Weaving Good Qualities
February 02, 2017

Try to settle in with the breath.

The mind’s been wandering around all morning, so gather it in. You want to gather it around one thing: the breath right here. Whatever thinking you’re doing, make it focused on the breath. Whatever you’re aware of, try to be aware of the breath. Get everything together right here.

It’s when the mind is gathered that it has more strength. And it gets to understand itself better as well. If it’s scattered all over the place, it’s like having your money scattered all over. When the time comes when you really need to use it, you have to run around and find it. Sometimes it gets lost because it’s not all in one place. You’re looking here but something else gets stolen over there. Whereas if you’re gathering all your valuables right here—in other words, all the good qualities in your mind get centered here—then they can have strength. They’re right at hand, and they can take on all the unskillful things in the mind.

So give them some strength, give them a sense of well-being. Feed them with the breath, allow them to rest with the breath, so that the good qualities are coming from a position of strength. That way, when difficult things come up, everybody’s here. You can all work together.

There’s an image they like to use in Thailand: They say that individual threads on their own can’t do much, but if you weave them into a cloth, you can do all kinds of good things with the cloth. It’s the same with the good qualities of the mind: If they’re scattered here, scattered there, there’s not much strength. They don’t have much resistance to things. But if they get woven together—as when you weave together your mindfulness and your alertness and your ardency around the breath—then they get strong and they can accomplish a lot.

So try to keep the good things gathered right here. As for things that are not so good in the mind, just let them go where they want. You don’t have to act on them. As you strengthen the good qualities, the bad qualities get weaker. And you learn you can trust yourself more. When things come up in the mind, you’re in a better position to judge what’s worth going with and what’s not. Because all the good people are here.