Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 62-minute workshop, Ven. Sangye Khadro addresses obstacles to establishing a daily practice. She discusses breathing meditation—not just for concentration, but for directly observing the mind, complementing the analytical Gelugpa approach—and tackles insomnia and self-doubt through stories of practitioners like Milarepa who transformed their habits. The core teaching covers practical foundations: begin with five to twenty minutes daily or several times weekly; practice in the morning in a dedicated space; join a group for accountability; maintain ethical conduct. She emphasizes that starting small prevents burnout—consistency matters more than ambition. She closes with a guided loving-kindness meditation moving from self to loved ones to neutral people to those you dislike, ending with a dedication of merit. Pitched at those beginning a regular practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 2005 02 13 MW.mp3
UUID: 56af650c-5379-4d56-96b6-c6ec3e77128d
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: How to Meditate Weekend (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Date: 2005-02-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 62.4 minutes
Words: ~6,963
So are there any questions left over from the discussion group or from this morning’s session? I think I have a question. There was a discussion around the breathing meditation, the benefits of breathing meditation. And maybe the Gelugpa tradition is quite intellectual, and some of us actually have missed out on on enough training in breathing meditation. I wonder if you’d like to talk a little more about the benefits of breathing meditation and how much, we need to do every day.
What, you know, benefits of doing it. I think that that kind of meditation could be done for different reasons or different purposes. For one thing, and this is completely in line with the Gelugpa tradition, we need to develop concentration. We need to learn how to keep our mind focused on one object and learn not to have it wandering all over the place. And so there’s that whole tradition of meditation on calm abiding, what’s called calm abiding meditation.
And, I mean, that’s that’s all throughout Buddhism. All Buddhist traditions talk about that. You know, calm abiding, developing concentration. And and and there are different objects that could be used. The Buddha actually mentioned different objects you could use for developing abiding.
And the breath is actually one of the objects, one of the recommended objects for cultivating calm abiding, learning concentration. And it’s also said that the breath you know, like among these different objects, some are suitable for different kinds of people. Like, for example, a person who has a lot of anger, has a very angry temperament, then that person could use loving kindness as an object for developing calm abiding. And the breath is recommended as an object used for people who have a lot of discursiveness, a lot of busy thoughts in their mind, who have a very scattered busy mind. So the breath is recommended for that.
So that’s one way you could use the breath. You could do breathing meditation as a way of developing calm abiding. But my own personal feeling, and I know there are many other Western teachers and practitioners who feel the same way as well, This kind of meditation is very helpful just to get to know our mind better, to be able to see what’s going on in our mind because there can be all kinds of stuff going on in there and often we’re not even aware of it. Yeah. Underlying subconscious under the current kind of stuff that we’re just not aware of.
And and for me personally, that I I feel this kind of meditation is very good for that because in the Gelugpa tradition, the kind of meditations that we do tend to be analytical. We’re thinking about something or we’re visualizing something or we’re reciting something. So, you know, we’re kept busy. Our mind is kept busy doing something, which is very good. I I think that’s great, all those kind of meditations.
But I I find it’s also really good to have periods of time where you just look at what’s going on in your mind without doing anything, you know? Not keeping yourself busy but just looking and seeing what’s going on there. Because I find for myself there can be all kinds of stuff going on that I’m just not seeing. And this kind of meditation helps me to see those things and recognize areas of my mind that need to be looked at and dealt with and worked on. So mindfulness, being mindful, learning to be more mindful, more aware, seeing what’s going on in the mind.
Otherwise, you know, if you’re if we’re all the time keeping ourselves busy thinking about things, reciting things, visualizing things, then those things those other things, those delusions can be there in the mind, you know, untouched Yeah. Undealt with. And we might think, oh, I’m a really good practitioner because I do, you know, five hours of of practices every day. But in the meantime, we’re still getting angry at people, we’re still feeling jealous, we’re still feeling proud and selfish, you know, because we’re not really looking at what’s really going on in the mind. So I mean, for me personally, I think it’s a really good complementary practice to use together with other kinds of practices such as analytical meditation and visualization and recitation and so on.
