Day-to-Day

When you are aware of what’s happening in the mind, you begin to notice the undesirable parts and will want to change. This is a beginning. The lessons are all there for you to go through and learn. Later on, if you really come to understand that something that is wrong is wrong, you will not repeat it again.

Don’t try to do anything,
don’t try to prevent anything,
but don’t forget what is happening.

This is what my teacher, Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw would say as his instructions. In the first two lines, he is speaking to the experience of what is happening. Awareness can be at work, but you do not try to alter the experience. You let the process continue as it is without interfering. Let things unfold naturally. Your job is to watch, know, learn, and gain experience. As you watch an experience continuously, you’ll begin to recognize patterns within it and later see the whole picture. The value of this meditation becomes more apparent with dedicated practice over long stretches of time. The more experienced you become, the deeper you will see. The dhamma is very subtle and you’ll see this when you practice long term.

What is happening in the mind and what is happening in the body right now? How is one mind or mental state related to another mental state? You want to be interested in the nature of this mind and body. Hold concepts or story lines on the side for now. As wisdom gains traction and defilements eventually thin out, you’ll see that there aren’t that many problems per se. “Problems” arise when there is a lot of greed, aversion or delusion present. When we can’t accept things as they are, we exhaust ourselves with desire for things that are not present or with desire to push away things that are already there.

The mind seeks variety, novelty and freshness and becomes lazy or bored when it’s not satiated. If we think that a certain experience is lingering longer than we’d like, we’re not observing properly. No two moments are the same. Every moment is fresh and every moment is changing. Even if an experience may seem neutral, we can still see subtle changes.

Doing what should be done

Yogis usually know about the Five Precepts and Eight Precepts so I do not need to tell them to you. If there is always mindfulness, you will automatically follow the Five Precepts. We must have some idea about what the Five Precepts entail in order to maintain them. It’s important to have that kind of knowledge already, but I’m not the sort of person who wants to impose requirements on people. If you merely follow my instructions without conducting your own investigation, wisdom won’t arise in you. You need to learn to the point where you personally understand why you need to act in certain ways.

There are two aspects of sīla or moral conduct: the doing of what should be done, and the not doing of what should not be done. If you know the Pātimokkha (the Buddhist monastic code), the Buddha says to do good, avoid evil, and purify the mind. The Buddha says to do what should be done. The Five and Eight Precepts that we always talk about is abstaining from that which should not be done. Remember that there is also the other side: do as much as possible of what should be done.

If we are being mindful all the time and wisdom is growing, we begin to understand what should and shouldn’t be done, because we will observe the effects of our actions and learn from that. In my experience, my behavior changed through continuous practice. I became very calm and spoke very little or not at all if it was not important. I was serious when I did talk. Being very careful in speech became important in my practice. I practiced refraining from lying, slander, gossip, talking nonsense, speaking harshly, and idle chatter. And as a result, my meditation deepened.

Causes and Conditions

Every person acts largely out of their own past causes and conditions. People brought up in Asia have a certain cultural conditioning and people brought up in the Americas or Europe have their own kind of conditioning. Then there’s individual conditioning, parental influences, and each person’s experiences throughout life; there are so many combinations and permutations that everybody has a unique footprint.

‘Non-self’ is just that principle of cause and effect. For example, somebody may have a very hot temper, and that person’s conditioning includes certain triggers that sets off their temper. If you understand that a person’s past conditioning is what is causing them to lose their temper as opposed to believing that they personally have negative intentions towards you, then it becomes easier to see the process and forgive that person. You recognize that because of conditions, the results arise, and it’s not the person who’s angry, but a set of conditions that has brought about this effect.

If you stay in the present moment, moment to moment to moment, you see the principles unfold. If you are angry and you watch that anger many times, you will begin to notice how the anger cannot run away with you as long as you are aware. You begin to see how, with awareness + wisdom, the unwholesome mental states cannot take over the mind.

Without awareness + wisdom, the unwholesome mental states can gain momentum unbeknownst to you. When there is knowing, you begin to notice how the habit of anger could arise in the absence of awareness or wisdom and how the process unfolds naturally. It’s all about mental processes; it’s never about the story or external things. When you understand the benefit of something, the harm of the opposite becomes obvious.

