It’s exciting that Ayya Khema can be with us for a week and that two different religions have combined to bring her here and to be responsible for her during this week. Buddha House and Bethany Women’s Spirituality Center, which is a Dominican based center for women. And we do have expenses while she’s here, and so this talk and the other talks, there is a charge. It’s seven dollars or five dollars. That nature.
Yes. Like, I shouldn’t make assumptions. Ayya Khema is a Buddhist nun of the Theravadin tradition. And very recently, she became a fully ordained bhikkhuni, which is, well, it’s very rare within our tradition. And that happened in Los Angeles in December after a month of rigorous training, where two hundred and fifty nuns became fully ordained and fifty monks.
So that’s something to celebrate as well as her presence here. Does this need to be turned on, or is it turned on? It’s on. It’s on. It’s nice to see you here this evening.
The topic of my talk tonight is happiness is a skill, which is something that most people never consider. Most people do not consider that their inner life depends upon skillful management. But skillful management is very important in all our endeavors, whether it is on the land or in a household or in an office or in a corporation. So it stands to reason that skillful management within ourselves will also have some benefit. Most people consider happiness a condition which arises out of the environment that they’re in, whether it’s people or whether it is a situation or whether it is something that they themselves have made happen.
But we’ll have to, first of all, inquire into ourselves what is my happiness. Because if we don’t know what we really consider happiness, it will be impossible to go after it. We will live haphazardly and hope for the best, which is what most people do. They hope for the best. So in the first instance, what is it?
What is my happiness? So maybe we can arrive at that through a process of elimination. Is it that what we see through our eyes? Well, naturally, we do like to see nice things, but that really does that really produce my happiness? It’s doubtful, isn’t it?
It’s not downright impossible because we see something different all the time. Is it what we smell? Well, that too is very doubtful. Doesn’t really have any connotation of making me happy. Is it what we taste?
Our meals. Well, we could say that if we haven’t got any meals, we would be unhappy. But having the meals, which one could assume that we all have, does that really make for happiness? We could inquire into it and see. What about what we hear?
Now, obviously, if we hear something nasty, like somebody doesn’t like us, thinks we’re pretty terrible, stupid, ugly, all these other things that we don’t wanna be, that would make us unhappy. But does the hearing of something that isn’t of that nature really bring us happiness? Is it really that which produces our happiness? If so, we’d have to make sure that we only hear that what we want to hear. Is it possible?
Can we go through life hearing only that what we want to hear? How can we manage that? Is that management possible? What about touch? Is the touch sensation that will make us happy?
That really happiness. If it is happiness for a few moments, which it can be, particularly it can be pleasure. What about the other moments? It can’t be constant, can it? So then that leaves us with what we’re thinking because we have exhausted the five sense contacts, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling.
So now we’re left with thinking. Are we thinking that what gives us happiness, or are we thinking sometimes things which do not give any happiness? Are we having thoughts in the mind which are quite counterproductive to happiness? And other times, maybe we do have some that bring us some happiness. So if we can eliminate the five senses as producers of happiness and realize that our thinking process sometimes does produce some happiness, then we are getting a little nearer to our own management of happiness.
It is a foregone conclusion that everybody would like happiness, quite rightly so. Happy people are much easier to live with. Happy people are people who are also able to exude some happiness around them so that there’s a bit of happiness in the air so that others can maybe partake of it too. But primarily, our whole effort in this life is directed towards getting it, which is an absurdity in its primary premise. How are we gonna get it?
Happiness is a feeling, and it’s got to be arriving within ourselves rather something that we can get out there. Now our five senses are constantly at work. At the moment, you’re seeing, hearing, touching, and presumably thinking. So the only ones that are not at work would be tasting, unless I’ve got some chewing gum or something, and smelling. Yes, there’s some incense, we can even use that one.
I can smell, I don’t know if it goes all the way down there. So the senses are at work. And this is the way we are always operating. We always have the senses at work. And our unfortunate mistake in this life is that we think they’re gonna do it for us.
And yet, they are so minimal and so limited that, for instance, dogs can hear much better than we do. They can hear sounds that we never hear. And bees can see better than we do. They can see ultraviolet light, which we can’t. So even life forms, which are less advanced than we are, have partially better senses than we do.