Is that answering the question? It is. Yeah. I’m wondering, what would the best meditations be for insomnia? Because I have trouble getting to sleep for years, and I’m wondering, are there insomniac monks, So even people who have Insomniac monks?
Monks. Well, there’s some who choose not to sleep, who are quite happy not to sleep. Right. But that’s a choice. So they don’t have things to do in the morning?
Like, I mean, that’s it. It’s like, the only reason I’d want to go to sleep is because I have to do something in the morning. Yeah. And you’re just too tired if you don’t get sleep. Yeah.
But if I mean, if you can meditate and not sleep and still do your things in the morning quite, you know, well. Yeah. Then there wouldn’t be a point of sleeping. That’s right. Yeah.
Yeah. I heard there are some people, even they’re not meditators or spiritual practitioners or anything, but they just think that sleep is a waste of time. And they just you know, either they don’t sleep or they they hardly sleep at all and they just keep themselves busy. So I think there are seems like there are people who are able to function okay without sleep or with very little sleep but, you know, not everyone can do that, so if you’re if you need sleep to be able to function. Well, I I haven’t heard of any specific meditations for that.
Although I heard Lama Zopa Rinpoche once made a joke. He said, If there’s anybody who has trouble sleeping, just have them listen to my talks. So maybe you could get some some tapes of those of Lama Zopa’s tapes because he tends to talk a lot. He he goes on and on for hours and hours and hours. People have a hard time staying awake.
I mean, I think that I don’t know, maybe the meditation on the breath, doing that meditation before going to sleep could help you to relax because I don’t really know what are the causes for insomnia but possibly one cause is that there’s just too much activity in the mind, too much thinking in the mind. And if you do meditation on the breath and you just sort of let go of all those thoughts and get your mind into a more relaxed state, then that might help you to sleep. But on the other hand, I think it can also happen the other way that you get really calm and clear, and then you’re just, like, wide awake. Because people say when they do a lot of meditation, like, they go to Vipassana retreats and so on, sometimes they they they hardly sleep at all. So I don’t I I can’t be sure if it would have that relaxing effect on you or not.
I don’t know. Has anyone else ever encountered any solutions for insomnia? Retreats. What they suggest to the students is that they do when they lie down. They’re insanely that they do the the breathing meditation, just watching the breath.
Because that way, even if you don’t go to sleep, at least your mind will be rested But in general, in Buddhism it’s said that it’s good before going to bed, before going to sleep to do something that will help the mind be in a positive state because the time that we’re asleep, our mind is still functioning, still active, still doing things. We have dreams and even when we don’t have dreams, our mind is still having some subtle experiences. And also we’re still creating karma. Mind still creates karma in sleep. And the state of mind we have while we’re asleep will be affected by the state of mind we have before we go to sleep.
So like if before going to sleep, we have lots of negative thoughts in our mind and we’re thinking, you know, of people we don’t like and, you know, feeling really angry at them or if we watch some violent movie right before we go to bed, you know, and so our mind is still filled with all this fighting and killing and shooting and blowing up and all that kind of stuff. Or or if we’re we’re our mind is full of thoughts of greed or attachment or desire, then that will affect our state of mind while we’re sleeping. So, you know, the whole time we’re sleeping, our mind will be continue continuing to be in a in a a negative state. So it’s recommended that we do something, you know, to put our mind in a positive state before we go to sleep. So doing some prayers, doing some meditation, or reading a spiritual book rather than reading a mystery murder novel or also, there’s certain meditations we can do as we’re going to sleep, such as, you know, just thinking of the Buddha, for example, and even imagining that the Buddha is above your head or you actually have your head in the Buddha’s lap like the pillow and receiving light, the Buddha sending light into you, or going to sleep thinking about others and meditating on loving kindness and compassion for others.
So it would be good to, whether you have insomnia or not, to try to do something that will help your mind be in a good state, a positive state before going to sleep. And you’ll probably sleep better if you do get to sleep. You’ll probably sleep better, and your mind will be in a better state during the night, less chance of nightmares. And also waking up, there’s a greater chance that you’ll be able to wake up in a positive state with positive thoughts and feelings rather than negative ones. So that’s advice given to anybody, everybody who’s concerned about mental and spiritual development.
