“I’ve got to…”

As long as you conceive of yourself as someone who has to do something in order to become something else, you will get caught in being a ‘self’ and never understand anything properly.

No matter how many years you meditate, you will never really understand the teaching; it will always be slightly off the mark. The direct way of seeing things – that whatever arises, passes away – doesn’t mean that you’re throwing anything away. It means that you’re looking at things in a way you’ve never bothered to look before. You are looking for a perspective on what’s here now rather than looking for something that’s not here.

Your meditation will be a really strenuous effort – and always a failure – if you come into the meditation room thinking, ‘I’ve got to spend this hour looking for the Buddha, I’ve got to be a good meditator, I’ve got to get rid of all these bad thoughts, to sit here and practise hard.’

If instead you come into the meditation room and simply become aware of the conditions of the mind, you’ll be seeing from a perspective of being Buddha rather than doing something in order to become Buddha. You’ll see the desire to become, the desire to get rid of, the desire to do something, or maybe the feeling that you can’t do it or that you’re an expert. You begin to see that whatever you’re experiencing is a changing condition and not-self. When we talk about sati, mindfulness, this is what we mean.

This reflection by Luang Por Sumedho is from the book, Ajahn Sumedho Anthology, Volume 5—The Wheel of Truth, (pdf) pp. 241-242.