And yet we’re relying on them to bring us that what we would most want in life, namely happiness. That reliance is constantly disappointed. Although the world around us has a temptation of making us think that it can be found there, it can’t last. I picked that rose before we came here and thought how beautiful it was. And that it was a typical example of trying to make us believe, not the rose, nature around us, trying to make us believe that we can actually find happiness through seeing something.
After I saw it for the first moment, I had to lie down and that was the end of that. All these sense contacts are of very short duration. We can now stare at this rose for the next hour or so and be happy staring at the rose. It’s not within our capacity to do that. Our eyes won’t do it and our mind will certainly not reflect on it.
Because the eye can only see color and form, it doesn’t see rose and it doesn’t see pretty. It’s a mind that sees rose and sees pretty. I cannot do that, neither can the ear, the ear understand what I’m saying. It’s a mind that can understand it. The ear only accepts the sound waves.
So by relying on our senses, which is what humanity does, we are constantly disappointed in our search for having happiness within. Our thinking process has a little more validity because at least when we learn to manage it a little more skillfully, we can do something about it. With our sense contacts, there’s nothing we can do. We’ve got to see what is there, and we’ve got to hear what’s going on. There’s nothing we can do about these sense contacts.
They’re constantly happening. The management of our thinking process, however, has a certain validity because it is entirely up to us what we’re thinking. Now, again, most people have no idea that that is so. They accept any thought that comes into their minds and then react to it. They react to the thought that arose either through wanting that what the thought has brought about, namely something pleasant, or rejecting that what the thought has brought about, something unpleasant.
By doing that, we are in a constant anxiety state. Fear is a human condition. The anxiety state of not getting what we want and not gonna be able to get rid of what we don’t want. The mind doesn’t have time to settle down and experience within a state of peace and happiness. In meditation, we have a means of understanding that we do not have to believe what we think.
The thoughts that arise are very constant, fleeting, and usually not the ones we want. They are just arising and disappearing again. They are arbitrary thoughts that do not seem to have any particular value in them. Now when we when we recognize that in meditation, we can of course take that with us into daily life and realize that all these arbitrary thoughts which arise do not need to be acted upon. And then another thing happens.
When we meditate, when we learn to meditate, we try to substitute our thinking process with a meditation object. Now obviously, otherwise we can’t meditate because if we just want to sit there and think, we don’t have to meditate. We can do that anytime. We can just sit and think. But when we want to learn to meditate, we have to substitute.
We have to substitute all this thinking eventually with that subject that we have chosen to meditate upon. This substitution process is the most important process that we can take into life with us, into daily life with us. Because if we learn to substitute one thing for another in our mind, we finally have a chance to get in charge of our mind and not allow it to think those things which certainly do not bring happiness. Now happiness is a feeling within, and the interesting aspect of this feeling is that all our sense contacts produce feeling, every one of them, including thinking. And because our sense contacts to the five senses are so impermanent, so very short duration, even though they may produce some momentary happiness, we have produce nothing that we can actually base our happiness on.
We have to constantly renew it. Our thinking process also produces a feeling, happiness or unhappiness. And once we become aware of that, that this is what is happening within us, it will certainly make us aware of the fact it’s entirely up to us to have happiness and not to the outside world around us. Once we see that, that it isn’t the outside world that is making us happy unhappy, it’s the inside world that’s making us happy or unhappy, then we can start to practice. A spiritual path is a path of practice.
It’s not a belief. It’s not a set of doctrines or dogma. It’s not something that is imposed upon us. It’s a practice path to gain peace and harmony within. Unless it is that, it’s not a spiritual path.
It’s doctrine and dogma or belief. And when it is that, it has very little results within because the mind keeps questioning, and the feelings which arise are not reliable. Only when we have a practice on which we can rely, when we know that happiness within is a reliable feeling and experience within, can we then rely upon our spiritual path? Otherwise, what can we rely on? Can we rely on something to happen after we are dead?
We’d like to be happy now, wouldn’t we? It’s the only time that we really know about. And can we rely on other people to make us happy? Surely not. They’d rather be happy themselves, wouldn’t they?
