We come to a quiet place like this so that we can see our minds clearly. When we’re engaged in a lot of activities and there’s a lot of noise, a lot of disturbance around us, what’s going on in our own minds gets covered up, blotted out. Only when our emotions are really strong, or our thoughts are really necessary, do we see them. As for vagrant notions, little wisps of ideas that come in, go out, we hardly notice them at all. Yet they’re the things that grow into big issues.

We come to a place like this to see what we can find out about how the little things in the mind function, and how they can be dealt with properly before they turn into big problems. So it may seem strange that we’re focusing on the breath as we meditate, instead of focusing directly on the mind. That’s because it’s a lot easier to see the mind when you’re not focused directly on it. You focus it on one thing, and then you can back up, and observe it as it stays focused. That’s when things begin to be clear.

So focus on the breath. Have a sense that the breath is bathing you. When you breathe in, remember: It’s not just the air coming in and out through the nose, it’s the whole sense of energy flow in the body. If you don’t feel much energy flow, just notice what aspects you do notice, and pay attention there. Gradually, as the mind settles down, you begin to sense other areas as well.

We’re trying to give the mind a good solid place where it can settle down and stay with a sense of interest, because this will keep you in touch with what’s going on inside.

You can’t stay here in a quiet place forever. You have to go out into the noise of the world, and sometimes you’ll have trouble justifying to yourself taking some time out to be with the mind, to be with the body as you sense it from within, because everything else outside is more demanding. But you have to realize that just because demands are being made doesn’t mean they have to be met. And the fact that some things are pressing doesn’t mean they’re important. But there will be things that are important, things that are demanding that you have to pay attention to, so you have to learn how to take some time for the mind so that the mind can handle them.

One of the best ways of justifying that time is to get so that you really are focused on how the body feels from within and you notice that you improve things inside—both in terms of the body and in terms of the mind—by the time you put into the meditation. So you can tell the other parts of the mind that you are actually being responsible as you stay right here and put your other responsibilities down for the time being. After all, you’re looking after the mind that’s going to have to deal with all those other responsibilities, and if you don’t look after it, it gets pretty ragged.

So you have to keep on reminding yourself: This is what you have to look after—the quality of your mind. If the mind is in good shape, then it can take care of other problems more easily.

If it gets neglected, it’s like the body’s not exercising. After a while it gets weaker, a little problem here, a little problem there, and when you need the body to do physical work, it’s not up for the work. Well, even more so with the mind: It requires attention. It’s like an engine that you have to keep fine-tuned.

So take an interest in what’s going on right here and learn some skills. You’re being just with yourself right here. A lot of people don’t know how to be by themselves. In fact, one of the defining characteristics of an arahant is being able to delight in an empty dwelling. If most of us were stuck in an empty room with nothing to distract us, we’d go stir-crazy pretty quickly. But you have to remember, in that empty room the body isn’t empty, your mind isn’t empty. So you need to get a handle on them, and to learn how to find it fascinating being here, thinking about the breath energy flowing in different parts of the body.

You notice that Ajaan Lee in his book, Keeping the Breath in Mind, talks about the breath energy entering the back of the neck and going down the spine. What is that like: entering in the back of the neck?

For people who have heart problems, it’s precisely what you need to disperse all the tension that tends to build up in the neck and the shoulders. But maybe you don’t have a heart problem. Maybe your problem is a weak back, in which case you try something else. There’s a Dhamma talk where Ajaan Lee talks about the breath energy that starts at the soles of the feet and goes up the legs, up the spine, up through the skull, and out through the top of the head. That strengthens your back. So there’s a lot you can play with.

The discoveries about what your body needs never seem to end, because as the body ages it develops different needs, unexpected needs. Often the breath can be the right medicine for it, but you have to learn how to have a sense of ingenuity and a willingness to turn things inside-out to see what the breath can do for you.

Sometimes if there’s pressure up in the head, you want to focus on the breath going down the back of the neck, down the spine, and then from the tailbone down into the ground. Other times, you want to think of opening up the front of the neck—in other words, through the throat—and think of the energy going down there, down into the chest. When it gets to the heart, think of it going out into the air.

Or you could think of the body as being like a big sponge, and the breath comes in and out through all the pores of the sponge. Ajaan Fuang talks about thinking of a line going down from the center of the top of the head, down through the head, down through the neck, the torso, and right in the middle of the body. As you breathe in, the breath goes into that line from all directions, and as you breathe out, it goes out from that line in all directions.