I say this a lot: when yogis successfully observe something unwholesome and it passes, and they are happy. But that’s not the end. It is important to reflect at that point what would have happened if we had not been mindful. If we are just happy in la la land we don’t get to learn what it is like to be unmindful.

I usually tell yogis to stay away from the storyline, but it can help to see the idea that the story carries. The story might be, “Anne was making a noise and I felt really angry with her” while the idea behind that might be “people shouldn’t make noise.” This idea influences the mind. But when it is seen clearly for what it is, that this idea is not helpful, then it can be let go.

Relating to others wisely

We get into a lot of trouble when there is attachment. When you or the other person is clinging to each other or to the relationship, double trouble! For example, thinking that you will be okay only if your children are okay implies that the mind is reliant on somebody else for its mood and that takes away the mind’s freedom. This is a strong delusion. With attachment come anger, anxiety, fear, and doubt but if there’s wisdom there can be loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. When the mind doesn’t believe that its suffering comes from other people, situation or places, then it is free.

An old couple was once asked how their relationship had lasted 50 years. One of them replied that they made adjustments every time their communication broke down. It worked because that adjustment was not made with passion or defilement but with wisdom. We become strangers to each other in a family if we don’t talk to each other for long periods of time. It takes a lot of wisdom to know whether and when to speak. Consideration of time, place, and other factors are all a part of that moment and situation before we can decide whether it is appropriate to say something. Sometimes it may be necessary to use humor to ease a situation; jokes and humor are very attractive to people.

So, love as much as you can but do not get attached. What emotions come up when you think about someone you love? If there is only love, there is only happiness. But love can get mixed up with a bit of attachment and that’s followed by fear. Loss is a natural part of life so there will be loss eventually. We need to understand it instead of fearing it. Every day we are losing time, losing the object, losing awareness, in every moment.

Speaking mindfully

We must be aware of ourselves every time we speak; come to know the many steps the mind goes through to speak. If yogis make a habit of knowing themselves, then awareness when speaking will naturally become part of that habit.

For some time I have had yogis not speak for two-thirds of a retreat and then, in the remaining one-third I explain how to be mindful while speaking and get the yogis to try mindful speech for a few days. Ideally yogis will have built up enough momentum and continue being mindful while speaking. But there is generally some inability or misunderstanding of how to remain aware when talking, and after a while I notice yogis speaking without being mindful and their momentum is gone. I now limit the practice to just one session to give just a taste of what it might be like to speak mindfully.

I did not invent this idea of cultivating awareness while talking. It is nothing extraordinary. The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta prescribes, “When silent, be silent with awareness and wisdom, when speaking, speak with awareness and wisdom,” but few people practice that. It’s difficult to practice being mindful when speaking and seeing. The reasons are that we don’t practice being mindful when speaking, seeing, and looking and we also don’t have enough momentum in our awareness. The whole point of my retreats is that I’m teaching you a skill that you’re supposed to bring into your life, and use in your life, so that mindfulness becomes a way of life. That’s why I think it is useful to know and practice being mindful when you speak, especially when you are back home and at work.

Awareness of speech is not a strange or wonderful thing but something very simple: be mindful when you speak. Some people ask, “What should I be aware of?” and I say, “Know that you are speaking, notice whatever part of the speaking experience is most obvious to you.” On retreat we practice observing body sensations and feelings, and observing the mind. All these things are still present when we speak and we want to know which of these catches our attention as we speak. The biggest trap when speaking is the strong desire to speak, wanting a lot to speak. A strong desire to speak is greed and mindfulness then goes out the window.

We can’t practice awareness of speech alone; we have to speak to somebody. We have to pay attention to an outside object, not just our own mind and body, so we lose mindfulness because our attention goes fully outside and then we are no longer attentive internally or to our speech. We start to think about the other person and look at the other person and then all our attention and our awareness goes outwards and our attention is no longer also directed toward ourselves. On the other hand, practicing talking meditation too formally and only in paying attention to one self will make the conversation stiff and unnatural.