And can we rely on the situations around us that they’re gonna make us happy? Well, surely, everybody here is already old enough to have found out that that doesn’t work. We’ve probably tried a few of those situations around us. If we can rely on ourselves, then we have something that we can fall back on. Now not only do we learn in meditation to substitute that which is useless with that which is useful, and then take that into daily life with us.
But also, when our meditation comes together where it is a concentrated meditation, and therefore the first time when it’s actually happening, We get in touch with an inner experience which is based upon our own original purity of mind. The inner experience of our own original purity of mind produces a kind of happiness which we have not been able to ever experience through our senses. Although we’ve had momentary happiness through the senses, quantitatively and qualitatively, it has never even approached the kind of happiness which lies within us if we stop thinking for a few minutes or a little while at least. Our thinking process is the overlay over original mind, over that which is pure within us. We all have it.
Nobody’s without it. Some people’s overlay is very heavy, can’t get at it, are not even trying. Those people who try to get at it through the process of meditation, which means not thinking in the end, but experiencing, not blank mind, but experiencing, can all do it eventually. It’s not a skill which is only for a few people. It’s a skill that all human minds, which are working in the ordinary way, are capable of.
And it is a skill. It’s a skill which brings us more benefits than any other skill we could possibly learn. There are so many skills available to us in this world, and practically all of them are for making money. Obviously, one has to make money, one’s got to live, one has got to eat. But this is where we usually stop with learning skills.
We learn a certain number of them and then we make a living, or if we don’t like the one we have learned, then we try to learn another one, change our profession, change our way of making a living. But this skill, the skill of meditation, which brings us to the experience of that inner purity of mind is the skill which has in its wake a totally different approach to ourselves and the world around us. That different approach is based upon realizing that we carry everything within, that we do not have to be dependent upon that which is outside of us. If as long as we’re dependent upon either other people or situations outside of us, we’re actually in a state of dependency, which is a lack of freedom. And also in a state of anxiety because we do not know whether we can keep the person or the situation going on which we depend.
We do not have jurisdiction over it. So a state of dependency produces more anxiety than we already have. When we can free ourselves from that, when we free ourselves from the dependency upon outside situations or people and know that we can produce happiness within, then we have the first inkling of what freedom means. Inner freedom, the management of our inner household, then becomes a matter of course. When we have a household in which we live at home and nobody cleans anything up, it’s all full of dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and papers thrown all over the place, furniture upturned upside down.
It’s not very comfortable to live in. We do like to clean it up and make it a bit comfortable and pleasant to live in. It’s only sensible. But are we doing the same thing for our inner household? Make that comfortable to live in.
Get rid of all the rubbish. Get rid of all that which needs attending to, which needs purification, washing. Get rid of the overturned furniture in there and put it straight side up so that we can live within our inner household in a way of comfort, ease, and harmony. This is the most important household to live in. It’s more important than the house that we actually call our house.
Naturally, that should be in order too, but it’s so much easier to put a house in order than it is to put put our inner household in order. If we practice the meditation skill and come to that skill where we recognize the happiness within as an inner condition, which is only dependent upon one thing, namely on concentration, then we also know how to put our inner household in order. We realize that it depends entirely upon ourselves. No matter what goes on around us, we can keep ourselves in order. Because this experience of that inner happiness makes it quite clear to us that our senses are not the producers of happiness.
They can never be that. They can only be a momentary enjoyment, a short lived pleasure. And because we realize that now, we can let go of so many of our time consuming and energy consuming endeavors, which have never yet brought about that inner peace and harmony that everybody really wants and should have. And because we are yearn yearning for it, it is already clear that it is available. Because how could we be wanting something that doesn’t even exist?
We get an inkling of it sometimes that it is possible to have real peace and harmony within. Sometimes people go to the ocean and watch the waves and maybe a sunset behind the waves and sit there and become totally peaceful and then think it’s due to the ocean, the waves, and the sunset. But it’s not. It’s due to the fact that at that moment, the mind was neither wanting nor rejecting. It’s impossible to reject ocean, waves, and sunset.