It’s an observation of mine that in progress of meditation that sometimes our Do you have a method or do you consider that there’s a method for overcoming those obstacles, of obstacles in terms of developing a meditation? You you be a little bit more specific? I use myself as a as a example. If I consider myself unworthy of achieving a level of meditation above that of basic, then there’s no way I’m gonna get above basic in my meditation. How would you overcome that view of unworthiness of self to develop a meditation that has concentration longer than the count of two?
Well, I mean, the the the teachings in the teachings of Buddhism, it said that every everybody, all beings, all those all beings with mind, sentient beings, have the potential to become enlightened. So it’s it’s the very nature of our mind that it’s possible to be free of all, like, negative thoughts and feelings and energies and all limitations, all problems, all suffering. So all of those negative things can be eliminated. They’re not permanent. They’re not things that will be with us forever.
They’re like the contamination in the water that can be filtered out. And then we have within us all good qualities that exist. We have love and compassion and wisdom and courage and, you know, every possible positive quality that there is. We have that in our mind. Even if it’s just in seed form, it’s still a long way to go to develop it, but we have that potential.
So we all have the potential to become Buddha, to become enlightened. And so I suppose initially when we first hear about that, we may find it hard to believe it. That may be the problem is just not believing that. How do you get past not believing? Yeah.
Well, perhaps if through the practice of meditation you are able to see some changes. Like if you compare yourself with the way you were before you ever started meditating or heard about this stuff, if you think about the way you used to be and then you look at the way you are now, I think you should be able to see that there’s been some improvement. Even if you can’t see it, you might ask people that you live with. Sometimes people, you know, I guess because of this problem of low self esteem or because of the problem of having overly high unrealistic expectations of themselves, people sometimes feel like, oh, I haven’t made any progress. I haven’t gotten anywhere.
I’m just as bad as I’ve always been. So we may sometimes feel that way. But if we ask other people in fact, sometimes they just tell you without being asked, you know. They’ll say something like, you know, I can see that you’re not getting as mad as much as you used to or you’re easier to live with than you used to be or you look more happy than you used to. So we sometimes may hear people making those kind of comments to us.
And again, our low self esteem may want to push that away and deny it and say, no, no, no. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t see my mind. If you can see my mind, then you’d know, you know, it’s just a huge mess. So but I think we have to learn to have more faith, more trust, more confidence in ourselves as well as in other people.
We believe that if people are saying that they’re probably not just saying that without any reason, without any truth to it. So anyway, if we can come to accept that there has been some improvement, some positive changes since we started meditating, then we can think, okay. This stuff works. This this this works. And if I keep doing it yeah, I’ve only been doing it for, you know, a few months or a few years or whatever and already there’s some improvement.
So if I keep doing it, it should just get better and better. And also it can be helpful to I don’t know, might be helpful to read stories of other people who through practicing meditation, following a spiritual path, able to change themselves. Yeah? So that can be very inspiring too. And there’s in the in the Buddhist tradition, there’s some pretty pretty amazing stories like Milarepa, who is a Tibetan.
He lived about, I guess, a thousand years ago. And, there’s a number of biographies of Milarepa available in English. Very interesting story. I heard somebody even wants to make a movie out of it. Oh.
One day. But anyway, he in the early part of his life, he got involved in black magic and was very good at practicing black magic. And through that, he caused the deaths of about thirty five people plus some animals and also ruined an entire village’s crops or harvest one year with hailstorms. So he did a lot of very destructive things. And it was done because he had this wicked aunt and uncle that cheated him and his mother and his sister out of their family inheritance when their father died.
So his mother was really angry and wanted to take revenge and you know, asked him, the son, to learn black magic. And he even I think she even threatened to kill herself. She said, if you don’t do it, I’ll kill myself. So he was kind of pressured to to do that. And but still, he created some very bad karma.
