Your Ultimate Possession
December 16, 2016

When I was in Zion, I saw a bumper sticker that I liked. It said, “The more you know, the less you need.” And it could have gone on to say, “The less you need, the safer you are.”

The fewer things you have, the easier it is to look after them, and not be afraid they’re going to get rained on.

There are passages in the Canon where a monk is sitting in his little hut and he says, “I’ve got my little hut here and it’s all well-roofed. So rain, go ahead and rain as much as you like!”—the emphasis being on making sure that the roof is well sealed.

Make sure your mind is well sealed against running out and trying to lay claim to a lot of things that just open it up to the changes that come when things change. The fewer things you need, the fewer things that are likely to get affected by change.

So, the more you know, the less you need. In this particular case, the more you know how to look after your mind: That’s what’s important. There will come times when you’re stripped of just about everything you can imagine. Even your body’s going to be taken away.

So what do you have left? You have left the condition of the mind. If you haven’t been looking after the condition of your mind, who’s going to look after it? How do you keep yourself protected? The mind will be running out laying claim to this, laying claim to that, even as those things fall away from its fingers, get pulled away from its fingers, pull those fingers off. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re not grasping at things you don’t need.

The more you know about how to look after the mind, the less you need—the less there is to get rained on. In that way you’re safe. You’re safe as you stay, you’re safe as you go, because you’ve got the knowledge, you’ve got the skills that you need. So you don’t need anything else.