It’s also impossible to want them. Nobody can take them home. So at that moment, the mind was peaceful. It didn’t want. It didn’t reject.
And we don’t have to go back to the ocean to get that. All we have to do is go back inside ourselves and stop that whole discriminating thinking process, which is always connected with wanting and not wanting, with the dichotomy of this is yours and this is mine, this is theirs and this is ours, this is good and this is bad, this I’ll have and this I won’t have. With all that, there’s no peace. It cannot be found that way. We have that inkling within that it is possible, and we may have already, as I said, experienced it for a moment or two.
If we have, we have a very good indication that we’re capable of experiencing it. But the skill arises with the ability to experience this anytime we want to. That means that anytime we sit down in meditation, that we can then experience that inner happiness. And we take with us a residue of that into our daily lives. The residue has two aspects.
One aspect is that that what the world promises us in pleasure, in happiness, in wonders, in new things, it’s no longer do we expect that kind of inner happiness from it. And therefore, we have no disappointments. While the sense contacts may be providing some enjoyment and some pleasure, we never expect anymore that will they will completely fulfill us. And the second thing is that we know already from our own experience that this happiness exists within, and therefore, all the difficulties that we may be experiencing during a day, and there’s hardly a person alive that doesn’t experience some difficulty during one day of living no longer have the sting that they used to have because we know very well that we can go back inside ourselves and find the same happiness again that we’ve already had. So this thing is taken out of all our difficulties.
They still arise. They’re there. The world doesn’t change. It’s our inner life that has changed. This is nothing but a learnable skill.
That’s all it is. But neither does it bring money nor does it bring material goods. And therefore, it’s not as much practiced as all other skills that we know about. And yet, it is incomparably more important. It carries within it the beginning of a change of consciousness, an elevation of our consciousness, which makes it possible for us to see a totally different reality.
The reality in which we live, we call a relative reality. It’s quite true. In this reality, every one of us is separate from the next person. There are males and females. There is nature out there.
There are trees. There’s a sky. There are stars. There are houses. There are cats and dogs and all sorts of things that the world is full of.
And some of it is mine, and some of it is yours, and some of it is somebody else’s. It’s a relative reality in which our senses are constantly engaged, and it is true insofar as it goes, but it isn’t ever totally fulfilling. It just doesn’t have the ability to fulfill us completely. Many people never want to admit that. Their connection with their own sensibilities is not strong enough to find that this is so.
Many people do admit it to themselves, but don’t know any way out of it. And then there are always those that can understand that this is so and do find a way out of it. So in this relative reality, we try to make the best of it. But if we get the skill of meditation and actually come to that point of inner happiness, a process starts where the reality in which we live is no longer the most important one. Well, we still have to live in it.
As long as we have this body, we have to live in a material reality. We have to feed the body. We have to look after it in some manner or form. We have duties and responsibilities. But the level of consciousness that we that we work with at all times, which I call either pedestrian consciousness or the marketplace consciousness, is no longer the only one that we have access to.
We learn to have access to one which has an elevation to it. It is no longer or the only one that we can work with. The marketplace consciousness is a one where you get something for what you give, where we have a constant value system. It is the one where we are concerned only with that which we can see or hear. And yet, don’t we all know already that there is more than what we can see with these eyes and hear with these ears.
And when we get inside of ourselves and experience the inner happiness, which is only due to the mind becoming concentrated and having a time of purification, we realize there is something more. And the kind of consciousness that we then have access to is one which sees a different reality, a reality which eventually brings about an understanding that we are not really separate, that we are not really divided into different entities, that we’re not separate from our environment, that all that exists has a totality about it. And that if we hurt someone else, we’re actually hurting ourselves. If we do good to someone else, we’re actually doing good to ourselves. That there is no division.
That it is all one universal manifestation. And when we get into a consciousness where this is a fact during our meditation, then when we get out into daily life, again, that has a residue, And we do no longer see everything as outside of ourselves, totally apart and separate. But what we then do see is a connectedness. And this connectedness makes it, of course, much easier to live on a basis of wholesome thinking, which brings peacefulness within, where there is no rejection of others, at least much less than there was before, where there is no hate and anger and fury, there is understanding of that which is good and which isn’t, but the hate and the fury is gone because it’s all part of oneself. This kind of entry into a different kind of consciousness makes it much easier to remain on a basis of happiness within, which is independent of what happens around us.
