This is a transcript of the Dhamma talk "Doubts about Your Abilities" by Ajahn Thanissaro.
Some skills in life are optional. You don’t need them to
survive, and you can often find someone else to do the skill for you. Playing
the stock market, for instance. I’ve never felt the need to learn the skill for that. And because there are so many skills like that out there, our society tends
to force us to specialise. They figure out pretty early on what you’re good at,
what you’re not good at, and then they put you on track in line with your
skills or your potential for skills. The idea being that, other people who are
skilled in other ways are people that you can hire to take care of those things for
you.
But then there are some skills that are necessary for life. Meditation is one of those. Because if you can’t train your mind, you’re gonna be subject to a lot of unnecessary suffering. And this is the kind of skill that you have to work at whether you’re good at it to begin with or not.
One of the drawbacks of having a specialised education
system is that it doesn’t train us to try to pick up some skills that we’re not
good at, and we don’t learn the skills needed to pick up skills in that way.
How to encourage ourselves over a little bit of progress, and to really work on
that bit by bit by bit, and have the patience. To do at least an adequate job. So
it’s good to train yourself in that ability to pick up skills in areas where
you may not seem talented to begin with - particularly with the meditation.
Part of this comes under Right View – realising that the kind
of concentration you’re working on here is not something totally foreign to
little bits of concentration that you already know. They talk about momentary
concentration, threshold concentration where you’re getting closer and closer
to being solidly with the object, and then finally, fixed penetration. It’s not
like they’re radically different things. It’s something that with access or threshold
concentration you’re stitching together little moments of concentration and you’re
getting better and better at not dropping a stitch. But to stitch them together,
first you have to appreciate them. This is why the Buddha had to emphasise
respect for concentration in that chant we had just now. 'Cause there’s also a
line where he talks about having respect for the training and the training
includes virtue, concentration and discernment. But then he singled out
concentration for a second mention, just to make sure that you realise you’ve got to
respect this ability to get the mind to settle down. It begins with respect in
the little moments of stillness that are there. Otherwise you look past them,
you don’t see them, you get frustrated and you destroy them. So stop and look carefully.
Those little moments are like seeds planted in the ground.
And little tiny saplings are coming out and little tiny seedlings are coming out,
and you have to recognise which are the seedlings you want, which are the ones you don’t. If it’s a weed, you can stamp on it with no problem. But
say you want a nice tree that can provide shade – some of the best shade trees
start from very tiny seeds, and you don’t wanna trample those. You wanna figure
out where they are and nurture them.
Or you can think about trying to start a fire on a windy
plane. There’s not much protection around so there’s a little bit of spark. And
so you’ve got to cup your hands around it, you’ve got to protect it. And it may
take a while for it to catch. You can’t be impatient. You just keep
reassuring yourself, "If I can stick with this, it’s going to work. If I stick with
this, it’s going to work." So you have to learn how to talk to yourself in the
right way to protect these things. First, to notice the potential for good and
then to figure out how to protect it. And the wind here that may blow out the
fire – that’s not just winds from outside. There are a lot of winds from the
mind itself. You just let them blow past. You can’t prevent them from being
there. But you say, "I’ll just protect my little concentration here from the winds of
discouragement, the winds of impatience, the winds of frustration, whatever." They can blow through the mind but you're gonna have your one little spot there that
you’re gonna protect. And as you stick with it, it will begin to get stronger.
You have to have faith in the process.
And above all, don’t compare yourself with other people. We’re
not here to compare ourselves. We’re not in a race. We’re here working on
skills that deal with something exclusively inside ourselves. The whole problem
with pain is in that area of awareness you can’t share with anybody else.
The solution is also in that area of awareness that you can’t share with
anybody else. You can’t peer in to other people’s minds to see what their pain
is like and how they’re dealing with it. And they can’t move into yours and
help straighten things out for you. This is one of those skills that everybody
has to work on. You can’t farm it off to somebody else, you can’t hire somebody
else to come and do the work for you. So they’re working on their pain, you’re
working on yours.
And try to take encouragement when you see someone else who
seems to be doing better than you. Don’t get jealous, don’t get envious. Don’t
be resentful. And don’t turn back on yourself. Appreciate the fact, okay, they’ve
been working on this. You may not see the work in this lifetime, but they’ve
been working on this in the past. And now they’re reaping the benefits. So
where do those benefits come from? The kind of work you’re doing right
now, which may seem to be stumbling. There’s a phrase in Thailand – "Falling down,
getting up, tripping, crawling." Lom look klook klan ล้มลุกคลุกคลาน. Those four words go
together very nicely in Thai. What it means is the kind of progress you make
where it’s not steady and it’s not easy, but you just keep having a go at it,
go at it, go at it. So learn to inspire yourself in whatever way works, and
take inspiration from other people. Both people who seem to be in a position better than you are – this is why we develop thoughts of empathetic joy – and
take inspiration from people who have not trained their minds – see what their lives are like.
I learned this evening of the father-in-law of my niece who
thought he was perfectly healthy, perfectly fine till a few months ago he was
told he had cancer and he didn’t last long after that, and it was pretty hard. And
because he didn’t have any way of training his mind, it was a really bad last
couple of weeks. And so you have to tell yourself, I don’t want to be in that
position. I would have something to hold onto. And what you’ve got to hold onto
is these little moments of quiet in the mind that are not involved with the dialogues,
not involved with the discussions, not involved with the monologues or whatever
chatter is going on in the mind. Those quiet spots, where you can take some
refuge. And then the discernment to let go of everything else. Those are the
skills you’re going to need.
So to whatever extent you can develop them, it’s all to the
good. You can’t tell yourself, "Well, I’m not going to die until I’ve fully
mastered this." That’s not the kind of thing that anybody can determine ahead of
time. But you can say, "Okay, I’m gonna keep at this, keep at this, all the way
up to my last breath." Because this is your hope for not causing yourself a lot
of unnecessary suffering. 'Cause these causes do come from within, but they are
causes that you can change. The desire that goes into craving that creates
suffering can be shifted into the desire for the Path. The desire to develop Right
View and then learning how to act on the desire so that the desire itself doesn’t
become an obstacle. But it’s still there, and it's giving you encouragement – that actually
becomes a force on the Path.
So these potentials we have in the mind – they can be turned
toward the Path. It’s simply a matter of sticking with it and taking one step
at a time and learning how to appreciate what you’ve got. Don't destroy it. Otherwise you plant a
seed and the seedling grows and oop, you step on it – that’s it. And then you plant
another seedlings, and then another, and then you get tired of planting all
these seedlings that don’t seem to be going anywhere. Not really realising that
you were the one who destroyed them. So cup your hands around those little
moments of stillness. If there are winds of frustration and winds of
discouragement, just let them blow. But don’t let them put out the flame.
There’s another passage in the Canon where the Buddha talks
about respect – he says there are some little things you shouldn’t have disrespect
for. Don’t have disrespect for little snakes, because they can be poisonous. And
don’t have disrespect for a little fire. It may seem small right now, but when
it takes, it can light up everything. So protect what you’ve got. And that’s
how the meditation becomes a skill, whether you feel that you’re talented at it
or not, it's a necessary skill. It’s like breathing itself – something we all got to do.
So remember that
doing good and things that are difficult has a dignity. And in this particular
area, that dignity is really worthwhile.