A yogi said in a Finnish retreat that while the retreat is quite good for mindfulness, there’s a lot of stuff happening and especially in speaking. When speaking with others, a yogi has to be responsive and quick and it feels like they’re doing two jobs at once. Yes—it will be this way. It’s all about skill, and skill is gained from continued practice. We will be slow in any subject when we are not skillful as yet. As we do it over and over again, we gain momentum and the process becomes easier. While there may be a lot of personal effort in the beginning, it eventually begins to roll on its own momentum, like riding a bike. I liken it to martial arts, where at first you are practicing some simple moves and after a while (you don’t know when), you can just use them automatically. In this same way, the mind may now be a little slow and deliberate when it begins this practice, but as you keep doing it, you will find it slowly becoming automatic.

You could try practicing in this way: Know what you want to say. Think about what you want to say before you say it. When you acknowledge to yourself first, to what you feel and think before you speak, you are giving yourself time to know yourself before you speak. Try this over and over again. You can be aware of your experience as you are listening to the other person and recognize that you are listening. You are listening and knowing and are aware that you are listening and they are listening and then you are aware that the act of listening is happening, that speech is happening.

You might have to practice this quite actively; it will be difficult at first but only because you haven’t had enough practice. Every new thing you learn is difficult when it is new because you don’t have enough practice. When your overall mindfulness becomes more natural and continuous and has some momentum through practice and you know the mind and recognize it at work, it becomes easier to notice when you are talking. You will notice when the mind is thinking, when it is listening, when it is hearing, looking, and so on. You will need to accept that at first you will lose mindfulness quite a lot. Just don’t give up.

Before I learned how to practice in social situations, I would spend as much time as I could by myself and did concentration practice. The mental stability was there but I couldn’t find peace because I was resistant to social situations. I wasn’t skillful but tried over and over again. As I learned to practice with people around, slowly over a long time, the mind’s habit changed; my awareness increased and slowly became automatic. When I saw that my resistance was because of conditioning, I actively set out to practice in social situations to overcome the resistance.

At one point, I decided to practice right speech, meaning no lying, no harsh speech, no slander, and no idle talk. Taking on this task really helped me in talking meditation because I had to check if I was doing any of the four wrong speeches. It reduced the amount of talking tremendously and my practice just shot up because we speak so often and I had to be so mindful all the time.

I don’t remember how long I practiced actively like this but after some time of practicing I could maintain my peacefulness while I was with others. After I was more settled, I actively increased the practice and sought out places that disturbed me because I knew that’s where my weakness was. I would go to those places and keep trying there. Sometimes I would walk into a bar and meditate. I wanted to know how much this affected my mind and I became really interested. Everyone around me was drunk and talking loudly but I was very peaceful. This is how I developed confidence in my practice.

It’s good to know, as information, that, it is possible to be mindful when you speak. Then you are willing to try and put this aspect of mindfulness practice into your daily life, to challenge yourself to use this as part of your practice.

It is very easy for defilements to come into our speech when we speak about ourselves, when the “I” becomes involved. At home we usually speak without mindfulness and it is this habit, rather than mindfulness, that tends to come in when we speak. When we are speaking, there are three things we can be mindful of: our mind, our speech and our body. If we know our mind then we should definitely be able to filter that into knowing our speech and our body as well.

Seeing is different from looking

You need to have your eyes open while meditating in daily life. I learned how to be aware with my eyes open because fellow shopkeepers used to tease me when I meditated at work with my eyes closed. They thought I was sleeping on the job! So I learned to pay attention to the internal landscape while keeping my eyes open. I eventually became more skillful at knowing the difference between seeing and looking, and the people I worked with didn’t even know that I was meditating.

If you actively know that you are aware and you are tuned into this awareness, then it’s hard to miss the seeing that’s happening in this moment. One exercise you can do to help recognize this is to sit with your eyes open when you do sitting meditation. Be naturally attuned to your internal landscape without bringing your attention to your eyes. While this is happening, attention will naturally stray to the process of seeing and you will know that seeing is happening. It can be those moments when the awareness naturally settles on seeing and it can hit us with clarity that seeing is happening right now and being known.

When we do not understand the reality of seeing, then sometimes putting attention on our eyes gets us lost in the things we see instead of recognizing that seeing is happening. Sight or seeing is such an obvious object that we do not recognize it as such, simply because we don’t yet understand its mechanisms.