That independence gives a great deal of self confidence. As long as we’re dependent, we cannot have self confidence because we are not in charge. But as soon as we become independent, then self confidence arises. And that self confidence makes it possible to connect with other people on a basis of lovingness and compassion rather than feeling threatened, alienated, separated. And if we then have learned that we do not have to think that which produces unhappiness, but are actually able to change our thinking in everyday life because we have noticed that it is that which brings us happiness or unhappiness, then we can rely on ourselves.
That self confidence, that reliance, that skill, that ability makes our inner household one of peace. Peace is often confused to be a piece of paper which is signed by a number of heads of state. That’s absence of a shooting war. That’s not peace. Peace is an inner condition.
It’s a feeling within. And only if we work at it will we be able to get it. Ramana Maharshi, who was a sage in Southern India, said that peace and happiness are not our birthright. Those who get it, get it through constant effort. Effort is absolutely essential.
There’s no way that we can get what we want without effort. Even the slightest thing we want, even going to a shop and buying something, we have to make some effort. How much more effort if we want peace and happiness within? But the skill which is needed for that is available. It is now available in the Western countries just as much as it used to be available in the East.
There’s no difference anymore. Our communication system has advanced to the point where there are hardly any secrets left, which is good. We need not we need not have secrets from each other. We’re all in this together. And all the things that are unhappiness producing, which bring which are problems, which are difficulties, are a universal phenomenon.
They are not an individual monopoly. Nobody has a monopoly on problems. They are totally universal and they can also be solved universally. We can only see our individuality. But if our skill in meditation makes it possible to go a little bit beyond this limitation that we set for ourselves, which seems to be bounded up with this body, we can see that there is some universality to all of us.
When the meditation comes together to the point where there is that happiness within, we also do not have that boundary of the body. We already experienced at that time that that too is an optical illusion. Our eyes just aren’t good enough. Our scientists have been saying for a long time already that there are no solid building blocks in the whole of the universe. All of it that exists are energy particles coming together and falling apart.
Well, how about us? Do we belong into this universe? Are we energy particles for coming together and falling apart? Well, if so, why can’t we experience it? Only because we’re constantly thinking something.
Once we get the skill of meditation and experience our inner truth, our inner being, we also experience that. And when we experience that, it makes a great deal of difficult, difference to how we approach others. We may look all separate, each one having one chair to themselves, but in reality, it’s not like that at all. Naturally, we don’t see this with our physical eye. Our physical eyes are very limited.
We can’t even see very far, And when it gets dark, we don’t see anything. Our eyes are extremely, limited. In the dark, we have to put on the light. When we get a little older, we have to get glasses, and we can see just about to the end of the block. But surely there’s more to this universe than the end of the block.
So if we keep on relying on that what we see, obviously we’re limiting ourselves much too much. But when we can start relating to that, what happens within us when there is purity? And that purity arises through the concentration because at that time, there cannot be any impurity. When we can relate to that, what is going on within us, then our viewpoint changes. We see much farther than the end of the block.
And it is an experience and not an imagination. It’s an experience that we have which all minds can have. We all have that potential. So the skill of happiness depends upon two things, depends upon our ability to learn the skill of meditation to the point where we can concentrate. And it depends upon our understanding that we do not have to take our thinking process for granted, that we can change it at will.
We even have that embedded in our language. I changed my mind. How often have we changed our mind? All we have to do is change our mind to the positive over and over again until the mind is not so interested anymore in the negative. With the two skills joined and together, we have a guaranteed path of not only happiness and peace within, but also of an elevated consciousness, which no longer sees only what the physical eye can see, but which connects to a much wider and expanded universal understanding where our small puny individuality is no longer the center of the universe.
And when that happens, then our problems are also no longer the center of the universe. They are put into the right perspective. Getting a different perspective because we’ve got a different viewpoint. And with that, we can live peacefully, happily, harmoniously with ourselves and others. I’d like to give you a opportunity now to ask some questions if you like.