And then he realized what he’d done, realized the bad karma he created, got really scared, like, what’s gonna happen to me as a result of this? So then he sought out a teacher and and learned he went through a whole series of tests, hardships, you might say, to sort of purify the bad karma that he created. But then eventually, you know, started meditating. And within that same lifetime, he attained enlightenment. He became a Buddha.
So there are stories like that of people making really big changes in their lives. And we can find modern day stories as well. It’s helpful to read books like Jack Kornfield’s books or books by other Western teachers. I find particularly in the Vipassana tradition, they’re quite open in talking about their faults and their failures and their mistakes and, you know, the stuff that comes up in their mind. So then you kind of realize you’re not the only one that has these kind of problems.
So it’s can be can be very heartening, encouraging. And yeah. So so that that can also be helpful to to see examples of people who go through difficulties and may may even feel like they’re not making any progress. So they may feel like they’re making progress for a while and then they seem to slip back and, revert to a less a more inferior state or something. And they keep going and eventually get through that.
So that can be encouraging so as well. Anyone else? Okay. So I thought we could do one last meditation before we finish, but not yet. I just want to talk about a couple other things.
Just sort of general general ideas, advice, guidelines on the practice of meditation that might be helpful for you. So it is good if possible to practice meditation on a regular basis because meditation is similar to learning other kinds of skills, like for example playing a musical instrument or playing playing tennis. In that you learn from a teacher, you learn from an instructor the the basic, like how to do it, the guidelines on how to do it. But then in order to get good at it, you have practice. You have to, you know, go home and practice what you’ve learned.
You know, even if you have a great teacher, the teacher will not be able to make you a great practitioner if you don’t practice. So a lot of it is up to you to practice, to work at it. So the ideal thing would be to practice every day if you can. And if not every day, at least a couple of times a week. But not to let a long period of time go by without doing meditation because otherwise you get out of touch with it, you lose what you’ve learned already and have to sort of start over again at the beginning or near the beginning.
So the ideal thing if you really want to make progress in meditation is to practice regularly. And it doesn’t have to be a long period of time. It’s recommended that in the beginning you could you could meditate for ten minutes or fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. Even five minutes, Lama Yeshe used to say, even if you just do five minutes, it’s still good, still something better than nothing. Cause everyone is different.
Everyone has different, you know, mentality and also physical situations. Some people can sit still very easily and other people have a really hard time sitting still. So so you shouldn’t, compare yourself with other people and think that you have to do what somebody else is doing. But check out what works best for you. So for you, maybe five minutes is your maximum.
You’re you know, that’s that’s what works best for you. For somebody else, it’s ten minutes. For somebody else, it’s fifteen minutes. So check out you you can experiment with different amounts of time, lengths of time, different ways of sitting, different kinds of practices to find out which one works best for you, which one fits you. Yeah?
Just like when we go and buy a pair of shoes. Yeah? We have to find a pair of shoes that suits us, that’s what we want and it fits our feet and it’s comfortable when we walk around in it. So we have to try on a few different kinds until we find one that’s right for us. So it’s like that with meditation too.
Try it, maybe try a few different practices and other ways of practicing until you find one that’s right for you. So in the beginning, between ten, twenty minutes, or five and twenty minutes is good. Then as time goes on and your ability to meditate improves, can increase the amount of time that you meditate for. But it’s better not to try to meditate for too long beginning. Even if like some people we start off with a lot of energy, we’re so enthusiastic, you know.
And we may, you know, meditate two hours a day or three hours a day or something like that. But sometimes that’s a bit risky because that kind of energy might decline or we might burn out. So it’s said to be better to start off small and gradually build up. And the reason for that is that if we if we push ourselves to meditate for too long a period of time, longer than we’re really capable of like if I set myself, you know, up to to meditate for one hour. Okay.
I have to meditate for one hour. But maybe after thirty minutes, I’m already feeling uncomfortable, you know. It’s physically uncomfortable. Mentally, my mind is, you know, wandering all over the place. But I force myself to keep sitting for the rest of the hour just because I set that as my goal.
