Time to Push Forward
January 05, 2016

It’s a rainy day, a good day to meditate.

Of course, every day is a good day to meditate, but when it’s raining outside, your attention naturally turns inward.

We’ll be inside most of the day, so try and be inside your body, too. Stay with the sense of the breath. Get a nice blanket, wrap yourself up, and just look inside. Try to be very observant.

The Buddha said there are three qualities that are important for making progress in the practice. One is being truthful: in other words, be really true to yourself about what you do. The second is being observant: noticing what you’re doing and the results that you’re getting.

These two qualities go together. The more truthful you are about things, the more observant you’re going to be.

The third quality is not just resting content with what you’ve got. We hear the Buddha say a lot about contentment, but it has mainly to do with your physical circumstances.

It’s rainy today so you don’t think how nice it would be not to rain. We need the rain: The trees need the rain; the people need the rain. So whether your mood is in the mood for rain or not that doesn’t matter, put that aside. You accept the fact that it’s raining today, you’re content that it’s raining, and you make the most of it.

As for discontent, the Buddha said that if you see that the mind could do better than it’s doing, try to do better. Don’t just say, “Well this is good enough for right now.” Because who knows how much more “right now” you’ve got. All you know is that you’ve got the opportunity with this “now” to move forward.

People say, “This is good enough for me right now because I think there’ll be time in the future when I can push forward.” But if pushing forward is always put off into the future, it’s never going to happen. The pushing forward has to be right now.

So if it’s a matter of getting the mind more quiet or trying to be a little more sharp in your insights, sharp in your perception of what’s going on—whatever needs to be done—here’s some time to do it. The time is right now.

If you’ve got these three qualities—you’re truthful, you’re observant and you’re not content to just rest where you are—then your practice is sure to progress.