Values
October 07, 2023

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October 7, 2023

There are lots of different ways of getting the mind to settle down, and the breath is the object the Buddha discussed most frequently and in most detail for settling down with. But there are other ways of getting the mind to settle down as well. You can focus on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha either by simply repeating one of those words in your mind as you breathe in, breathe out, or by focusing on their qualities. Think about the Buddha, think about the Dhamma and the Sangha—what you find inspiring about them.

You could think about your generosity or your virtue. Think about the times when you were generous and didn’t have to be. There was no compulsion, but you just simply wanted to share. It’s good to think about those times.

Think about times when it was difficult to hold by your precepts, but you did. Or think about the *brahmavihāras, *or about death, that it could come at any time.

That last contemplation is not meant to be a sole topic of meditation, though. The way the Buddha recommends it is that you think about the fact that death could come at any time so you’ve got work to do. What work do you need to do? What things do you need to let go of in the mind that would hold you down, pull you back? Do that work right now.

Some people have very personal ways of getting the mind to settle down. There’s a story in the Canon of a nun who was frustrated by the fact that she couldn’t get her mind to settle down at all. She reflected on the fact that people who work in the fields had to work a lot harder than she did, and yet they were able to accomplish their aims, why couldn’t she accomplish hers? So she walked back to her hut, and as she was washing her feet before going into the hut, she focused on the water. As it flowed down, it calmed her mind. She entered the hut, and gained awakening.

There’s a story in the commentary of a monk who was so inarticulate that he couldn’t even keep one meditation word in his mind. So the Buddha gave him a piece of cloth and said, “Just rub your hand over this piece of cloth again and again.” As he did, he began to notice that the sweat on his hand was discoloring the cloth, and that gave rise to a sense of *saṁvega. *That calmed his mind down.

So can you choose the topic you want to get the mind still. The breath has lots of advantages. Some of those other methods can be used only for a certain amount of time. Like the contemplation of the body: It might be great for developing a sense of saṁvega, but sometimes it gets depressing, and you find that you can’t even eat, which is not the purpose of the meditation.

In cases like that, the Buddha says to go back to the breath. He says it’s like a rainstorm that comes in at the beginning of the rainy season in India, washing all the dust of the hot season out of the air. In the same way, working with the breath clears unskillful qualities out of the mind.

So the technique for getting the mind still is going to be an individual matter. What’s important is that you do get the mind to settle down clearly here in the present moment, because you need to see a lot of things right here. And not just see, not just observe: You’re going to be passing judgment.

We hear so much about how mindfulness is a non-judgmental, non-reactive state of mind. And the Buddha, as he taught meditation to Rahula, his son, did start out by saying, “Make your mind like earth”: Earth doesn’t react when disgusting things are thrown on it. At the same time, it doesn’t get excited when you pour perfume on it. But that’s just a beginning step. You want to get your mind still and solid like that, non-reactive like that, so that it can pass accurate judgments.

We can see this in the fact that the Buddha then taught the steps for breath meditation, which are very proactive and involve passing judgment: What kind of breathing feels good? What kind of breathing doesn’t feel good? You train yourself to develop breathing that gives rise to a sense of refreshment, gives rise to a sense of pleasure.

If the mind is scattered, you learn to breathe in ways, think in ways, that get it to settle down, be more concentrated. If it’s feeling low, you try to find ways of making it glad. You don’t just sit there with whatever. If the mind is low, you try to gladden it. If it’s scattered, you try to concentrate it. If it’s feeling burdened by something, you try to release it from those burdens.

The reason the Buddha has you make your mind, or your basic attitude, more solid, is so that you can notice what’s happening in the mind, step back from it, and figure out what really needs to be done.

So there’s a judgment involved. As he said, once you’ve learned the Dhamma, you’ve thought it through, and it makes sense, then you give rise to a willingness, a desire to practice. Then you judge what’s going on in your mind, what’s going on in your behavior, against the standards of the Dhamma.

Actually, the teachings themselves as a whole are one judgment after another.

The Buddha started his first sermon by saying that there are two ways of practicing that are not noble: indulgence in sensuality and self-torture. There are two types of path: There’s the noble path, and there are lots of ignoble paths, actually.

The noble path is what looks for something deathless. That’s the basic value judgment that underlies everything in the practice—that a happiness that’s deathless, a happiness that’s totally harmless, a happiness that’s not subject to change, is possible through your actions, and it’s the best thing you can aim for. You judge everything else you do and say and think against the standard of that possibility.

