A World Apart

We live in so many worlds.

There’s the world of work, the world of our family, the world of our imaginations. When we meditate, we’re creating a world apart, one that’s not involved in the other worlds.

We start out by focusing on the breath. As the Buddha said, you focus on the body in and of itself. In the case of the breath, this means simply being with the sensation of the breathing as it comes in and as it goes out. As for how that connects with the world outside, you try to cut all those connections.

When the Buddha describes mindfulness, it’s basically two activities. One is keeping one thing in mind. In this case, it’s keeping the breath in mind. The other is putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world – in other words, all your emotions about the world outside or any other worlds that are not related to the breath in and of itself.

It may seem like you’re turning your back on that world, but you’re actually being very responsible because the shape of your mind is going to determine how you interact with the world. If you want to interact in a way that’s good, you’ve got to look after your mind.

So we’re looking after the mind both for its own sake and for the sake of the duties we have in the world outside. It’s obvious that when the mind is calmer and clearer, then when you engage in the world outside, you can engage in a way that’s more skillful.

But it’s important that we keep our priorities straight.

The first priority is the world of the mind in and of itself because this is something that only you can be responsible for, and this is what you’ve got as your companion all the way through life, even to the end of life. Any thoughts or interests you may have in the world outside will actually get in the way of doing what needs to be done at that point, which is to stay focused on being calm in the midst of all the turmoil that will go on in the body. You want to make sure that wherever the mind goes after life the mind will be in good shape. And being in good shape will determine that it goes to a good place.

Even before death, we deal with aging and illness. Those are times when you’re dealing primarily with issues that only you can experience from inside. And the skill with which you handle them is your responsibility. No one else can help you. Others can give you advice. They can try to comfort you. But the actual skill with which you deal with these things—the extent to which you suffer or don’t suffer—depends totally on you.

This is an issue that should take high priority in your life.

This means that meditation is not simply something you stick into a few free moments. It’s a matter of life and death: the life of the goodness of the mind, the death of the goodness of the mind, and your ability to handle difficult situations. When unexpected things come up, all the plans you’ve established for how this is going to happen and how that is going to happen will often just get swept away. What you need most at times like that are powers of alertness, mindfulness, discernment, and concentration.

These are precisely the skills you’re developing as you stay with the breath and work with the breath so that it becomes a good place to stay.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the talk “A World Apart,” March 16, 2020. [Also in pdf format.]