An excerpt from Jack Kornfield’s The Wise Heart:

“‘Eh,’ Ajahn Chah would peer at me when I was having a hard time, ‘caught in some state again?’  In the forest monastery we were constantly being directed both to look at consciousness itself and to precisely name the states that rose to fill it throughout the day: frightened, bored, relaxed, confused, resentful, calm, frustrated, and so forth.

“Ajahn Chah would sometimes ask us out loud about our states so that we could acknowledge them more clearly.  To a recently divorced monk from Bangkok he chided, ‘Is there sadness?  Anger?  Self-pity?  Hey, these are natural.  Look at them all.’  And to a confused English monk he laughed, ‘Can you see what is happening?  There is distraction, confusion, being in a muddle.  They’re only mind states, you know.  Come on.  Do you believe your mind states?  Are you trapped by them?  You’ll suffer for sure.’

“Once we became more skilled at noticing, he would up the ante.  He would deliberately make things difficult and watch what happened.  In the hottest season, he would send us out barefoot to collect alms food on a ten-mile round trip, and smile at us when we came back to see if we were frustrated or discouraged.  He’d have us sit up all night long for endless teachings, without any break, and check in on us cheerfully at four in the morning.  When we got annoyed, he’d ask, ‘Are you angry?  Whose fault is that?’

“In popular Western culture we are taught that the way to achieve happiness is to change our external environment to fit our wishes.  But this strategy doesn’t work.  In every life, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame keep showing up, no matter how hard we struggle to have only pleasure, gain, and praise.”

So, today I’m practicing.

Is it possible to alter my internal focus?

Yes, yes, and yes!

How about you?