Put the Chain Back on the Bike

When Ajaan Suwat visited the United States, his attendants brought him to some major cities and national parks. When asked what he found most impressive, Ajaan Suwat replied: nothing. Americans put all their ingenuity into material things, he said, and none of it into training their minds.

He didn’t mean that we don’t have great thinkers or psychologists. He meant that we tend to speculate about what the mind is rather than directly observe its workings. We go around labeling minds — that one’s bipolar, that one’s neurodivergent — without looking within to see how our experience of “mind” is conditioned by the way we breathe, think, and talk to ourselves. So we never develop ingenuity about how to bend our minds toward happiness.

This past retreat, I saw many familiar patterns in myself: old fears, doubts, and regrets I’ve known about for years. But I also saw a sort of sullenness that simply doesn’t want to take responsibility for these patterns. Part of me wants to say, “This is just who I am,” rather than admit, “This is how I’ve let my mind become.” But I realized that, if I don’t change the way I use my mind, my life will only become more full of fear, doubt, and regret.

Have you ever been riding a bike when the chain fell off? Suddenly, it’s really easy to pedal. Easy, but also useless for going anywhere. That’s how our intellectualizations about ourselves are: I’m a good person, I’m a bad person, I’m doing well, I’m fucking up. It feels effortless to slip into these old ideas. But they don’t move the gears of our lives forward.

On the other hand, realizing that, thought by thought, breath by breath, perception by perception, you are shaping the course of your life is intimidating. You’re going to mess up constantly. Your heart pounds and you encounter lots of resistance. But that’s a sign that the wheels are turning and you’re actually going somewhere.