Turn a little bit to them. That’s right. Yes. Well, it depends on their parents. If their parents are meditating and are doing it diligently daily, one usually finds that the children might ask whether they could join in.
And very good devices, also if they haven’t asked, is to say that they’re allowed to join in. And we usually think that from the age of seven on upwards, they’re old enough. And one should never set them a definite time, but just tell them to sit as long as they wish and then go out quietly when they’re small like that. Alright. What else?
Yes. Where do you get the skill? Well, you can go to Buddha House. They teach meditation there. Did anybody bring any of the yeah.
On the table there, there are some pamphlets. And, also, there’s meditation taught at Bethany. Did you bring any papers for that? No. So the the skill is, something that one needs to have some instructions first.
So when you go out, you can pick up one of the papers. Yes. Well, one of the very important aspects that are connected to meditation, to successful meditation, is that one guards one’s mind during day everyday life and daily living, that one guards it from, unwholesome thinking and that one guards one’s body from unwholesome action. So with the two, that one protects oneself, then that is a skill. Yes.
A skill which, for some people, takes a long time to acquire and for others goes rather quickly. And it is, depend upon determination, perseverance, and patience. One has to have those character qualities within. If one doesn’t have them, one’s gotta develop them. Without those, one isn’t gonna pursue it.
And the protection that one affords oneself in mind and body during one’s daily life are, of course, also imperative. What else? Well, you’re talking about the destruction of the natural environment. Yes. Well, the greatest pollution that’s going on is from unwholesome thinking.
If the unwholesome thinking would stop, the pollution will stop. And the pollution is in two ways. The first pollution that will stop is the pollution of the thinking which is picked up by other people so that there is a lot of hate and greed in the world. And, naturally, when that stopped, the destruction of the environment stops too. I mean, it’s it’s unwholesome thinking that makes it possible.
So we are all polluting our environment the minute, not only when we get into a car and get the exhaust to put out this unwholesome stuff, but the minute we dislike, the minute we are fearful, anxious, hateful, envious, jealous, proud, we’re all polluting our environment. And it’s been done. It’s been done ever since humanity exists. So by now, the environment is pretty polluted. But we can do something about it.
We don’t have to live with it. We ourselves, each one of us, can do something about it. Alright. What else? The how do you feel the connectedness with all around you?
Or just as exactly as you’re saying it, you feel it. You certainly don’t see it, not with these eyes. They’re they’re they’re much too weak for that. It’s an inner feeling. This inner feeling is based upon your own experience and your understanding.
You see, our whole life is lived based on feeling. Most people think that it’s based on their rational thinking, but that’s not the case. It’s all based on feeling because even thinking produces feeling. So whatever you feel inside, that’s the way you live. So it’s it’s feeling exactly that.
No? Do you have another question about that? Yes? No? No?
Okay. Whether a teacher is available? Advisable. Yes. A teacher is absolutely advisable.
In fact, at some stages in the development, it’s essential. First, you need a teacher at the very beginning. You need somebody to tell you how to do it. It’s all a matter of how to. And as one progresses a little further, one needs a teacher to for support because one doesn’t have the self confidence yet that one is doing it right.
And then there’s another point in the development where you need a teacher because fear can arise, arise. And that’s a very important point to get a teacher then. And, also, a teacher is very important to lay out the the guidelines on how how where the path leads to so that it doesn’t it’s not a potluck situation, but one knows exactly what the mind can do. And, usually, we usually say when the student is ready, the teacher is there. But whether that always works, I don’t know.
I’m not sure if that’s I don’t know either. Yes. Well, all the answers are certainly within oneself. They’re all there. However, one needs the guidelines on how to get at them.
They’re all covered over with our defilements. So one needs the guideline how to get it. What one can do if there’s no life teacher around, one can take the available instructions as we find them in the holy books, if you want to call them that, and actually follow those instructions. They are not for reading. They are guidelines for action.
The spiritual path is action. So if we use those guidelines, if there’s nobody there, it’s not quite as satisfactory as somebody who can explain it, but it’s certainly giving us an idea of where to what to do. So that can be helpful too. Well, you do. But what kind of course was that?
