Just Do It!

The postures change by themselves. Standing, walking, sitting, lying down. They change. We can't just sit all the time, stand all the time or lie down all the time. We have to spend our time with these different postures, make all four postures beneficial. This is the action. We just keep doing it. It's not easy.

To make it easy to visualise, take this glass and set it down here for two minutes. When the two minutes are up then move it over there for two minutes. Then move it over here for two minutes. Keep doing that. Do it again and again until you start to suffer, until you doubt, until wisdom arises. ''What am I thinking about, lifting a glass backwards and forwards like a madman.'' The mind will think in its habitual way according to the phenomena. It doesn't matter what anyone says. Just keep lifting that glass. Every two minutes, okay - don't daydream, not five minutes. As soon as two minutes are up then move it over here. Focus on that. This is the matter of action.

Looking at the in-breaths and out-breaths is the same. Sit with your right foot resting on your left leg, sit straight, watch the inhalation to its full extent until it completely disappears in the abdomen. When the inhalation is complete then allow the breath out until the lungs are empty. Don't force it. It doesn't matter how long or short or soft the breath is, let it be just right for you. Sit and watch the inhalation and the exhalation, make yourself comfortable with that. Don't allow your mind to get lost. If it gets lost then stop, look to see where it's got to, why it is not following the breath. Go after it and bring it back. Get it to stay with the breath, and, without doubt, one day you will see the reward. Just keep doing it. Do it as if you won't gain anything, as if nothing will happen, as if you don't know who's doing it, but keep doing it anyway. Like rice in the barn. You take it out and sow it in the fields, as if you were throwing it away, sow it throughout the fields, without being interested in it, and yet it sprouts, rice plants grow up, you transplant it and you've got sweet green rice. That's what it's about.

This is the same. Just sit there. Sometimes you might think, ''Why am I watching the breath so intently. Even if I didn't watch it, it would still keep going in and out.''

Well, you'll always finds something to think about. That's a view. It is an expression of the mind. Forget it. Keep trying over and over again and make the mind peaceful.

Once the mind is at peace, the breath will diminish, the body will become relaxed, the mind will become subtle. They will be in a state of balance until it will seem as if there is no breath, but nothing happens to you. When you reach this point, don't panic, don't get up and run out, because you think you've stopped breathing. It just means that your mind is at peace. You don't have to do anything. Just sit there and look at whatever is present.

Footnotes

...¹

A lively talk, in Lao dialect, given to the Assembly of newly-ordained Monks at Wat Pah Pong on the day of entering the Rains Retreat, July 1978

...,²

Previously a different translation of this Dhamma talk was printed under the title 'Start Doing It!'