An Upside-down Basin

Once we’ve abandoned doing evil, then even when we make merit only a bit at a time, there’s still hope that our perfections will grow full. Like a basin set upright out in the open: Even if rain falls only a drop at a time, there’s a chance that the basin will get full.

But if we make merit without abandoning evil, it’s like putting a basin upside-down out in the open. When the rain falls it still lands on the bottom of the basin, but on the outside bottom, not on the inside. There’s no way the water will fill the basin.

Chicken in a Cage

When mindfulness and the mind in charge come together, there’s a kind of feeling. If the mind is ready to be at peace, it’ll be caged in a peaceful place, like a chicken we’ve put into a cage. The chicken doesn’t leave the cage but it can walk back and forth in the cage. Its walking back and forth is no problem, for it’s walking back and forth in the cage. The feelings of the mind when we use mindfulness to keep it at peace, the feelings in that peaceful place, aren’t anything that will stir us up. In other words, when it feels, when it thinks, let it feel within the peace. It’s no problem.

Why Wait?

As soon as there’s anything unskillful in your thoughts, words, and deeds, remove it. Don’t let it hang around for a long time. It’s like a wound appearing in your body, or a thorn sticking into your foot. You want to remove it, but would it be better to remove it today or tomorrow? Or how about taking it out next week?

Or suppose you get a stomachache today. A stomachache is painful, and you want the pain to go away. But do you want it to go away today, or would tomorrow be better? Or would you rather wait for a week for it to go away?

Dye in the Mind

It’s like rain water, which is water that’s clear and clean. Its clarity is normally clean. But if we put green or yellow dye into it, the water will turn green or yellow. It’s the same with the mind. When it meets up with a preoccupation it likes, it’s at ease. When it meets up with a preoccupation it doesn’t like, it’s ill at ease. It’s like a leaf blown by the wind. It flutters. You can’t depend on it.

Flowers and fruits also get blown by the breeze. If they get blown by the breeze and fall from the tree, they never ripen. It’s the same with the minds of human beings. Preoccupations blow them around, drag them around, pull them around, so that they fall—just like the fruit.

The Broken Glass

Suppose you get a glass. You say, “This is mine, and it isn’t broken. Look after it well, okay? Don’t break my glass, okay?” But can you prevent something breakable from breaking? If it doesn’t break now, it’ll break later on. If you don’t break it, someone else will break it. If someone else doesn’t break it, a chicken will break it! The Buddha says to accept this. When he uses this good glass, he penetrates all the way to seeing that this glass is already broken. He sees this glass that isn’t broken, and has us know that it’s already broken. Whenever you pick up the glass, he was you say, “This glass is already broken.” Drink from it and put it down: He tells you that it’s already broken. Right? The Buddha’s understanding was like this. He saw the broken glass in the unbroken one. Why did he know that it was broken? Because it isn’t broken. That’s how he knew it as broken. “Whenever its time is up, it’ll break”: He developed this attitude and kept on using the glass. One day it slipped out of his hand: “Smash!” No problem. Why no problem? “Because I saw it as broken before it broke.” See?

But you say, “My glass is so expensive. Don’t ever let it break.” Later on the dog breaks it: “Hmm. What if I killed this dog?” If your child breaks it, you hate your child. You’re that way with whatever breaks it—because you’ve dammed yourself up so that the water can’t flow. You’ve made a dam without a spillway. You just dam things up without a spillway, so the only thing the dam can do is burst, right? When you make a dam, you have to make a spillway, too. When the water rises this far, it can flow off to the side. When it’s full to the brim, it can flow out that way, right? You need a spillway. The Buddha saw inconstancy, and that’s the way things are. He already saw that they’re inconstant. When you see things this way, you can be at peace.

That, in short, is the practice of the Dhamma.

Elephants, Oxen, & Water Buffaloes

Training the mind well is a useful activity. You can see this even in draft animals, like elephants, oxen, and water buffaloes. Before we can put them to work, we have to train them. Only when they’re well trained can we use their strength and put it to different purposes. All of you know this.

A mind well trained is of many times greater value. Look at the Buddha and his noble disciples. They changed their status from being run-of-the-mill people to being noble ones, respected by people all over. And they’ve benefited us in more wide-ranging ways than we could ever determine. All of this comes from the fact that they’ve trained their minds well.

