Mindfulness Is a Lifestyle Change

When a retreat begins, defilements will negotiate with the yogi: “OK, for how long do you want to practice? One month? Two months? Three months? All right. We’ll leave you alone for that long. But when the retreat is over, then it’s our turn again!” And it really is their turn again. Delusion loves hearing the line, “The retreat is over!” It is very common to think that we’ve finished meditating. When this happens, it is now time for defilements to come back out to play.

When I was younger, I went for long retreats of six to ten months at a time. My mind cleared up while I was in retreat, but I stopped practicing back home and my mind went back to square one. My life did not change. I never listened to my teacher’s advice to continue practicing at home and got into deep trouble! It was only when I was in the deepest trouble that I saw the need to work it out in daily life. I began to practice continuously at home and realized the need to meditate all the time.

When you return home, remember that you are there, at home. You should remain in the present moment there. The present moment is the only real thing. Stay where you are because the now is always now, there is no “after now.” You’re trying to have mindfulness in this mind, and the only effort is to remember to be mindful in the present moment. Through everything in your life you are remembering to be mindful, remembering how to be mindful, and building and maintaining samadhi, or stability of the mind.

You use the information that you have, combined with intelligence, logic, and reasoning, to figure out how to practice correctly. Next, you learn how to keep these already developed insights alive. Finally, you figure out how to develop even deeper levels of insight.

We must walk on the noble eightfold path of sila (moral conduct), samadhi (stability of mind), and panna (wisdom). We need to be a close friend of the dhamma in order to grow in the dhamma. Otherwise, there is not much growth. How can the dhamma grow in us if we are not always living the dhamma? The Buddha frequently reminded his followers to keep the dhamma in mind. He didn’t say when to have the dhamma in mind but just said to have the dhamma in mind. Unless we are always meditating, delusion will step in and hold the door open for all the other defilements to move in.

How long can you maintain stability of mind in daily life?

People talk about how long they have been practicing meditation, but they are counting only the length of time from their first retreat up to now. If they added up the hours that they were actually mindful, that would be a wholly different picture. The way we usually work is to put in a lot of effort over a small period of time in the hopes of getting some reward. That’s greed at work!

Right effort is staying in it for the long haul. You need to become familiar with the work that you do, to always be in touch with it so that you become skillful at it. Right effort is not slacking off, not giving up, and never stopping. Keep going. That’s real right effort. Wisdom considers the long term. There’s no hurry, but we also do not rest. The more we understand the forces of nature and how they work, the more we begin to rely on the laws of nature to let things unfold in a steady way.

I would ask you to look at your mind right now. How often do defilements come in unnoticed? You’ve got to turn that whole paradigm upside down so that what is naturally present in your mind is awareness, stability of mind, and wisdom, just as the defilements are present right now. If you ask me about setting aside time for meditation, yes, we should do that. When I was at home, I sat before I went to work in the morning and before I went to sleep at night. But I also sat from time to time throughout the day in my shop or at the coffee shop. When there was a lull in my work or I had five or ten minutes, I would be still and do meditation. All of these things gathered my mind.

We haven’t reached the point where practicing continuously in daily life feels essential for us, so much so that we cannot live without it. If we felt that way about practice in our daily lives, we would maintain mindfulness so much more continuously.

When we want to maintain the peace in our mind for longer and longer periods, we begin to realize that all these elements of knowing what we are aware of must become part of our practice and skill. Otherwise, we cannot maintain the peacefulness of the mind. We lose it when we lose awareness, like a leaky faucet loses water. We leak peacefulness when we lose mindfulness while talking, walking, or going about our daily business.

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When you are aware of a peaceful mind, it continues to be peaceful. It becomes more and more peaceful. When you aren’t aware of the peaceful mind, then the mind starts breaking down into chaos. How long can you maintain stability of mind in daily life?

The Buddha said that when there are leaves covering the surface of a lake, you can’t see your reflection. Also, when the water is turbulent, you can’t see your reflection. It is the same with the mind. Stability and wisdom cannot arise when the mind is covered with defilements.

We give wisdom more opportunities to arise when awareness and stability of mind are present for longer and longer periods. Once you recognize the agitated mind and continue to know that agitated mind, it starts to become peaceful and clear again. Not being aware of the agitation or confusion only leads it to spiral into more agitation or confusion. When you know everything that’s happening in the mind, you’ll also immediately notice when a speck of defilement comes to disturb that peace. At this point, you can immediately recognize the thought that preceded that shift from a peaceful mind to an agitated mind.

Just know the state of your mind—whether it is peaceful or agitated. Keep that as your anchor as you go about your business. You may put a lot of effort into your work with little energy left for awareness. But awareness needs some energy as well. If you are not skillful at using just enough energy for awareness, you’ll use too much energy and won’t have enough to do normal work. Learn to use just enough energy, and then practice continuously. You will become skillful if you do this every day.

When we are learning to be skillful at something, like putting in golf, for instance, we putt again and again and assess whether the energy we have used is sufficient. We then adjust our game and try again. We need to bring that same approach to our meditation. Instead of a forced focus, it is a light attention and full interest in the process. People who cook will know what I mean. How will an extra onion change the taste of this dish? How would it taste if we were to cook the onion a bit longer? How would the taste change if we added soy sauce instead of salt? When we do everything else in our lives, we know how to use our intelligence to figure out how to do something best. Why don’t we do this with meditation? Why do we just blindly follow instructions without getting personally invested and involved? If we get an instruction to focus, we may just start doing it without considering whether it is helpful. We need to assess for ourselves: Is this working? What is the effect? How is it? I want you to open the door to possibilities through your own understanding.

