Setting the Context for Practice
Q: I have been trying to simplify my life, but it just doesn’t seem to work. I tried to live without a car, but it takes too much time to get around without one, so I decided to buy a old one. Occasionally there are good things on television, so I kept the TV. I have just about done away with furniture and now use a futon and mats that I can roll up. But I don’t think I can reduce my things to the point where I don’t have to pay much attention to them.
A: I gather you heard me talking to someone earlier about moving down the economic scale and reducing the number of material things in one’s life. This is something everyone has to work out for him or herself. There is no sense in agonizing over the fact that you may still be attached to things you feel you should get rid of. Just let simplicity be a principle you value. At first you will simply be alert to not bringing more things into your home and into your life. Later, as you settle into this way of living, you will see the advantages of having less and will feel confident about letting go of things that you now still secretly cherish.
The main point of living simply is learning to be content with what you have. Most people experience little contentment in their lives. They always want more or better. In this age, simple living takes courage, strength of character, and discipline. The reward is a lightness of heart, a sense of freedom from the ever-wanting, perennially unsatisfied desiring that keeps people preoccupied with things that are destined to perish.
I once asked a group of American teenagers what money cannot buy. They were stymied. No one could come up with an answer. Finally, I started offering some answers: time, good health, harmonious relationships, beauty, fresh air, clean water. They sat skeptically pondering these possibilities. Then I mentioned the two most important ones: silence and peace of mind.
They started refuting this list. They were convinced that money was the key to everything good—that money could bring you loyal friendships, provide you with beautiful surroundings, and even bring peace of mind, because financial prosperity could rid you of most worries.
I pointed out that rich people worry continuously about money; they are endlessly concerned with multiplying and preserving their wealth. Even if they had a money tree growing in their backyard, they would still worry about how to protect it.
I asked if anyone thought money could buy silence. No one ventured a reply on that one. One boy agreed that silence is something money can’t buy, but asked what’s the point of it. Good health—well, money could provide you with higher quality food, which would make the body healthier. Fresh air, clean water—one could go backpacking or ride a mountain bike to where the air is clean and the water is safe to drink. As for a harmonious family life, wealth would certainly contribute to this.
These intelligent, typical middle-class teenagers were determined to refute almost anything I said that diminished the value of money. Anything that did not have a price tag, such as silence, had no value for them.
As the discussion drew to a close, I brought up something else that money cannot buy: spiritual experience. And yet this experience far surpasses any pleasure one could ever imagine, since it comes about when fear and desire are out of the way. Religious experience is to be discovered quite apart from concerns of money and material things. It is a refined sort of experience that rivets our attention and caresses our consciousness. Perhaps someday when they have learned the truth about the limitations of money, they might remember this conversation.
Q: I don’t think anyone can deny that we need money to live in this world. My idea is that one should strive to become very rich. After that, there will be time and leisure enough to practice intensive meditation. You have proceeded this way, haven’t you?
A: You haven’t recognized that rich people need to devote themselves to their money. They have to guard it, administer it, and worry about how to make more money with it. Having money without wisdom means a life lived in an excruciating realm of hell.
It’s better to establish yourself right from this moment in a moderate lifestyle in which you can keep your focus on spiritual development. Later on might be too late and you might have missed an opportunity.
I advocate this maxim: “Simplicity is sanity.” Have just enough to live moderately in a way appropriate for householders. Keep in mind the words “good enough,” rather than “more,” “better,” and “best.” It’s foolish to use the human mind only to think about wanting. For the most part, people who are ripe for spiritual practice have what they need in both material goods and experience.
Wanting and craving are paired with suffering and conflict. Contentment and simplicity are paired with wisdom. It is very important to live in a way that doesn’t drive you crazy but rather drives you sane. You are driven sane by doing small, simple things carefully, thereby spiritualizing your activities. Live your life like a medicine man or woman.
