Calming Mental Activity

Practicing with the Anapanasati Sutta in Zazen, I came to the section “Calming mental activity I breathe in; calming mental activity I breathe out.” In a flash I had an image of a large shop floor, with stations where metalworkers were busy fabricating metal shapes that looked like they might be parts of some much larger assembly—like a car or a plane. The shop floor was clean, the lights were bright, the tools and workstations neat and orderly.

The shop floor fell silent—maybe it was lunchtime or Friday end of day. It was a restful silence, the workers now gone. The shiny metal pieces sat on their workbenches, at rest.

I realized that this is the shop where the stories in my mind are fabricated, first in pieces, then in full assemblies that become vehicles I drive (or fly) around in the world. Amazing how strong and durable they are, how well-formed—and shiny. But they are formations constructed by mind, not realities found in the world. Rather, they are stories about the world, and about me, too.

You cannot say the stories are true or false, existent or non-existent. We can know them mainly through their influence and effects on our lives and on our relationships to each other and the world.

Maybe these vehicles, these stories, need to be reviewed, upgraded, or even junked. Maybe they no longer take us where we need to go. The first step is to see them clearly as they are. This is known in Buddhism as Right View, the first step on the Eightfold Path of liberation.