It’s a similar story with the act of looking. We want to pay attention to the mind that is doing the work of focusing on seeing in order to pick up something visually or to use certain information in order to function. You can’t physically know looking but you can know that the act of looking is happening. It’s not something tangible but you can know that it is happening. This is because reality is not solid. We can understand reality or we can know reality but that’s all we can do. If we are able to be aware of awareness, able to know the mind that is doing the work of being aware, then that awareness will pick up seeing or looking on its own. These little skills are necessary, particularly in daily life.

The process of eating

All six sense doors are working while you’re eating. Do you know everything that is happening? If you forget yourself while you are eating, there will be a lot of eagerness there. Eating often has a kind of excitement and eagerness that accompanies it. So before you start eating, check and see if there is eagerness. When this excitement calms down, awareness will become steadier.

Taste arises on the tongue. Where does the feeling that this food is good arise? In the mind! They’re wholly separate. Of course when we speak, we say, “This tastes good.” You’ll have one and the same durian but some people will like it while others can’t stand it. Durians have this one taste but the idea that this durian is either “heavenly” or “disgusting” happens in the mind. There was a Singaporean yogi who did not like durians and he watched the disliking mind. When the disliking passed away, he then tried the durian. Now he likes durians!

Taste has nothing to do with it. Some of you probably were turned off by the smell of durians from the very beginning. The first whiff made such a negative impression on the mind that it labeled everything about the durian as negative, beginning with that initial association with the sense of smell.

So, let’s relate this to your daily life. When you are outside and you judge a certain kind of sound as distracting or bad, then perhaps you will go looking for a place where there are no sounds. Can you find any place without sound? You have to understand the nature of sound. You may consider a certain kind of sound noisy, distracting, or bad. You may then go in search of a place without sounds. But can you find any place that is completely silent?

Thinking processes

We need insight into the nature of the thinking mind because much of our suffering comes from thoughts. Have you ever thought, “What if this car gets into an accident?” How did that feel? There is fear when “I” is involved but the mind is free when it knows a thought as just a thought.

Thinking in the right way is part of the practice. Yogis are often afraid of thinking about meditation but in fact, to do any kind of work, we need to consider the situation, reflect, and think. We use wisdom to make fewer mistakes and we actively reflect on meditation work that’s productive and useful. This helps us recognize what’s helpful in our practice and strengthen that. What we are observing, experiencing and thinking about how to practice, it all comes together.

The thinking mind in itself is neither wholesome nor unwholesome. It is the motivation of defilement or wisdom behind the thinking mind that determines the quality of the thought. We are concerned with this quality of mind. Naturally arising thoughts are not a problem because they are just objects to be known. Of course, if there is a defilement, we ought to deal with it and not let it carry on unchecked. If, on the other hand, it is wholesome, we can encourage it.

It is best not to observe the thinking mind alone. Also watch the feelings that accompany this thinking so that you can know when it is becoming too much. You can also gently allow the overthinking to continue and learn from it. You will experience when it has become too much and having this experience will allow you to learn from overthinking.

When there are strong wholesome qualities in the mind, it is difficult for the mind to suddenly change and become unwholesome; when there is a strong unwholesome train of thought going on, it’s difficult for it to suddenly switch and become wholesome. I experimented for myself when my mind was wholesome. I tried to intentionally think negative thoughts and realized that I could not.

Know that not all Dhamma-related thinking will necessarily be wholesome. Sometimes a self-righteousness or attachment will be fueling it. When Dhamma-related thinking has to do with your actual practice, it’s probably helpful. It’s helpful to think about the Dhamma and it’s okay if you don’t understand things straight away. The Buddha recommended this kind of consideration because you never know when the mind might be in the right state and suddenly understand! Take in enough information to help you understand whether this information is beneficial, suitable, too much, too little, or balanced.

If you can see the wanting to think, know that. Observe the intensity of the wanting. When, through skillful observation, the wanting diminishes, the thoughts will also diminish. If you can’t see the intentions to think just switch back and forth between thoughts and body as objects.

Lost in thought

Do you know that you are walking when you are walking around in daily life? You will often be lost in thought. If you realize that this is happening, just know, “The mind is thinking.” What is important is what is happening in this moment. You can do what you need to do when you arrive at your destination; there’s no need to think about it now. This way the mind will also think less about the future. You can expend a lot of mental energy speculating about the future without actually knowing what is going to happen. If you discover a very different outcome than what you had expected, you have spent a lot of energy on imagination!

