Perception is the energy that recognizes the form and characteristics of the object of our attention and gives it a name, like leaf or mountain. We have a concept of what is there. But we have to be careful, because all of us are frequently victims of wrong perception. We see a rope and may think it’s a snake. So whatever we touch with our mind, we should know first of all that it is the object of our perception, and that our perception may be erroneous. Mindfulness can help us avoid wrong perception.

  Perceptions and feelings give rise to volition, the energy that pushes us to respond—to do something, to run toward or away from something. Sometimes you know that doing a certain thing may destroy you, yet you still want to do it, because your volition is so strong. With the intervention of mindfulness and concentration, you can have the insight and determination to say, “No,” and you are free.

  Our brain has neuroplasticity; it can change, and we can change. The five universal mental formations form a neural pathway that can take us to a habitual response or, with the intervention of mindfulness, concentration, and insight, can create a new neural pathway that leads to understanding and compassion, happiness and healing.

  THE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN MEDITATION

  The practice of non-thinking is the secret of success in meditation. When thinking settles in, you lose the first impression of contact and a chance to be in the here and the now, to be in touch with what’s inside and around you. Instead, just become aware of contact and feelings. Then you can be in touch with the elements of nourishment and healing available in your body and the environment, both physical and mental. When the feeling is pleasant, stop all thinking and just become aware of the feeling. It may be the pleasant feeling of walking barefoot on the beach. Walking on the beach, you can be very happy if you are able to let go of thinking of this or that. Brushing your teeth, going to the toilet, turning on the light or the water tap, any moment can be a moment of happiness.

  SAVORING A BEAN CAKE

  When I was four or five years old, every time my mother went to the market, she brought me back a cake made of bean paste. While she was away, I would be playing in the garden with the snails and the pebbles, and when my mother came back I was very happy to see her. I took the cake that she gave me and I went off to eat it in the garden. I knew I mustn’t eat it quickly. I wanted to eat it slowly—the slower the better. I’d just chew a little bit off the edge to allow the sweetness of the cake to go into my mouth, and I’d look up at the blue sky. I’d look down at the dog. I’d look at the cat. That is how I ate the cake, and it would take me half an hour to eat it. I had no worries; I wasn’t thinking about fame, honor, or profit, the past or the future. All of us have lived moments like that, when we’re not craving for anything, not regretting anything. We’re not asking ourselves philosophical questions like “Who am I?” Are we able to eat a cake like that now?

  THIS IS IT

  The opportunity that you have been waiting for is right here in the present moment.

  Each step is that opportunity; each breath is that opportunity—an opportunity for you to go back to the now and stop your endless wandering and waiting for that day to come.

  The day that you’ve been waiting for is today;

  the moment that you’ve been waiting for

  is this very moment.

  You must pierce the veil of time and space in order to come to the here and the now.

  No matter what your circumstances are, that opportunity is there for you. In the now, you will find what you have been looking for.

  BE THE SOVEREIGN OF YOUR TERRITORY

  Imagine there’s a country that doesn’t have a government, a king, a queen, or a president. There is nobody around to take care of the country. The country needs a government. It’s the same with ourselves. We need to be present in our territory, to take care of it, because our territory is large—it includes our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. We need to be the king or queen and govern our territory. We need to know what is precious and beautiful so we can protect it. We need to know what things aren’t so beautiful so we can fix or transform them. We need to be a good queen or king and not run away from our country.

  There are people who don’t want to be the king or queen, who just want to run away from the job because they think it’s so tiring. We run away by watching television, eating something, using social media, checking our email or the news, playing video games, listening to music, or socializing in various ways. We don’t want to return to our homeland. As kings and queens we need to become aware of our responsibility, to see that we need to be the sovereign, to return to our territory and take care of it. We can learn ways to do this. Practicing mindfulness and concentration, we know how to do it. All the essential methods are in the sixteen exercises of mindful breathing. [See the Practices section in the second part of the book.]

  Be mindful of your breath and your steps so you can be truly present in every moment of your life and have sovereignty over your kingdom. Then when you want to speak or act, you’ll express yourself mindfully, and you’ll be able listen deeply and understand the difficulties and joys of another person.

