Unwavering Conviction

Get yourself ready to meditate. Sit in a composed way and examine your mind, using your mindfulness and discernment perceptively. Setting the mind in the right direction is something very important. If the mind isn’t set in the right direction, its thoughts and opinions won’t be right. It’s like a tree leaning to one side. When it falls down, it’ll fall in the direction that it’s been leaning.

When the mind has been set in a direction that isn’t good, it’ll think of things that aren’t good. But a mind that has been set in a good direction will tend to think in a good direction. When the mind is set on being peaceful, when it’s set on meditating, it tends toward peace. It tends toward seclusion. This is what gives rise to concentration, to mindfulness and discernment, and ultimately to the knowledge of release, step by step. All of this comes from setting the mind in the right direction.

This is why setting the mind in the right direction is so important. You need to apply appropriate attention—yoniso manasikāra—to develop skillful strategies in dealing with the mind. Don’t simply go through the motions as you’ve done in the past. Stir the heart to be responsible for what it’s doing. Take on the responsibility of being intent and glad, convinced in what you’re doing. Make an effort. Don’t give up. Don’t let the meditation become so routine that you don’t pay attention, or that you’re simply doing it because it’s on the schedule. You always have to try to energize the mind so that it’ll keep making progress, so that it’s always fully prepared: prepared to be mindful, prepared to get into concentration, prepared to grow still.

We should always think about the rewards of stillness. We should keep in mind the good things that come from meditation so as to give energy to the heart. At the same time, keep in mind the things that come from letting the mind slip off without any awareness, under the power of infatuation, under the power of delusion: a waste of time that brings no benefits. Think of the benefits that come from being alert to what you’re doing, responsible for what you’re doing—responsible to the point where you can depend on yourself and have no doubts about what you’re doing.

And why would you have no doubts? Because your mindfulness and alertness are right there with the movements of your thoughts. And when you examine them, you see that you do only the things that should be done, that serve a purpose.

So as we’re practicing here in the present, we should see it as an extremely important activity. It’s nothing minor at all. When we meditate, we have to give importance to ourselves, to the fact that we’re doing it. Don’t just go through the motions. After all, it’s a practice that the Lord Buddha—out of his knowledge and kindness and goodwill for us—set out as a practice for us to follow, and that people have been following ever since. It serves a really important purpose.

We’re able to see for ourselves, to know for ourselves, when something serves a good purpose. An example is when we train our mindfulness. Once our mindfulness is trained, it’s really valuable, really beneficial. We can use it to good purpose in all kinds of activities, whether in the work of the mind or in our work outside. This is why it’s said to be a quality with many benefits.

Which means that any activity that develops mindfulness is a beneficial activity. Any activity that develops mindfulness so that it’s right and firmly established is an activity that’s beneficial in giving the mind knowledge and intelligence, that gives us hope in achieving our aims.

“Achieving our aims” means achieving what we want: i.e., happiness. It doesn’t mean achieving what we don’t want: i.e., suffering, things that are defiling, that give rise to animosity and danger.

So these are important benefits. Those of us who have been practicing should make an effort to keep giving rise to a sense of gladness and contentment every time we meditate. We should keep seeing the benefits of what we’re doing.

Now, the work we’re doing here is subtle and delicate work. It’s not coarse work like work outside. So we have to adjust our mood to be in tune with subtle work. Your mindfulness has to be subtle. Your awareness, as it watches over the work, has to be subtle. To try simply to keep your awareness continuous and set on one thing is not beyond your ability. Even though in the beginning you don’t see any results, you have to trust the principles of the skill taught by the Buddha. If you keep on practicing without flagging, your intelligence with regard to the mind will have to keep increasing, and you’ll come to see and understand on your own.

In the beginning, you have to rely on your conviction in the Dhamma taught by the Buddha. This is the way it is with any skill. For instance, if you study to be a doctor: As long as you haven’t yet put your knowledge into practice, you can’t be sure of what results you’re going to get. But you study and you believe the principles you’re being taught. Once you’ve believed the principles and learned them, then when you put them into practice and get good results, you believe from what you yourself have done. It’s all clear to you, and you have no doubts about what you’ve done, because you’ve seen the good results. If you hadn’t believed anything at all, your studies wouldn’t have been solid and you wouldn’t have stuck with it—because of your doubts and uncertainty.

It’s the same with the practice of the Dhamma. We have to believe in the principles of the Buddha’s Dhamma: what’s called svākkhāto bhagavatā dhammo—the Dhamma well-expounded by the Blessed One. What makes the Dhamma well-expounded is that people of every level are able to understand it, to put it to use, and to practice in line with it. It’s not that only some individuals or some groups can receive the results in line with their practice. All kinds of people who follow it after listening to it can come to understand on their own. They don’t have to be deluded into believing what they’re told. They use their own mindfulness and discernment to contemplate and see clearly within themselves. This is why the Dhamma is said to be well-expounded. There have been many, many people who have put it into practice and seen results they can believe for themselves.