Just just a course. Just an institution. Ah, well, yes. We we do have meditation courses, certainly. Certainly.
And these in meditation courses are given opportunity for intensive practice. We’re gonna have one this weekend, and they do they are very often, they are repeated by other teachers. And intensive practice combined with explanation of where this leads to. Yes. There is an end to this.
It’s called Nibbana. But it may not happen in this lifetime. But that is not, so much the, the problem. It is the joy of the journey which produces a new, views at, every, opportunity. And that is the joy which arises that one knows one is actually taking the right kind of journey, the inner journey.
So whether one is actually arriving at the destination at this point in time is not the criteria because we don’t really know what is the destination like. But the journey itself brings the benefit. And there are meditation courses. Yes. What else?
And there’s also one can consider this, that if for instance, one has a property and would like to get some water and one digs a well in a in a spot where one thinks the water is available, and after ten feet of digging, there’s no water. So one thinks, well, it must be the wrong spot. I’ll go somewhere else. And again starts digging ten feet. And again, there’s no water.
And again, one thinks, it must be the wrong spot. I’ll go somewhere else. And one does that ten times, one doesn’t get a drop of water, but one has dug a hundred feet. If one had stayed in the first spot, it’s highly likely that one would have got water after digging hundred feet. So having chosen one pass, one should try and find out whether that one take one there.
Naturally there are also mistaken views in the world on what a spiritual path consists of. But sooner or later, one finds that out oneself. One could look at this as if it was a mountain. And that one has heard that on the summit of that mountain, the air is unpolluted, everybody is happy, that it’s a wonderful place to be. And then one makes up one’s mind, one would like to get up to that mountain top.
So then one has to scout around for a guide that has already been up that mountain so that one can take one up there with the least danger. So having found one that says, well, look, I’ve been up there, I’ll take you up, such as the Buddha. Then to have the confidence to follow that guide And the landmarks are clearly given where one can fall into a crevice, where one has to go straight ahead and so forth. But whether one is going to get up to the mountain or not to the mountain top doesn’t really matter. It’s the climbing that matters because every little elevation that one gets up to has an entirely different viewpoint.
One sees already quite a different view even if one’s only getting up one tenth of that mountain. It looks entirely different than where one is standing at the bottom. And another thing that one has to remember is that if we really want to climb this mountain successfully, it’s useless to have our eyes up on the summit and saying, oh, up there, it’s going to be beautiful up there. Because every time we look up there, we’re going to fall flat on our nose. We have to watch each step that we take.
And having taken a few steps, then the view becomes much wider even just getting up a little bit than being down at the bottom. That is what really counts. Whether there is a beautiful summit or not, well we’ll find out. If we keep on climbing, we’ll definitely find out one day. Yes.
Yes. It’s a you can’t do it that way. It’s a do it yourself job. And with that, we can only get a roadmap. We can get a roadmap, but we’ve got to do the driving ourselves.
So in the if we recognize that, then we can go ahead and do it. I think that all societies today are consumer societies. They’re not anymore confined to the west. They’re everywhere. It’s the way the world has gone.
Anything else? Yes. Yes, well, one of the things that probably happens to most people is that they hear a teaching and they’re not totally grabbed by it. So they go and hear something else until they find one which really takes hold of their my heart and mind. It has to be a heart and mind connection.
It’s useless to be either one or the other because we have both. We have heart and mind feeling and thinking. And unless we have a wholehearted relationship to the spiritual path, it’s going to be a half hearted result. So the mind, the thinking process has to be able to understand the teaching. If it can’t understand, what’s the use?
I mean, we can hope for the future, but the future never comes. When the future comes, it’s called the present. So we might as well understand it now. But we also must be able to have a loving relationship to that teaching, which means that because we have understood it, because it relates to that which we have already experienced in our own lives, because there is this relationship and we can understand it, that we gain confidence even before we have gone the whole way on this road map. And from that confidence comes joy.
Joy is an necessary ingredient for meditation. If we don’t enjoy it, we’re not gonna do it. So we might as well enjoy it. And that only happens when the confidence arises that this is something that will bring me to this happiness, peace, and elevation of consciousness. So most people do, shop around, as you say, because they don’t not immediately find that heart and mind connection.