So see what way of conceiving or perceiving the breath energy is helpful for you right now. The breath energy and the meditation as a whole become more interesting when you see that you’re exploring, experimenting, trying things out. When you learn how to develop the kind of focus that, instead of tightening up around the spot of the focus, actually helps to disperse things—to disperse tension, to disperse feelings of dis-ease—then you’ve mastered a really useful skill.

It’s like the scatter-sight that hunters or mushroom gatherers like to use. When you go into the forest, you have to give equal weight to every part of your entire visual field because you have no idea where the mushrooms are going to be. So you have to be fully present, but widely present—put it that way. The best way to develop that scatter-sight is also to think of the breath scattered as well, with your awareness widely present, throughout the body.

So there’s a lot to play with, lots to get interested in. The more you’re interested in what you’ve got right here, the more the mind will be inclined to want to stay centered here. Even as you’re dealing with other things, you can stay centered in the body.

Sometimes it’s too much, if you have a lot of other activities going on, to keep track of whether the breath is coming in or going out. But you can keep track of the general tone of the energy in the body. When things get tense, you can think of relaxing, relaxing.

And that’s just the body and the breath. Then there’s the mind. When the Buddha talks about the different kinds of fabrication that we do based on ignorance that lead to suffering, he speaks of body fabrication, which is the breath. and then the two that are more mental: verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself—what he calls directed thought and evaluation; and then mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings—feeling tones, here, of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain.

As I said, if you do these things in ignorance, they lead to suffering, but if you do them with knowledge, they can actually become part of the path to the end of suffering.

So as you’re meditating on the breath, you begin to notice that you’re learning not only about the breath, but also about the mind as the mind talks to itself about playing with the breath energies, the perceptions you hold in mind of how the breath comes in, how it goes out, and the feelings that you can develop through the way you breathe. You begin to notice that all your other emotions are created out of these same types of fabrication.

So when anger arises, the first thing you want to perceive is that it’s not something you want to get involved in. Part of the mind will say, “But, there’s something really wrong going on out there, and if I don’t get angry, I won’t do anything about it.” You’ve got to learn some new motivation. The fact that something is wrong, and maybe you can do something to make it right, doesn’t mean that you have to get angry about it. In fact, you’re not going to be effective if you’re angry. You can be a lot more effective if you can keep your anger under control, if you can disperse it.

So, a good way to disperse it is to ask yourself, “How am I talking to myself about this issue? It’s aggravating the anger. How can I talk in another way that actually helps with the solution, or helps me to realize that this may not be the time for the solution? Maybe I have to wait.”

The same with perceptions: What images are you holding in mind? What images make the anger attractive? And what images are simply telling you, “Okay, this is my normal way of acting. If I don’t act this way, I’m not me.” This is where it’s good to have a larger imagination about what you can be.

Westerners who went to Thailand to study with the ajaans noted that all of the ajaans could play many roles based on what they saw was the appropriate response to any particular situation. Which meant that they had to get their sense of *the way I act *out of the way, and focus more on what would be an effective way to act right now. So that’s a good question to keep in mind, a good way to talk to yourself.

Learn how to take an interest in this process of how you put your experience together, how you put your emotions and thoughts together—and how, if they’re not skillful, you can deconstruct them and put them together in another way. It helps you to step back both from the turmoil around you and from the turmoil inside, because this is the skill that you’re going to need.

It’s not one where you just run away to when you need to be still, need to be calm. There are times when you have to carry the calm into a storm. But have a sense of how precious that calm is by developing this sense of the observer that can watch what’s going on in the mind but doesn’t need to get sucked into what’s going on. It can be sensitive to what’s going on in the body and deal effectively with that. That little bit of feeling separate is not going to be alienating. It’s liberating. As the Buddha said, that’s the essence of discernment: seeing things as separate.

The thoughts that come into your mind are separate from you. The feelings in the body are separate from you. Pains in the body are separate from the body itself. You can separate things out like this.

That puts you in a different position, a position where you’re not sucked into things, because you’re separated out as well. Having that sense of being separate is going to be your salvation as you’re dealing with this crazy society of ours. An image I like to think of is that you’re an anthropologist from Mars coming to observe these strange human beings on Earth in the beginning of the 21st century.

The sense of being separate like this comes from being willing to take an interest in what’s going on in your body, what’s going on in your mind. These two things that you use as tools as you engage with the world, you find ultimately, are more interesting than the world itself.

The things that you create in the mind are much less interesting than the process of creation, because you realize if you do that process with ignorance, it’s going to lead to suffering, but if you do it with knowledge, it becomes the path out.