I would liken mindfulness to a mother tending to a baby. Having children is a huge enterprise, as all mothers will know. I once observed a mother caring for her 2-year-old and saw just how skillful she was with the toddler as he sat on her lap. She held a conversation with four other people while feeding the child. As the toddler moved in her lap, she adjusted along with him, and every now and then gave him some food, and if he didn’t like what she gave him, she would put the piece down, give him a different piece, and later on pick up the original piece again to give to the child. Sometimes she would eat it herself, always going with the flow, not making judgments of the child. Meditation is like this. We may find it difficult in the beginning to mind what we are doing, but it’s all practice and habits.

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If thoughts are too subtle, and you don’t catch the thoughts, then the causes will not show themselves. So there can be awareness and stability of mind, but wisdom is missing from the picture. As our practice develops, there needs to be a little bit of inquiry.

There is no speech or action without some idea fueling it. Why are you wearing the shirt you are wearing right now? Why did you place your keys, for example, over here, instead of in the corner somewhere? There are ideas in the mind. Notice what is happening. If you are at the point where you can be aware of the mind, begin to pay attention to how it is feeling or what it is thinking. You will then begin to see causes. The mind is knowing, aware, and feeling. Pay attention to the mind that wants to do things or that wants something to happen.

These mental intentions are present everywhere in the body. What intentions are you aware of while you are walking? What are you aware of when you are sitting? What are you aware of when you are working? Do you notice the wanting to move? What do you want to move? Every movement involves mental intentions.

You can see these things if you’re watching the mind. What are you aware of while you’re reading this? If you watch only the body, you will not see a complete picture. When you begin to see a more comprehensive picture of how the mind and body are operating, then you will come to know causes and effects.

When I was trying to understand the emotion of anger, I asked myself, Why was there anger? What was I angry with? When the mind is angry at something, there is some sort of underlying idea in there. The mind is holding on to a certain belief and getting angry over it. As soon as I saw this happening in the mind, the anger just slid away. But sometimes people don’t even have an idea of what they’re angry about. So many things have accumulated over time that it’s hard to pull apart the strands. It’s all jumbled up.

You have to watch every time anger arises. This anger wasn’t here a moment ago. Look at this feeling very closely. It has something to do with the conditions surrounding your experience at this moment. Is it a person? Is it something in the environment? Is it you?

For example, people feel that they shouldn’t get angry when they’re on retreat. Anger arises anyway. Now they’re angry that there’s anger! This is possible! Yogis then get frustrated. Sometimes the mind may be in a habit of getting angry at something specific, so when this object appears, anger will arise. If you’re able to understand this as a natural phenomenon, then the anger will go down in intensity immediately. How is that? It’s because there is now right understanding.

You want to watch and learn what is happening and why. You want to know why anger is present. Why does this feeling arise? Maybe you are dissatisfied. Why are you dissatisfied? You want certain things to happen. Let’s say you don’t get what you want or what you want to happen does not happen. You want something. Can you just watch this anger? It’s impossible. The anger is going to keep on going. Why? Because there’s some cause that you have not addressed yet. If you want to know the intensity of the anger, you can look to the intensity of the wanting. They are related.

When you have some preconceived notions about something and things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to, anger will arise. Or you may feel justified in being angry over something. You may be relating an event back to a friend, and you might say, “You know I really ought to be angry about so and so. . . .” What does this mean? It’s just the mind preparing itself to let this defilement loose. But it’s never good to let anger loose.

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Now is the time for you to get into the boxing ring. I am the coach, but all I can do is yell from the sidelines. For beginners, I’ll shout strategies when you look to me for support. Amateurs will often look to the coach for further instructions, while the old hands don’t need to; they can think for themselves and deliver the punch. As a coach, I can yell what I want, but you, as the yogi and boxer, can use only the strategies you are familiar with. You are the boxer in the ring, and you are facing the real deal.

When I practiced at home, I would talk with my teacher once every week or so. If you are practicing at home and do not have anyone to ask, ask yourself the question, then set it aside. Later, consider what I’ve said and what the Buddha taught. What have you tried before? What has worked? Should you try one way or another way? Even those who do not meditate will sit down and really think through a life problem if it matters enough to them. The thinking we are referring to with meditation is not just random abstract thinking but right thinking and use of wisdom.

My teacher never told me not to think. He didn’t exactly encourage me to think either, but he did ask me questions that required me to be aware and to reflect on how I was practicing. I eventually discovered the answers and realized that one finds answers by being aware and by questioning. When you begin with the why, you are already bringing out your internal curiosity and intelligence. You’ll have many questions initially in the learning phase, but you won’t have that many in the wisdom phase. At that time, the mind will be clearer and less cluttered. The student is inside you. The teacher is also inside you.

This work is possible. You need to be patient and work through it for a few years continuously and patiently. You need to taste the full flavors of dhamma: of knowing, of awareness, and of understanding. You all have to cultivate your own energy and your own wisdom. When you have tasted enough dhamma, it will lead you along. When I practiced like that, I finally understood the meaning of if you look after the dhamma, the dhamma will look after you.

When you really practice long term, the practice just becomes nature. When the practice becomes nature, it also becomes your nature to understand dhamma nature.

Adapted from Collecting Gold Dust: Nurturing the Dhamma in Daily Living © Sayadaw U Tejaniya 2019, transcribed by Tony Reardon and edited by Laura Zan.