..续本文上一页oad to watch him—and as soon as he got to the donkey, he kept his distance and walked way around it.

　　The sign of a good warrior is knowing which battles to take up and which to leave alone. It”s not that you go running in and take on everything at once. You look at your strength, you look at the issues, what”s really important, what”s really worth expending your strength and energy on, and save your energy for the important things. Learn how not to waste it.

　　The other side of respect for concentration is respect for other people”s concentration. We here at the monastery don”t have a “No Speaking” rule. But it”s wise to keep your speech to an absolute minimum. This is an area where, if people want to be quiet, we should learn how to respect their desire to be quiet without their having to explain an awful lot. In other words, they come to the meal, they want to eat, they want to eat quietly—you leave them alone.

　　It”s good training to learn to look at your speech. If you have an absolute rule against speaking, then the mind just goes on chattering to itself, chattering all the time, to fill up the space. But if you”re allowed to speak, you”re reminded to speak wisely. Ajaan Fuang had a good rule for this. He said, “Ask yourself before you say anything, “Is this really necessary

　　” If it”s not, you don”t say it.”

　　I found that when I first started to try to apply this rule to my own speech, it cut my speech down about 95%. You come to realize that a lot of the chatter in the course of the day is just that: idle chatter. It fills up the space, and you know what filler usually is: styrofoam peanuts. Shredded newspapers.

　　The problem is when you”re trying to fill up space, many times whatever comes into your mind pops out of your mouth without your really thinking about what the consequences are going to be. A lot of the speech that creates problems is composed of things you didn”t really intend to say but somehow they managed to come out. So, try to show respect for the concentration of people around you, too. This way the fact that we have a lot of people here, instead of becoming a hindrance, actually becomes a help. Many people notice that when you sit in a room full of meditators it”s a lot easier to get concentrated. But then if you leave the room and everyone chatters, it just destroys it.

　　So, show some respect for concentration because it”s basic respect for the mind. Concentration is what all the other good qualities—like discernment and release—depend on. To show respect for concentration is to show respect for our desire for true happiness. Give respect to the fact that other people desire true happiness as well. This is the path. The Buddha once said that Right Concentration is the heart of the Eightfold Path. The other seven factors are its requisites, things that help it along, that give it strength, but concentration itself is the heart.

　　So, keep that in mind. Try to maintain that heart, don”t let it stop beating because it”s hard to get started again. If it beats erratically that”s not much help, either. You want a steadiness to the concentration so that it becomes your background, the basic center for the mind.

　　We”re working on a concentration that”s centered but expansive. You have one spot where your main focus is, but the range of your awareness should spread to fill the whole body. This way there are no hidden corners, no places where denial or other dishonest mind functions can hide.

　　You want a spaciousness where thoughts can come up into the mind without destroying the concentration. If you want to, you can watch them come, you can watch them go, but the concentration, the sense of foundation remains—because that”s what samadhi means: a mind established, a mind solid in its footing.

　　So, you want a type of c…

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