Be here and now. If you do, ... - Ajahn Suchart
“Be here and now. If you do, when you sit in meditation and want to focus your mind on your breathing, it will not go anywhere else.”
The key to success in meditation is focus. You have to focus your mind in the present, in the here and now. You should not let your mind drift to other things.
You should always be focused on whatever you are doing at that moment. If you are walking, just be focused on your walking. If you are eating, focus on your eating. If you are washing, bathing, sweeping or whatever you are doing, focus your attention on that particular action in real-time, right now. Do not do something and think about other things at the same time, such as when you are sweeping or washing, and you start thinking about what you will do tomorrow or what you did yesterday. This is not practising. The practice is that you have to be here and now. This is what we call the development of mindfulness.
In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Buddha laid out the way to focus your mind, to bring your mind to be watchful and focused on your physical activities. Be here and now. If you do, when you sit in meditation and want to focus your mind on your breathing, it will not go anywhere else.
If your mind can focus continuously on your breathing, your mind will come to peace very quickly. When you have this peace, you will experience a kind of happiness that you have never experienced before. You will find that this is real happiness, something that we all have been looking for, something that will stay with us and something that we can have any time we want once we are adept at the practice.
What you should do is to develop this ability to focus in your daily life, from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. As soon as you get up, focus right away on your body by looking at the body and asking where is the body now? It is lying down. Next, what do you want to do with the body? It wants to get up.
Focus on your body, whether you want to stand up, walk or go to the bathroom. Be with the body at every instance. This is to prevent your mind from running here and there. If your mind keeps on running here and there, you will never stop thinking and will never find peace. If you can focus your mind, your thinking will gradually come under your control. You can stop your thinking if your mindfulness and ability to focus are strong enough.
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