We, too, are among those who have made an effort and set our hearts on the practice because we want genuine results. If we practice with a sense of contentment, a sense of inspiration, without flagging, we too can come to know and see. It’s not beyond our capabilities to contemplate correctly in line with the standards that the Buddha set out.

So we should be happy and content in our practice. If we didn’t practice, we wouldn’t get this kind of knowledge and understanding. When we practice and gain knowledge and understanding in the strategies for avoiding things that aren’t good—things that will give rise to animosity and dangers—we develop our own discernment into how we used to behave because we didn’t know what was really going on. But now that we know the principles of the truth and we try to abandon things that aren’t good, step by step, we can stop doing the things we used to do. We see clearly, we do things that are good, and in this way we gather up goodness and strategies in our mind that we can use in our daily lives. This makes the mind bright and clear in our practice.

Even though the body may encounter difficulties and weariness, our heart is strong. It can win out over that weariness and keep on practicing constantly. Ordinarily, if there were no mindfulness or discernment to keep on teaching and directing our mind, it wouldn’t be able to do this. It’d be dragged and pulled by other things into other issues. But here we can cut through those things. The ways into which the mind could be pulled are many, and there are no obstacles standing in the way—if we were to go.

But here we’re not going, because our mind knows how to choose between what’s appropriate and what’s not, and it can lay down strict standards so that we have few burdens and don’t go searching for things that will disturb it. We take on only the burdens that are necessary for life, for the survival of the body and the mind. Whatever’s excessive, we try to cut away, cut away, step by step. This is when we see that our mind is intelligent. It knows how to choose. This is when we say that the mind is skillful: We can choose to practice all the time.

As for the results, we know them for ourselves. Even though no one may be explaining things for us, we can bring the mind to stillness as we practice, as we exercise restraint over it and can bring it to peace. When we can absolutely cut away outside burdens, we’ll see even more results. If the mind enters concentration and comes to stillness as we intend it to, we try to establish mindfulness to keep in mind only the present. For the time being, we cut away past and future. We meditate to let go, and the mind enters a secluded state of genuine stillness, unconcerned for the time being with anything at all outside. That’s when we’ll see clearly into our own mind.

If we often train the mind to be still and often gain a sense of seclusion to the point where the mind has the strength to develop conviction and concentration so that they’re really solid, anything that comes to disturb it—such as external pains—can’t influence the mind that’s been well trained. This we can see clearly.

Our teachers who have been well trained have their minds on a high level where they can win out over painful feelings and external diseases. They can keep their minds happy and cheerful as if nothing were happening. Even when the time of death comes, it’s the same thing: When disease reaches the point of death, they can go with ease. They don’t get delirious; they don’t get confused. They die as if they were simply falling asleep—very different from people who haven’t trained themselves. People who haven’t trained themselves suffer and grieve. In some cases their tears flow. Possessive about this, worried about that, they suffer. If they’re not careful, their clinging to those things will give rise to states of becoming right in those things. If their merit and skillfulness are lacking, and they’re full of unskillfulness, they’ll take birth in those things. There have been many examples of this.

For example, there was once a miserly rich person who believed that being generous and giving alms was only for poor people who wanted to gain wealth. Because he was already wealthy, he told himself that he didn’t have to give alms because he already had lots of wealth. So he never gave alms or practiced generosity in any way at all, because he felt that what he already had was enough. He didn’t desire any merit because he already had every kind of pleasure and possession. He wasn’t interested in being generous, observing the precepts, or meditating in any way at all. He simply did what he felt like doing. He ate and played around and used his wealth for himself.

So finally, when he died, he had nothing to fall back on. He couldn’t call to mind anything at all. He could call to mind the pleasures he had had in eating and being heedless, but they couldn’t help him. All he could think of was his wealth, and so he got possessive of his wealth. His mind, when it left the body, couldn’t take birth as a human being again, because the qualities that would qualify him to be a human being weren’t present in his mind. There was nothing to support the mind to gain a human body, so he had to take birth in a coarse body. His unskillfulness made him into a common animal—a dog who stayed around the place the rich man’s treasure had been buried.

When the Buddha passed by on his almsround, the dog barked at him, and the Buddha called it by the rich person’s name. The son of the rich person, who heard this, was offended. How could his father have been reborn as a dog? He went to complain to the Buddha, but the Buddha said, “What I said was the truth. If you don’t believe me, get some good food for the dog to eat. Once it’s eaten, whisper into its ear, ‘Tell me where the treasure is buried,’ and then dig down wherever it lies down.” So the rich man’s son followed the Buddha’s instructions right then and there, and the dog went to lie down in its place. When the son dug down there, he found the treasure, and so had to admit that his father had been reborn as a dog.

