Getting out by Going Inward

Close your eyes and focus your mind on the breath. Stay there with the breath as it comes in and as it goes out. Keep your mind pointed in this direction, not going off to other places.

As the Buddha says, one of the ways in which you provide blessings for your life or protection—the Pali word is maṅgala—is to direct yourself in the right direction. You’re the one who has to decide on the direction of your life. Other people may want to influence you in different directions, but you have to ask yourself, “What is the best direction I can take for the sake of my long-term well-being?” Those people who want to point you in this or that direction: What’s the reason? What’s the motivation? Will it really be good for you? You have to decide.

Compare all the different directions you could have in life. Some people go for wealth, some go for status, some people for praise, fame, sensual pleasures. Ask yourself, what kind of direction is that? Those things go around and around. Wealth turns into loss of wealth, status turns into loss of status, praise turns into criticism, and pleasure turns into pain—back and forth, back and forth like this. If you follow them, you don’t go anywhere. You just go around.

The Buddha says the best thing is when you see that the world just goes around and around and around is to want to get out. That’s the best direction to go. And this is the way you find that direction, focusing inside the mind. So focus your attention in here. Have all the arrows of your mind pointing in here.

When you go out and think about sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations, you should pass judgment on how much they provide things of value, and how much they provide things that are of no value at all. When your attention goes out like this, turn around and come back in.

Ajaan Fuang once received a letter from a Dhamma practitioner in Singapore who said that everything he saw in life he tried to see in terms of the three characteristics. While he watched TV, drove the car, everything he did was in that framework. Ajaan Fuang told me to write back to him and say, “Turn your attention back inside, because that’s where the problem is.” The problem is not with the TV, not with the road you’re driving on. The problem is with your mind. So look into your mind and see which is the best direction you can straighten it out. That’s the best direction you can go, and that’s also the direction out from all the suffering we’ve been causing ourselves for who knows how long. The Buddha says it’s been going on for aeons and aeons. That’s an awfully long time.

So, do you want to go around and around like that, going nowhere basically, or do you want to go someplace important, someplace out? The choice is yours. Otherwise, we live our lives like dust motes in the air, being pushed forth by the breeze—back and forth, back and forth—and don’t go anywhere in particular.

But if you want to go someplace that’s really worth going to, this is how you do it: You put your mind in the direction of figuring itself out. Why is it that you like things that cause trouble? Why are you ignorant? Where are you ignorant? How can you put an end to that ignorance? Finding that out, learning how to answer that question, is a good direction to go.