  CURIOSITY AND INVESTIGATION

  If you want to succeed in the practice of concentration, make it interesting. If you are interested enough in the object of your focus, concentration will be easy, and it can touch the deepest level of your consciousness. Understanding is a fruit of mindfulness and concentration. If you are not interested in something, you can never understand it. If you are not interested in someone, you can never understand them. If you are interested in them deeply, you will be mindful and concentrated, and it will be easy to find out all about them. When you are interested in something, when it is important to you, everything becomes interesting—a leaf, a pebble, a cloud, a pond, a person, a situation, your child. You feel eager to look deeply into all of these things, to find out their true nature. When concentration becomes easy, natural, effortless, it is true concentration.

  THE ULTIMATE DIMENSION

  There are two dimensions to life, and we should be able to touch them both. One is like a wave, and we call it the historical dimension. The other is like the water, and we call it the ultimate dimension, or nirvana. We usually touch just the wave, but when we discover how to touch the water, we receive the highest fruit that meditation can offer.

  In the historical dimension, we have birth certificates and death certificates. The day your mother passes away, you suffer. If someone sits close to you and shows concern, you feel some relief. This is the world of waves. It is characterized by birth and death, ups and downs, being and nonbeing. A wave has a beginning and an end, but we cannot ascribe these characteristics to water. In the world of water, there is no birth or death, no being or nonbeing, no beginning or end. When we touch the water, we touch reality in its ultimate dimension and are liberated from all of these concepts. If you know how to touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, she will always be with you; you can see that she is there in you, smiling. This is a deep practice and it is also the deepest kind of relief.

  One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but it was merging with the moist soil and preparing to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled to the leaf and said, “You are pretending.” Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including the leaf I almost stepped on. The day of our so-called death is a day of our continuation in many other forms.

  LOOKING DEEPLY INTO THE NATURE OF REALITY

  Unlike scientists, spiritual practitioners don’t use sophisticated research instruments. They use their inner wisdom—their luminosity—to look into things. Once we get rid of our grasping, our fear and anger, our notions and concepts, then we have a very bright instrument with which to experience reality free from dualistic notions of birth and death, being and nonbeing, coming and going, the same or different. The practice of mindfulness, concentration, and insight can purify our mind and make it into a powerful instrument with which we can look deeply into the nature of reality.

  THINKING GLOBALLY

  We may feel that we are not capable of touching the ultimate dimension but that isn’t correct. We have done it already. The problem is how to do it more deeply and more frequently. The phrase “Think globally,” for example, is in the direction of touching the ultimate dimension. When we see things globally, we avoid many mistakes and we have a more profound view of happiness and life. The spot you are standing on includes the whole earth. When you practice walking meditation, you realize that with each step you take, you are touching the whole earth. When you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything. The same is true of time. When you touch one moment with deep awareness, you touch all moments. If you live one moment deeply, that moment contains all the past and all the future in it. When you drink a cup of tea very deeply, you touch the present moment and you touch the whole of time.

  THE FOUR NUTRIMENTS

  When something has come to be, we have to acknowledge its presence and look deeply into it to discover the kinds of nourishment that have helped it come to be and continue to feed it. Nothing can live without food; whether it’s our love, our hate, our thinking, our depression—it can’t continue without nourishment. It’s important that we can identify what we’ve been ingesting that has fed and sustained our happiness and our suffering. There are four kinds of nutriments that can bring about our happiness or suffering: edible food, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. When we are able to identify our suffering and see its causes, we will have more peace and joy, and we are already on the path to liberation.

  EDIBLE FOOD

  It’s important that we learn ways to shop, cook, and eat that preserve the health and well-being of our body and our spirit. We eat only the things that can bring peace and well-being into our body and mind. We eat in a way that helps retain compassion in our heart. We have to look deeply to see how we grow our food, so we can eat in ways that preserve our collective well-being, minimize our suffering and the suffering of other species, and allow the earth to continue to be a source of life for all of us, assuring a future for our children.

  SENSE IMPRESSIONS

  Our six sense organs—eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind—are in constant contact with sense objects, and these contacts become food for our consciousness. When we drive through a city, our eyes see many billboards and these images enter our consciousness. When we pick up a magazine, the articles and advertisements are food for our consciousness. Not only children need to be protected from violent and unwholesome programs, films, books, magazines, games, and social media. We, too, can be destroyed by these things. If we are mindful, we will know whether we are ingesting toxins or nourishing ourselves with sense impressions that encourage understanding, compassion, and the determination to help others.

