I was recently reading a Dhamma teaching by the famous Zen master Dogen Zenji. In it, he compared the defilements, wanting, aversion, and delusion, to three thieves. I really like this analogy. The three defilements are like thieves who sneak in through the sense doors and steal your life from you – or moments of your life anyway. When the defilements are having their way with you, you are not really living your life. Instead, you’re following the commands of the defilements. I guess maybe they’re more akin to carjackers. They sneak in, with the help of their accomplices, take control of the body and mind, and drag it into suffering. Their accomplices are feeling (the pleasant or unpleasant quality of experiences), supposition (the labels and automatic assumptions that the mind applies to what appears at the sense doors), and concocting thought.
The good news is that these thieves are actually not that strong. They can’t overpower us. They’re just sneaky. They can only gain entry under the cover of darkness. To prevent the thieves from getting in, we only need to keep the flood light of self-awareness on to illuminate what is showing up at the sense doors. We don’t need to do battle with them. If our light is on and they know we are watching, they won’t try to get in. To maintain self-awareness in this way is to practice in accordance with the Satipatthana Sutta or Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Observational awareness of the six sense spheres is part of the fourth foundation – mindfulness of dhammas.
But the defilements are very persistent and patient, waiting for us to let our guard down, so we must be diligent. We have to keep watch as continuously as possible. Life is a dangerous neighborhood. When we’re in a dangerous neighborhood, we have to stay alert. If we’re heedless, we’ll be robbed. Our Mahasati insight meditation practice facilitates this needed continuity of awareness. We learn to practice with the body moving and the sense doors open. We practice with our flood light on, illuminating the entirety of this body and mind, and what it’s encountering from moment to moment, as best we can.
It’s good to start with some formal practice each day – sitting and doing the hand movements – as it helps us get our generators started and our lights turned on. Also, until one’s practice is very mature, our flood light can usually shine much brighter when doing our formal practice as compared to self-awareness in daily life. Each movement of the hands continuously reminds us to be alert, and we may more easily see the more subtle truths of our life.
Nevertheless, because we are practicing with the body moving and the eyes and ears open, we can carry our practice into our daily life much more easily in comparison to other methods. And being safe during our daily life is what really matters. To keep the thieves out by sitting still, shutting the eyes and ears and engaging in one-pointed concentration is only a stopgap solution. You are only safe while sitting on your cushion. When you rise from the cushion and enter your daily life, the thieves are there waiting for you. Probably those who have tried this form of meditation can attest to the truth of this. The mind is calm and stable when your meditating, but you start living your life and it all goes out the window.
The challenge is that the defilements are very persistent – always watching for their opportunity. The good news is that staying safe is very simple. We don’t need to wrestle with the thieves or try to overpower them. In fact, you shouldn’t allow yourself to be baited into getting into a fight with them. Thwarting them is very simple. These thieves are afraid of the light, and as long as the light of awareness is illuminating the contact that is happening at the sense doors, they won’t enter your heart and mind. So please keep your light on. But if your light has faltered, which it will until one reaches the end of the Path, and wanting or aversion is already present in one’s heart and mind, the solution is the same. Don’t wrestle with the thieves. Just illuminate them, and their activities, with the light of your present moment awareness and they will scurry off.
Michael Bresnan