So if you have found your home base spot in the body, keep looking after it, maintain it, treasure it. As it gets stronger, it’ll be able to send its influence out, both into the body and into your actions, into the world around you.

"When things are a real turmoil in the mind, just hang out in the body, hang out with the breath. Find which part of the breath in the body feels good and just stay there.

It’s like a big storm coming in.

A couple of years back — it was right around this time of the year — we had a big three-day Santa Anna storm, and one night from midnight to 6 a.m. we had hundred mile-per-hour winds. Trees were being blown down all over the place. There was a mess. And in the midst of the storm, nobody ventured out. We all stayed hunkered down in our huts. When the storm was over the next morning at dawn, we could come out and survey the damage and figure out what had to be done. You don’t go exposing yourself to a storm if you don’t have to.

The same principle applies to the mind. When these things come storming through the mind, you’ve just got to sidestep them. And through the practice of meditation, find which spot is your spot in the body, the spot that you can keep calm, the spot where you feel at home. Learn to treasure that spot. Learn to keep after it, keep looking after it. And when necessary, learn to hide out there. As that passage on equanimity reminds us, there are certain times where it’s simply the force of karma that the situations are going to be bad. There’s not much you can do about them. But the important things are that you maintain your equanimity and learn how to hide out. Come out when there are times you actually can make a difference, so that you don’t waste your energy on unnecessary battles. Because the same principle applies inside as applies outside: If you wait until you find the absolutely perfect place to meditate, the perfect situation, you’ll never meditate. You’ve got to put up with imperfections and learn how to work around them.

The same inside: There are times you can’t get everything comfortable, there are times when there’s a storm going on in the mind, so you find a place to hide out and you stay there. That way, at the very least, the things that you are responsible for — your choices in the present moment — are intelligent choices. They don’t create bad ramifications. You don’t continue the chain of negative forces coming from the past. You just let them blow through, and then come out and deal with things when you’re in a better position.

So an important point in meditation is finding out where your home base is and then maintaining that. Don’t get complacent. Sometimes it seems once you’ve found it, it’s the most natural thing to stay there. The mind is always going to come back. But if you start getting complacent, it starts getting less protected and sometimes when you need it, you can’t find it. So if you have found your spot, keep looking after it, maintain it, treasure it. As it gets stronger, it’ll be able to send its influence out, both into the body and into your actions, into the world around you. Just make sure your foundation is strong."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Hunker Down"

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