Most of the desperate and neurotic suffering in the West comes from overabundance. Many of the heaviest sufferers are the people who have the most stuff. This is an ironic turn of events that wasn’t expected to come along with the technological advancements of this age, which were supposed to make people happier. I understood this some years ago when I lived for six months in a tiny monastery on top of a mountain and found the circumstances far more ascetic than I had expected. Unlike most other monasteries in that part of Thailand, there wasn’t much of anything available in the common storeroom—a few mosquito coils, batteries, and some light bulbs. I had just a few pieces of clothing, a recycled Pepsi bottle on a cord as a water bottle, and a fifty-cent pair of flip-flops that were just about flopped out. I remember that for two to three weeks I had just a few bits of candle that I would chop out of a large ceremonial candle to use in my hut. My match box was often too damp to ignite anything, so I learned to sit in the dark for much of the night.
Yet I was quite happy. Of course, there was still the human suffering that comes in any situation. Occasionally I was lonely and hungry, or felt despairing. But nothing was added onto that. I wasn’t concerned that my match box might be stolen, and didn’t need to worry whether my insurance covered recycled candles and second-hand flip-flops! There was a sense of peace that came with not having much of anything, and a sense of contentment from the satisfaction that I had what I needed. And since my needs were so simple, I felt at ease, confident that whatever I really needed would manifest. And it did.
Q: I’m still young and haven’t decided what kind of career to pursue. The only thing I really know about myself is that I like to help people.
A: You are likely to find yourself doing social work of some kind. What is important, however, is not the particular field you study at the university, but your ability to center your life in what has meaning. If your life has meaning, it will develop toward something. Directing your life toward service to others is a noble and dignified way to live. But in order to have a real impact on others, you will first have to enrich your heart with purity, loving kindness, and compassion.
Make your field of study the development of noble inner qualities that you can bring into service to others.
Q: I have been living alone for some years and keep pretty much to myself. I sometimes wonder if I am selfish. Perhaps I should remarry and raise children.
A: To live alone and peacefully takes a certain talent, you know. It provides fewer opportunities to associate with fools—apart from the one in our own head! If you look at advertisements and go to theaters, you are invariably going to see people doing things as couples. “Couples are fun and singleness is lonely.” However, some people—both lay persons and monks—including myself, enjoy aloneness and find it a productive lifestyle. Loneliness and aloneness are opposites.
If you want to help children grow into fine adults, you could volunteer your services through any one of many agencies and, thereby, help many more children than if you just have children of your own. The goodness rippling outward from your service will have considerable significance in this world, where selfishness has become the norm.
Q: I have decided not to meditate any more because it seems more important to develop computer skills.
A: You can choose to put all your energies in that direction. But if you become completely wired to the world, it will be at great expense. Computer people, in my experience, become alienated from reality. Not just distanced or confused, but alienated. This is tragic. It is like giving up a bag of gold for a pot of beans—the twenty-first-century version of that old folk tale. Computer nerds give up the unlimited potential of emptiness to become an isolated part of a pseudo-network. They buy into an abstract existence which people call virtual reality. Those who go in too deep lose all sense of what is natural. Be careful. I can see this from my own experience. I have written some things on a computer—and that machine had no Internet, CD, or game capacity!
The environment we choose to live in—our home, our friends, our intimate partners—has tremendous influence on the way we live and the direction our life is moving. It is critical to our well-being. We can live comfortably and safely in a dead and dried-out, riskless situation in which we are prompted only to entertain ourselves with frivolous activities. Or, we can choose to live in a vibrant, challenging environment, which however obliges us to live with a degree of uncertainty. Moving out farther toward the edge, where things are not so much in our control and we are forced to explore the unknown, provokes the body and mind to be vigilant and awake.
To live in this manner is not to deliberately seek out life-threatening circumstances, such as living in slums. In such places we are forced to use all our mental energy just to survive. Prisons, for instance, are very difficult places for a person to grow; even though a prisoner has few duties and a lot of time on his hands, the need to protect himself from others predominates. It is difficult to turn within. It is difficult to find like-minded, spiritually oriented friends.
If we have good spiritual companions, friends who support and encourage us to grow in a good way, we can live just about anywhere. We feel confident, and our practice progresses. Once our practice is strong, a difficult environment becomes a challenge instead of an obstacle.