There was a businessman who went to the market to buy goods wholesale to resell later. His journey to the market was filled with thoughts of various prices, how he would try to get there before everybody to get the first pick of goods. When he arrived he found there was nothing there for him! This businessman was a yogi and so he was aware of what his mind was doing this whole time. He realized how much time he had wasted speculating and determined that on future market trips he would relax and make decisions when he arrived.

Memories and planning

The concept or story is about the past or future but the knowing of that is in the present moment. You need to consider how you might respond to a certain situation so that you arrive prepared, but this is not the same as worrying about a situation. If you are planning and knowing with wisdom that this is happening, that’s the present moment. Planning is necessary but could be done with either defilements or wisdom. Do you worry when you’re planning? Some people plan with greed and others with anxiety but there is a way to plan and think in a relaxed way.

Thinking about past events will also happen naturally from time to time and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t go back and change the situation. You can only revisit the past in thought. However, you can learn a lesson and not repeat the same mistakes. One yogi realized that the idea of “one second” of time was a concept and the past dropped away for him with this understanding.

Awareness at work

Meditating at work is a skill and by skill, I mean lots of practice! Initially, of course, when you pay attention to outside phenomena, you can’t concentrate on phenomena inside; when you put your mind inside you can’t really be aware of what is happening outside. Initially you might not be able to be aware of inside and outside when you are working but try to practice whenever you can to allow momentum to build. At some point awareness will kick in naturally while you’re doing something you’re really absorbed in. Getting to this level of awareness requires consistent practice.

When you need to be working, just do it fully. Sometimes you will have more time to devote to your practice and do it freely and you will know something like, “Oh the mind is thinking about this so it can do that.” When you build the habit of noticing the mind at work then you will notice that awareness just starts popping up because it becomes a habit for the mind to recognize itself doing work. This will just come in naturally. Allow this to happen.

A yogi once asked a question about building up continuous practice, “How much should we do?” I said, “Do it 50-50.” The yogi was a psychiatrist so he thought a moment about my suggestion and asked, “How do you measure?” (Laughter.) I considered it and realized that it wasn’t as much about a division of 50-50 as much as allowing the mind to do its work naturally. If it is very practiced then the knowing happens naturally.

When you have a continuous practice that reminds and remembers and knows the mind at work, then it gets to the point where it becomes effortless because the mind becomes so familiar and so intimate with itself. It is always with itself and it likes being with itself. That’s when it allows the mind to do anything because it doesn’t mind; it’s always with itself. The operative word is continuously. Although it is difficult in the beginning, any amount of effort you put in brings momentum and that in turn makes it more effortless and continuous in the future. That’s why the Buddha said to practice continuously.

When the mind says, “It’s not fair.”

When something happens, the mind starts making judgments, sets up parameters, and develops ideas of what’s appropriate and boundaries of “you” and “me.” Once hooked on these ideas, the mind won’t like it when one of these ideas is violated.

We encounter this all the time. In Western society, people wait in a queue or line because there is a belief that people should wait their turn for something. There is a dissonance when someone cuts that queue/line and thoughts that they should be in line start coming up. Or different thoughts of fairness might come up. There could be another kind of belief, “I wanted to get to my food and she has slowed that down by jumping the queue.” The mind has convinced itself of all these strands of thought! At times like these, we should ask ourselves, “What internal belief is being thwarted here?” Right now, someone’s actions are frustrating these beliefs and the mind justifies this anger against the other person!

Stringing each other along

In daily life, we give each other compliments and thank each other for their compliments. We string each other along by reinforcing the need to look good and feel good. If instead we had said, “You look really terrible,” the listener might get irritated because people want to feel good. We are often at the mercy of other people’s words, compliments or insults and are generally automatically affected. When there is an understanding of how these thoughts work in the background, the wanting will disappear.

Feeling like being taken advantage of

It is very important that there is a right attitude when we are working in the world. Sometimes we may feel like we are being taken advantage of or being taken for granted. How different would it be if we thought these people were acting in a certain way because they didn’t know any better? If someone were bullying you, it would be really tough to handle! You may get tense, agitated or angry with the bully. What if you thought that this person was only inadvertently doing these things because she didn’t know better? How would you feel then? You can better understand and forgive.

