessary burden on your own mind? And, of course, when you place burdens on your own mind, it can’t help but place burdens on other people, too.

So. For your sake and for the sake of the people around you, learn how to travel lightly, carrying only the things that are necessary. This is for your own good and for the good of everyone else.