  VOLITION

  Volition, our deepest desire or intention, is the ground of all our actions. We have to ask ourselves, “What is my deepest desire in this life?” Our desire can take us in the direction of happiness or suffering. Desire is a kind of food that nourishes and gives us energy. If you have a healthy desire, such as a wish to protect life and the environment or to live a simple life with time to take care of yourself and your beloved ones, your desire will bring you to happiness. If you run after power, wealth, sex, and fame, thinking that they will bring you happiness, you are consuming a very dangerous kind of food that will bring you a lot of suffering. You can see this is true just by looking around you. For example, if you think that becoming president of a large corporation is what will make you happy, everything you do or say will be directed toward realizing that goal. Even when you sleep, your consciousness will continue to work on it. Or perhaps we believe that our suffering and that of our family has been brought about by someone who wronged us in the past. We feel we will only be happy if we can hurt that person, so our life is motivated solely by the desire for revenge and punishment.

  Everyone wants to be happy, and there is a strong energy inside us pushing us toward what we think will make us happy. We need to see that position, wealth, fame, possessions, or revenge are often the very obstacles to our happiness. We can cultivate our wish to be free of these things and nourish our deepest desire so we can enjoy the wonders of life that are always available—the blue sky, the trees, our beautiful children.

  CONSCIOUSNESS

  If we have not been able to transform the painful events of our past, then they are still buried in our consciousness. When we allow painful images from the past to come up, it’s like we are eating our own consciousness; and the more we think, the more angry and upset we become. We chew our suffering and despair like cows chew their cud. We ruminate on our suffering and we suffer all over again. But in our consciousness, there are also the seeds of enlightenment. Our consciousness has as many channels as a television. Why don’t we push the button of compassion and understanding and change the channel?

  We consume our own individual consciousness and we consume the collective consciousness. In both there are nourishing foods and toxic foods. We should be aware that when we spend time close to a community that has a great deal of hatred and despair, these energies will penetrate into us. We need to find a collective environment that is nourishing, where the people are motivated by compassion and helping others.

  THE PEUGEOT

  In the 1970s, within a few years of arriving in France, our group bought a little car—a secondhand Peugeot. We went all over Europe in it and used the car to transport not only people but also sand, bricks, tools, books, food, and many other materials as we began to establish the Sweet Potato community in an old farmhouse outside Paris. We used it for all our needs and kept it for many years. When our car was old and couldn’t be used anymore, we had a difficult time letting it go. We were attached to our little Peugeot, because both we and the car had gone through so much together. The car had survived breakdowns, numerous accidents, and untold repairs. My friends and I were sad the night we had to abandon it.

  I don’t know if people develop such a deep connection to the things they buy these days. Many people have a strong desire to possess the latest thing, and manufacturers and advertisers know this. It is not by accident that merchandise is not created to last. The objects of our desire are constantly changing. And our desires for the objects we consume also change from one moment to the next. We are always running after something new. We may be infatuated with what we’ve bought for a while, but soon we take it for granted, we get bored, throw it away, and then buy something else. As you grow in mindfulness and concentration, you reclaim your life. You begin to see how much time we lose in empty, meaningless consumption. Looking deeply, we see that running after such objects of desire brings us no lasting happiness, only suffering.

  MAINTAINING MOTIVATION

  When we’re not in touch with our volition, our deepest desire, then even if we struggle and try hard, concentration will not come easily. When that desire is strong in us, the concentration needed to realize real awakening arises effortlessly. Whether we are eating, drinking, walking, or washing dishes, even when we think we’re not very concentrated, we are concentrated because we are being motivated by that strong desire. Scientists and philosophers who are concentrated on their special subjects also have this kind of desire. When we touch our deepest desire, concentration comes easily and stays with us for a long time. We will be in constant concentration, not only in the meditation hall, but in the bathroom, the garden, the kitchen, the market, wherever we go.

  THE SPIRITUAL IS IN THE ORDINARY

  With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual. Where do you seek the spiritual? Seek it in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness and concentration are there. Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute.

  Washing dishes in the historical dimension,

  I see them piled high.

  Looking from the ultimate dimension.

  The pile presents no obstacle.

  LIKE A CLEAR MOUNTAIN LAKE

  Near the mountain, there is a lake with clear, still water reflecting the mountain and the sky with pristine clarity. You can do the same. If you are calm and still enough, you can reflect the mountain, the blue sky, and the moon exactly as they are. You reflect whatever you see exactly as it is, without distorting anything. Sitting quietly, just breathing in and out, we develop concentration, clarity, and strength. So sit like a mountain. No wind can blow the mountain down. If you can sit for half an hour, enjoy sitting for half an hour. If you can sit for a few minutes, enjoy sitting for a few minutes. That is also good.

 

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