It’s not the case that once you’ve been wealthy you’ll always be wealthy. If the mind falls to a low level, like the rich person who did evil, you can become poor. You can even become a beggar. This can happen even in this lifetime—you don’t have to wait until the next lifetime. As for people who develop their goodness, they can become rich, they can become happy—and these results can come in the present life. You don’t have to die before you’ll see that kind of future.

So we shouldn’t have any doubts about good and evil, about good practice and bad practice. Once you can develop conviction to the point of acala-saddhā, unwavering conviction, your conviction will be firm to the point where it doesn’t deteriorate. Why? Because you’ve reached the point where your discernment doesn’t deteriorate in the heart and mind. When you’ve clearly seen goodness and evil in your heart, how could your discernment deteriorate? It’s like seeing fire. There’s nobody who would want to get deluded into lying down in a fire. Or like seeing urine and excrement: There’s nobody who would want to lie down in urine and excrement. We’d do it only if we didn’t see it clearly, if we were absent-minded and stepped into it by mistake. But if you see it clearly, nobody would want to do it.

When the heart and mind are fully developed, when mindfulness is fully developed, when discernment is fully developed, we won’t be absent-minded. Then, what we see as wrong is really wrong. What we see as right is really right. What we see as skillful is really skillful. What we see as evil is really evil. What we see as good is really good. What we see as dark is really dark. What we see as bright is really bright. For that reason, we can’t give up on doing good, even though life is about to end. We have to keep on doing good even though we can’t get up from our bed. We lie there meditating without giving up, all the way to the last breath. That’s what it means to be a person who practices. That’s the kind of person who has the firm conviction called acala-saddhā: someone who has seen with his or her own discernment, someone who has genuine respect for the well-expounded Dhamma of the Buddha.

When you reach this point, your goodness can be your refuge as it adorns your mind at all times. Both in the present life and when you leave this life, you keep on creating goodness and it keeps on adorning you. This is the truth. The Buddha never said anything that was nonsense or deceptive. That’s because he already had had enough, so why would he deceive anyone? He had had enough. He had had enough in terms of a following, enough in terms of wealth, enough in terms of attachment: So what would he deceive anybody for? He did nothing but let go. People who can deceive are people who are still hungry, who still desire, who haven’t yet had enough. That’s the kind of person who can try to deceive others. But that’s not the case with the Buddha or his noble disciples. They were fully developed, fully complete in terms of mindfulness and discernment, so what would they get infatuated with? How would they benefit from deceiving the world? They’re worthy of respect and homage, worthy to be taken as a refuge.

We all are extremely fortunate. We should make ourselves happy and glad that we have the opportunity to practice, to train ourselves. This is something that seems easy, but it’s really hard. If it were really easy: Exactly how many people have been able to do it? But at the same time, if it were really hard, why is it that we can do it? This is why there’s the old saying, “Good people find it easy to do good. People who aren’t good find it hard to do good.” This is really true. People who aren’t good find it easy to do things that aren’t good, but hard to do things that are.

So we should examine what kind of people we are. We can do good easily and don’t see any obstacles in the way of doing good. This means that we have the characteristics of good people, the characteristics of goodness. We have good qualities in our hearts. Now, this isn’t something to go bragging about. If you’re good but then go bragging to other people, putting them down, you’re creating defilements in yourself. That’s because goodness isn’t something to show off when other people look down on you. If you go bragging, then instead of being good you become the sort of person who’s not good.

So think about your goodness only to yourself, as a way of giving yourself encouragement. Simply do what’s good, and don’t go putting other people down. Don’t despise other people who can’t do what you can do. If you do despise them, it’s not right. It’s a form of conceit and it gives rise to animosity and dangers. You have to be wise to these things. Your mindfulness and discernment have to see things rightly.

When we understand the conditions that give us the strength to practice, we have to use appropriate attention—yoniso manasikāra—the strategies that help us to keep following the practice. Not only in the monastery—wherever you go, make sure that your mind is skillful. That way, you’ll be able to increase your skillfulness at all times. When you drive, keep the practice in mind. It’s not the case that you can’t keep it in mind. When you do your work, do it with right mindfulness established rightly.

When you do this, you’ll have a sense of seclusion in your work, a sense of pleasure in your work, a sense of ease being alone, when you’re working alone, instead of feeling lonely—even though other people might not understand. This sort of seclusion is very beneficial. It allows us to do our work in full measure without anything getting in the way. When you’re alone at your desk and there’s no need to get involved with other people, you can have even more opportunities to develop skillfulness inside.

So we should all set our hearts on training ourselves to get better and better. When we set our hearts on this, we’ll meet with the happiness and prosperity I’ve described.

That’s enough for now, so I’ll stop here.