A Mirror for the Mind
January 21, 2012
There’s a passage in one of Ajaan Lee’s talks where he says that the breath is like a mirror for the mind. This is why we look so intently at the breath, because it’s going to teach us some very important lessons about the mind. In particular, it’ll show us how to find happiness by understanding where we cause suffering, because all the suffering that weighs the mind down comes out of the mind. But because it’s so difficult to look directly at the mind, we have to look in a mirror. It’s like trying to look directly at our own face. If you cross your eyes, you can see your nose, but there’s not much else of your face that you can see directly. So you have to look very carefully in a mirror. The more carefully you look in the mirror, the more you’re going to see of your face.