Because the Buddhist view is about the mind – and it is, and it’s utterly important, and it is the main thing – somehow, we then tend to think, “Well, it doesn’t matter about the outside.”
In our culture the outside world is everything: we’re suffering because of the outside, and we’re happy because of the outside: it’s the outside’s blame and the outside’s fault, so we’re always looking out there for all the solutions, right?
The Buddhist view is the exact opposite: we’ve got to look inside. But the point I want to make here is the outside is still incredibly important.
The very first level of practice, which we talk about all the time, is about controlling our body and speech, our behavior: it’s not about our mind yet. And at this level of practice a crucial point is – and it’s so important especially at the beginning – we have to be clear about the conditions we’re living in.
We need to be choosing our job carefully, choosing our relationships carefully, choosing the people we live with, choosing our environment really carefully – because at the beginning, when we have no control over our mind or our body or our speech, choosing the wrong conditions can make us go crazy.
This is why people kill each other; this is why people kill themselves. The external conditions play a huge role in our lives. Nobody in their right mind would ever expect an alcoholic to give up attachment to alcohol, which is finally the goal, while continuing to drink alcohol. To think that you can give up attachment to alcohol while alcohol is still around in your kitchen, still in the cupboard, and when you’re hanging out with alcoholics, is absurd. You cannot possibly do it.
The first thing a person who is an alcoholic needs to do is get the hell away from other alcoholics, get away from alcohol. That means choosing the right conditions – then it’s a lot easier to work on the mind.
Another example is our relationships. If we’re in a really difficult relationship with our mum or with our partners, we’ll hear the Buddhist teachings that it’s all about the mind and we’ll think, “Oh, it’s my problem, my jealousy, my attachment.” You’re absolutely right, it is, but unless you’re well practiced, the conditions are too difficult for you.
I mean, they talk about how forty percent of all women who get murdered are murdered by the bloke in the same bed. In other words, if you’re an ordinary person, with ordinary delusions, with no self-awareness, uncontrolled speech, uncontrolled body, and you’re in a relationship with another person who is also like that, what do you expect is going to happen? It’s going to be volatile and fighting and shouting and yelling – of course it is.
If all we ever do is fight, then all we’re doing is feeding each other’s garbage, you know? And we don’t have enough awareness to realize we should control our speech – it’s too difficult – and we don’t have enough awareness to realize this relationship is not the right place for us.
Yes, you’ve got anger – absolutely you’ve got anger – but don’t blame yourself for the whole thing. It means you can’t handle those conditions, and so you need to get the hell out. This decision itself demands some self-awareness: to see that these conditions – this environment, this relationship – are not right for you.
If you want to give up anger, stop being around people who are feeding your anger: this is not blaming the people, it’s just being intelligent.
You have to choose the right conditions that feed the right part of yourself, and then you can really start the job of controlling your body and your speech. It’s very meaningful, but unless we spell it out, it doesn’t really occur to us, you know?
In other words, what I’m asking us all to do is look into our lives: Am I in the right conditions? Am I in the right place? Do I have the right conditions for my practice, which means do I have the right conditions for applying the Buddha’s teachings in my life?
The highly developed way to apply the teachings is to focus on the mind, no matter the conditions, but that’s really advanced for most of us, you know? We don’t have enough control over our body and speech: we mean well, but end up making a mess. If you really can see everything in your life, all the good and all the bad, as practice, that’s the most advanced – that’s the bodhisattva approach; everything is grist for your mill, you know – but if you can’t practice at that level, that’s when you have to make some choices.