But once one finds that, one should stick to it. One should be able to see that this is what one really what one can really relate to. It is the closest relationship we can have. It’s closer than any relationship with anyone else to one’s own spiritual path. And if we don’t have both heart and mind connection to this close relationship, it will never be totally successful.
Anything else? I’ll do a guided meditation with you now. And, for the meditation, it is, helpful to have the feet next to legs next to each other and the feet solidly on the ground. And, if you can sit without leaning against the backrest, it’s better because the back is an important part of the meditative process. And relax the body.
Lift the shoulders and drop them. Relax the stomach. Relax the neck. The head should be straight, held straight, not hanging down, not hanging back. Eyes closed.
The hands can be on the in the lap or on the knees with a palm up or palm down, whichever you prefer. And in order to start, watch the breath coming in and out of the nostrils for just a few moments. And on your next in breath, breathe in peace from wherever you think it can come, from your mind, from the air around you, from the night sky, from the trees, from the stars, from just the thought. Fill yourself with peace on every in breath. Peace as a feeling, feeling of evenness, of not wanting, not wishing, not hoping, not rejecting.
At ease. And on your next out breath, breathe out love from your heart and surround yourself with it so that you’re sitting in it as if it were a golden cloud which surrounds you, makes you feel safe and secure. So on every in breath, fill yourself with peace. On every out breath, surround yourself with love. The warmth that comes from your heart.
And now breathe out love and peace to the person nearest you in this hall. Fill him or her with peace and surround him or her with love. Giving the best from your heart that you have to give. And now breathe out love and peace to everyone here. Open your heart wide enough so that it can encompass everyone who’s here, filling everyone from top to toe with peace and embracing everyone with love, giving everyone a sense of peacefulness and protection, ease and harmony.
Think of your parents and let your next breath take love and peace to them, filling them with peace, embracing them with love, giving them the best you have to give from your heart. Think of those people who are nearest and dearest to you. Fill them with peace. Surround them with love. Without expecting them to return the same to you.
Think of all your good friends. Breathe out love and peace to them. Fill them with peace. Embrace them with love. Letting them know how you feel for them.
Think of your neighbors, people at work, people you meet in the street, in the shops, meet when traveling, those you know and those you don’t know. Open up your heart wide enough so that you can feel all of them with a peace from your heart and embrace all of them with love, making them all part of your life, which they are. Think of anyone whom you find difficult to love, who may have put obstacles in your path. And think of it as a learning situation, being grateful that you can practice, forgiving and forgetting, purifying your own heart, Fill him or her with peace. Surround him or her with love, making no difference between this person or any other.
Now open your heart as wide as you can, letting the breath with love and peace reach as far as possible to as many people as you can reach. Those that are near and those that are further, those you have seen and those you can only imagine. Let the peace from your heart reach out, filling as many people as possible, and the love embracing as many people as you can reach. Let it flow from your heart like a golden string going further and further. Now put your attention back on yourself.
Feel the peacefulness that comes from making the right kind of effort. It comes from loving and giving. And feel the lovingness surrounding yourself, giving you the safety and security of being at ease and harmony with yourself. Breathe in peace. Breathe out love.
Fill yourself with the peace. Surround yourself with the love. Let it be an inner experience. On every in breath, fill yourself with peace. On every out breath, surround yourself with love.
May all beings have love and peace in their hearts. This is a useful and helpful meditation practice, which you can use every morning before going out into what we are pleased to call the real world. It facilitates one’s relationship with others as well as with oneself. And you need no more than ten minutes for that. Of course, you can extend that for any length of time, but it is at least a very good start for one’s meditation practice.
And if one is already a meditator, it’s a very good addition to it. And if one does it every morning before leaving the house, even if one doesn’t feel anything, the mind goes in the right direction and eventually the feelings will come. If it’s only the mind in the beginning doing it, namely thinking, it doesn’t matter. If one already feels something that’s fine, But at least it’s something to get started with. Thank you very much for coming this evening.
Shantima’s gonna say something. If you’d like to have