Talking to Yourself

We suffer largely because of the way we talk to ourselves. That’s what the message of the four noble truths is all about.

It’s not that we suffer from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. We suffer because of the commentary we apply to these things. And a lot of meditation is learning to talk to yourself in new ways. In fact, the whole practice is about talking to yourself in new ways, asking new questions – and when you ask new questions, you get new answers.

How do you create suffering for yourself? What are the steps? What are the steps in the path away from the suffering? What do you have to relearn? What old habits should you keep? What new habits do you have to develop?

These are questions best asked when you’re alone, talking to yourself. The problem is that we don’t always live alone. We very rarely have time alone now in the modern world. Our space is invaded; our minds are invaded. This has always been the case with every domestic culture where people try to domesticate you so that you live nicely within the culture.

…One of the things that’s radical about the Dhamma is that a large part of it is not domesticated. It’s a wilderness Dhamma. The Buddha was able to straddle wilderness and civilization, but his time in the wilderness was what enabled him to get away from the questions of his civilization and see that they were the wrong questions.

The hot topics of the time were: “What are you? Do you have a self? Do you not have a self? Or how about the nature of the world: Is it eternal? Is it not eternal? Who made it? Did somebody make it?” That kind of thing.

It drove some of his contemporaries crazy that when the Buddha was teaching, he wouldn’t answer these questions. He asked another set of questions entirely. It was by holding to that alternative set of questions that he was not sucked back into his society after his awakening.

This is something you’ll have to learn how to protect: this ability to be with yourself even when you’re with other people and not get sucked into their issues.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the Dhamma Talks Section, “Meditations” series book Meditations 10: Dhamma Talks, “Comfortable as an Outsider” (pp. 89-90). (Also in audio format at “Comfortable as an Outsider, December 28, 2019.”)