Love for the Dhamma
October 07, 2003
Back when Ajaan Mun was alive, scholarly monks would say of meditating monks, “What can they know? They sit with their eyes closed. What can they see?” They’re still asking that question today: “What can meditators see with their eyes closed?” Of course the answer is that they see their own minds. Scholarly monks would say, “Here we spend years looking through the books, and we still don’t fully understand them. How can you understand them by sitting there with your eyes closed?” The answer is that the real problems in life don’t lie in books. Books contain only the names of the problems. The real problems lie in the mind, which is why we sit here focusing the mind on the breath as a way of bringing the mind into the present moment, where we can watch it. We turn our gaze inward, instead of outward.