Self-judgments

“Bad” is just a label. Don’t label yourself that. When the mind is wholesome, the person is good and when the mind is unwholesome, the person is bad. It’s only for that moment and that’s always changing. Continue to practice and take your time; the fact that you are practicing shows that your mind wants to become better and that means that the mind will become better.

When doubt is strong in the mind, do not pay attention to these thoughts. Once we give attention to these kinds of thoughts, they suck us in and grow. We can anchor ourselves to feelings instead and not give any power to the conceptual thinking. Follow the same principle for other strong, unwholesome states. When we look at the feeling and discontinue looking at the thoughts, it will help the mind calm down. Then we can look at these thoughts and feelings together when we feel we’re ready.

Everyone has his or her own path and there’s a natural course that needs to unfold for each person. You can watch what’s happening in the mind and understand it, but you can’t force it. You may learn a technique at a retreat, but it is when you go home that you can apply that technique all the time. That’s when your life changes.

Preconceptions

How do you experience silence? How do you experience the stillness of a garden or the woods? I’ve asked different people this question. Fear comes up for some people. Youngsters tell me that they get bored when there’s nothing to occupy them. As you can see, good or bad depends on the person experiencing it, depending on their preconceived feelings of it.

There are tons of these accumulations that you have from childhood and you really want to see these ideas that have built up over the years. If these little preconceptions are seen properly, then the mind will no longer be disturbed by what is happening. If you continue to meditate regularly, there ought to be fewer and fewer attachments.

Giving comes in different ways

The market where I had my shop was a very busy place. Lots of shops were lined up side by side with narrow alleys between them. Shopkeepers sent goods in and out with carriers who ran back and forth for the shopkeepers. People would run quite blindly, not caring who was in the way. I would get irritated whenever I had to get out of the way, which was quite often! I knew that people would run into me if I didn’t move aside, but also became annoyed that I was the one who always had to be careful. This was a daily occurrence.

When I began to practice continuously, I became mindful of my irritation with this market situation. After being mindful of it regularly for a long time, I actually began to see it as a good practice to give space to these people to prevent accidents and I saw moving aside as a practice of generosity. As I practiced day after day and mindfulness arose, good actions also followed. The aversion that accompanied the critical mind decreased. With aversion gone, I began to feel mettā for these people.

Different experiences, different reactions

When necessary, use every weapon you have in your arsenal.

There will always be some kind of contact at the six sense doors. Don’t follow any such contact. Just know the state of mind and stay with the knowing, observing mind. How does the mind feel or react every time there is contact at the sense doors? Is there a resistance? You may not necessarily let go and accept the situation initially, but that’s fine because you are using this experience as a tool to develop skill in meditation.

In daily life, where wisdom may be weak, you want initially to pay attention to awareness. The mind can recognize the situation happening while awareness naturally collects data in the background. As awareness picks up more data from the experience, and the picture becomes complete and wholesome minds grow stronger, you will eventually stop acting out of defilements.

Let’s say you are in a social situation and you have accidentally said something harsh because there was too much momentum to speak. Let awareness continue to know in the background while you’re talking to others. At some point of seeing this whole process, awareness will have enough of a picture that wisdom can arise and resolve the situation. It is inevitable to make some wrong turns in daily life but you have to learn how to profit from these experiences. Don’t allow defilements to run freely or your situation will deteriorate.

Imagine the alternate result if only delusion were operating. Perhaps that situation would become exaggerated. We have to recognize things for what they are. If the mind has a bad habit, we have to recognize that. There is awareness so you’re keenly aware of what goes through your mind. It takes time and everybody has different characteristics. We all have faults and we need to look at what is in our mind and know it until the mind realizes that it doesn’t want to be that way anymore. That realization will help you learn how to let go.

We think that there are many people that we interact with in our daily lives. In fact, most of us will usually interact with a certain limited set of people over and over again. How do we work with this? How can we strategize so that we become skillful? So long as there is the intention to have the Dhamma in our lives, then it will become easier.

Having these experiences is very important and each experience gives you a life lesson. It’s like playing videogames, which I like to talk about with children. You work at it and reach the first level. You graduate to higher and higher levels and eventually win the prize. You know how to do this because you’ve got that experience. You know how you can win this game at this level. Of course if you don’t know how to learn from your experiences, you won’t get anything no matter how many life lessons come your way!