Actual Practice Requires Constantly Checking Your Results

Observing the breath is meant to transform the mind's thoughts, the mind's activities, and one's mental disposition. In daily life, have there been any changes in your own mental activities? Has your attitude toward people, affairs, and things shifted? Have your thoughts become a bit purer? Has your grasping at form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas lessened? Have you become more accepting of conditions? Less picky? Have your interpersonal relationships improved somewhat? Has your mental disposition improved a little? Has your state of mind grown more peaceful? Do you expend less mental effort on people and affairs? Have you become a bit more kind-hearted? Do you make others feel a greater sense of warmth and affinity? In short, you should examine your mental activities from every angle, promptly summarize your progress, know what is wholesome and what is unwholesome, maintain and consolidate good results, and improve unwholesome habits. In this way, your roots of goodness and merit will accumulate ever more deeply, and your precepts, meditation (samādhi), and wisdom will advance more and more.