Five Things to Keep In Mind
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
July, 2003
Many times we like to think that simply by adding meditation to our lives, the effects of the meditation will permeate throughout our whole lives without our having to do much of anything else. Simply add the meditation to the mix of your life and it will change all the other ingredients: that”s what we”d like to think, but it doesn”t really work that way. You have to remake your life to make it a good place for the meditation to seep through, because there are some activities, there are some states of mind, that are really resistant to receiving any influence from the meditation.
This is why, when you”re meditating, you also have to look at the way you live your life, your day-to-day activities. See if you”re creating a conducive environment for the meditation to thrive and spread. Otherwise the meditation just gets squeezed into the cracks between the rocks here and there, and never gets to permeate much of anything at all.
There”s a teaching in the Canon on five principles that a new monk should keep in mind. These principles apply not only to new monks, but to anyone who wants to live a life where the meditation can seep through and permeate everything.
The first principle is virtue. Make sure you stick to your precepts. In the case of monks, of course, this refers to the Patimokka. In the case of lay people, it refers to the five precepts and on occasion the eight. When you”re holding to the precepts you”re holding to firm principles in your life. The Buddha described observing the precepts as a gift: a gift both to yourself and to the people around you. You give protection to other people”s lives, their property, their knowledge of the truth. You protect them from your being drunk; you protect them from your engaging in illicit sex. And when these principles become precepts—in other words a promise to yourself that you keep in all circumstances—the Buddha says that you”re giving unlimited protection, unlimited safety to other beings, and you have a share in that safety, a share in that protection yourself. So on the one hand, the precepts create an environment where there”s more protection, and when there”s more protection it is easier to meditate. On the other hand, the precepts foster an attitude of giving. You realize that for the sake of your own happiness, you have to give. When you have that attitude it gets easier to meditate, because all too often people come to the meditation with a question of “What can I get out of this”
” But if you”re used to giving and seeing the good results that come from giving, you”re more likely to ask, “What can I give to the meditation
What needs to be given for the good results to come
” With that attitude you”re more willing to give of your time, give of your energy, in ways that you might not have been willing to before.
The second principle for creating a good environment for meditation in your life is restraint of the senses. In other words, you”re not only careful about what comes out of your mind, you”re also careful about what comes in, in terms of the things you look at, the things you listen to, smell, taste, touch, and think about. Be careful not to focus on things that will give rise to greed, anger, or delusion. If you”re careless in your looking, careless in your listening, it”s very difficult to be careful about your thoughts, because thoughts are so much more subtle. This doesn”t mean that you go around with blinders on your eyes or plugs in your ears, simply that you”re skillful in how you look at things, skillful in how you listen. If you know that something tends to arouse lust or anger, learn to look at it in a way that doesn”t arouse the lust, that counteracts the lust, that counteracts the anger. …
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