So as you sit here and meditate, if the mind isn’t settling down, you ask yourself, “What could settle it down?” Choose a topic that you like. Or think things through: “What’s getting in the way of it settling down?”

The Buddha says there are basically two types of causes of suffering. One type is one where all you have to do is look at it and it goes away. The reason it has power over the mind is that you’re not looking at it; you don’t see it. But if you can get the mind to be a little bit still, still enough to clearly look at itself, you realize, “This is dumb. Whatever underlies this particular cause of suffering is something I don’t really believe in, actually. Why do I let myself be overcome by it?” It’s this kind of cause of suffering that the technique of just watching or just being with something can overcome.

But there are other kinds of causes of suffering that don’t go away when you just look at them. You’ve got to have that sense of values—the value of the potential of the deathless—to motivate whatever action you’re going to take to get rid of this type of cause: “What can I do to get rid of it? What can I do to abandon it?”

The Buddha says you “exert a fabrication” against that cause of suffering. Now, fabrication here can mean your bodily fabrication, in other words, the way you breathe. Say, anxiety arises, and you find yourself breathing in a certain uncomfortable way. Well, learn how to breathe in another way that’s not so aggravating to the anxiety.

Then there’s verbal fabrication: How are you talking to yourself about the issue? What are you saying? Suppose you’re talking about something that you’re afraid is going to be taken away from you: Is that a fear that you want to give in to? Do you want to hold on to something that’s going to expose you to that kind of fear?

This is where the Buddha’s values differ from the values of the world. The world says you’ve got to hold on. You’ve got wealth, you’ve got family, you’ve got your loved ones, and without them your life is meaningless, so you’ve got to do everything you can to protect them.

But the Buddha says that kind of loss is not really all that important. He takes a much larger view. Imagine someone who’s seen eons and eons of past lifetimes, seeing the whole universe full of beings dying and being reborn based on their karma. And from that perspective, he said: You lose your relatives, you’re going to get them back. You lose your wealth, you’re going to get it back again—and again and again. And you’re going to lose it again and again and again. That kind of loss doesn’t necessarily pull you down.

The kind of loss that pulls you down is if you lose right view or lose your virtue. If there’s anything to be afraid of, be afraid of that. It’s a different kind of fear.

The fear that comes from losing things in life in terms of the people, things, status, whatever, comes from a sense of powerlessness. Fear of loosing your virtue, fear of loosing your right view, though, is a fear that comes from a sense of power. You have the power to protect these things. No one else can destroy your virtue; no one else can take away your right views. You’re the one who can destroy them; you’re the one who can take them away. You have the power to protect them or to drop them—and you don’t want to misuse that power.

As you think about these things, that counts as verbal fabrication, and you see how the fears that were making you anxious are nothing you really want to focus on, nothing you want to have take over your mind.

Then there’s mental fabrication—perceptions and feelings. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions are images you hold in mind, and they’re related to your sense of values: “This means that, that means this; this is worthwhile, that’s not worthwhile.” Sometimes you actually see a visual image in the mind of yourself being deprived of something, or being threatened by something. You can change that image.

Remind yourself that you have a certain kind of power. The things of the world are like what Ajaan Chah says: He picked up a cup one time and said, “This cup is already broken.” In other words, you know someday it’s going to be broken, so you have to look at it from that attitude.

In the meantime, you take good care of it. You don’t mistreat it. You take good care of it, but keeping in mind that someday it’s going to be broken, so that when it does break, you’re not surprised. You’re not caught off guard. That’s a perception you can hold in mind.

These ways of shaping your experience—these perceptions, these ways of thinking, even these ways of breathing, are based on a set of values: that a deathless happiness is possible, that it’s the best thing you can go for, and then you rank all your other values in line with that.

So meditation is not just a technique. It’s not just one insight technique that works, or just one concentration technique that works. The commentaries count forty topics of meditation, and there are actually more than that. What unifies everything is the sense of values.

You want to keep those values in the back of your mind as you meditate, as you get up from meditation, as you engage in the rest of your activities. Learn to look at the world from the point of view of the Buddha’s awakening. In Buddhism, that’s *the *event that puts everything else into perspective.

What the Buddha saw on that night, what he was able to accomplish on that night, gives us a new sense of the world we live in, and the possibilities for happiness that are open to us all.

Those are the things that determine our values, so that we can find a happiness that really does satisfy, that causes no harm to anyone, and that will never leave.