A mind well trained is of use in every occupation. It enables us to do our work with circumspection. It makes us reasonable instead of impulsive, and enables us to experience a happiness appropriate to our station in life.

The Balloon of Tranquility

It’s as if your child gets a balloon. Whatever else it’s been playing with, it puts aside. Its interest in other preoccupations grows quiet. It plays as it likes with the balloon. It’s right there. Its mind is quiet. This level of quiet is just the level of quiet of a child with a balloon. Its mind is all tied up in the balloon. But this level of quiet isn’t enough. The child sees the balloon floating in the air and it’s engrossed, that’s all. It doesn’t think about whether or not the balloon is going to burst. It doesn’t think. It sees the balloon floating in the air and it’s engrossed. This is what’s called samatha, tranquility.

Vipassana or insight is a matter of making your discernment greater than that. You know what’s going to happen to the balloon. Will it eventually burst?—that sort of thing. Eventually you see in the mind that the balloon is inconstant. It’s sure to burst. Your discernment shoots out to that point.

Tranquility doesn’t have any discernment. It sees the balloon floating in the air and just keeps playing with it. When the balloon bursts—pop!—it cries. Why doesn’t it think? It doesn’t have the discernment to see that the balloon will burst. It doesn’t look into inconstancy, stress, and not-self. It just sees the balloon floating and it feels satisfied. Engrossed. This is tranquility, the stillness of tranquility.

With concentration, the mind is quiet, but defilements are still there, simply that for the moment no defilements appear in the mind. That’s why it’s not disturbed. It’s quiet like a balloon for the time being. There’s still air in the balloon and it’s still floating. It’s just there to make the child happy over made-up things, that’s all. Tranquility is just like that.

The King of Death

We live like a chicken who doesn’t know what’s going on. In the morning it takes its baby chicks out to scratch for food. In the evening, it goes back to sleep in the coop. The next morning it goes out to look for food again. Its owner scatters rice for it to eat every day, but it doesn’t know why its owner is feeding it. The chicken and its owner are thinking in very different ways.

The owner is thinking, “How much does the chicken weigh?” The chicken, though, is engrossed in the food. When the owner picks it up to heft its weight, it thinks the owner is showing affection.

We too don’t know what’s going on: where we come from, how many more years we’ll live, where we’ll go, who will take us there. We don’t know this at all.

The King of Death is like the owner of the chicken. We don’t know when he’ll catch up with us, for we’re engrossed—engrossed in sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas. We have no sense that we’re growing older. We have no sense of enough.

Killing Your Meditation

When standing, walking, sitting, and lying down, keep your mindfulness continuous at all times. This is called practicing meditation (kammatthana) correctly. The reason why our mindfulness isn’t continuous is because we don’t do it. “Doing it” isn’t something the body does. The mind is what does it. If we do our mindfulness so that it’s continuous, so that we’re constantly aware, it’s like drops of water that flow continuously so that they become a continuous stream of water. If you can train the mind in this way, your meditation will progress quickly and well.

But these days, people go practice vipassana for three days, seven days, ten days, fifteen days, and then they come out of retreat. They say that they’ve already done vipassana and they’re already good at it. So they go to sing and dance and play around. When that happens, their vipassana is gone and they don’t have any left. When they do all kinds of unskillful things that stir up the heart and damage it like this, you can’t call it “practice.” It’s a mode of practice like planting a tree where you plant it today and then, in three days’ time, you pull it up and plant it over there. Then, after another three days, you pull it up again. The tree is going to die and you won’t get to eat the fruit. Meditation can die in just the same way.

The Way to the Monastery

Virtue, concentration, and discernment: These three things the Buddha called a path. The path isn’t the religion, and it’s not what the Buddha really wanted, but they’re the way we get there.

It’s the same as your coming from Bangkok to Wat Nong Pah Pong. You didn’t want the road coming here. You wanted to reach the monastery instead. But the road was needed for you to get here. The road coming here isn’t the monastery. It’s just the road to the monastery. You have to follow the road to get to the monastery.

Virtue, concentration, and discernment are the road to peace, which is what we really want.