So by the end of that one hour period, I’m probably feeling really unhappy and uncomfortable about meditating. And if I keep doing that, after a while, I’ll just feel aversion from meditation. I’ll see meditation as something really like torture, like really horrible. And then eventually you just wanna give it up. You don’t wanna do it anymore.
And so it’s said to be better to meditate for a short period of time and stop meditating at a point when you’re still feeling fairly comfortable physically and mentally, so there’s some enjoyment. So your association with meditation will be that it’s an enjoyable experience rather than a torturous, painful experience. So start off with shorter sessions and gradually build up. And then the time of day to meditate, again is something you could work out what’s best for you. But generally it’s said that the morning is if you can meditate in the morning, that’s the best time for various reasons.
One is that the environment is more quiet in the early morning. There’s there’s less noise, less traffic and you know, a lot of people are maybe still asleep. So so there’s not so much noise. And also, provided you’ve had a good night’s sleep, then physically and mentally you’re rested and your mind will probably be more clear, more sort of relaxed and clear than in the evening, like after a day of running around and working and all kinds of things happening. Your mind will be much more active and busy, so it’ll be harder to to concentrate.
So the mind is probably better to work with in the morning than in the evening. Also, it’s a good it’s a good way to start the day. If we can start our day with some meditation, some spiritual practice, getting ourselves into a positive state of mind, then there’s a greater chance that our mind will be positive throughout the day. Even, you know, it may not last all day but at least it helps. It helps us to be in a better state of mind and better able to be positive in our interactions with others and the decisions we make and so on.
So if you can meditate in the morning, that’s best. But if that doesn’t work for whatever reason, then any time in the day that you can set aside some time and meditate is fine. And you also don’t have to meditate only once a day. You can meditate as many times as you want. Have a number of sessions during the day.
It’s actually also good to do some meditation in the evening when you’ve finished your day before going to sleep to get your mind into a good state and also clear up if there’s been any problems during the day, any, you know, unpleasant encounters or maybe you got angry at somebody or something that’s kind of disturbing your mind. It’s good to clear that up before going to sleep. It’s also good if you can to meditate in the same place, to set aside a room if you have an extra room in your house or just a place in a room where you can set up a seat for yourself. And also, the Buddhist tradition is to have an altar where you can put images, like of Buddhas or teachers or other objects that can help you remember why we’re meditating, what’s the goal, what’s the purpose of doing meditation. So that can be helpful as a sort of focal point for your energy when you’re meditating.
But it’s good to try to be consistent in where you meditate because a certain energy will build up in that place. If you keep meditating in the same place each time, then place will will will kind of take on an energy and it will make it easier for you to get into a meditative state of mind each time you sit there. You know? You know what I’m saying? So the environment we’re in, the place where we are and trying to do meditation does have an effect on us.
Like if you tried to meditate in a pub, for example, or a football field, you know, you might find it a bit more difficult. But when you walk into I mean, like this room, for example, we we set this room up as a meditation room and we’ve been doing meditation in here. So so when you walk in here, like when you walked in here this morning, you may have felt, you know, kind of peaceful. The feeling in here, the energy in here was kind of very peaceful. So if you can make a space like that in your house or your apartment then that will assist you in your practice of meditation.
And also it’s good to, if if possible in a place where you live, which is possible for those who live here in Adelaide, if if you can join with other people to meditate because sometimes people have trouble with discipline, being able to keep up the practice on their own. Some people are are good at that. They have no trouble. I meet people sometimes who say that, you know, they just started meditating on their own and they meditated every single day. They never had a teacher, they never met with a group, they just did it on their own, which I think is just amazing.
So some people have that ability but other people, don’t. They might they might start off and do it for a few days and after a few days, you know, lose interest or get themselves busy doing other things. So, meditating with a group can be helpful to keep up your discipline, to keep up the regularity of your practice. So I think around Adelaide, there’s Buddha House and there’s other places as well where there’s regular meditations. It doesn’t mean you have to do it every day, but maybe just once a week or once every two weeks.
If you get together with other people and meditate, then that can help give you support, give you strength in keeping up a practice on your own. Then another thing too is our lifestyle. So the way we live our life will also have an effect on our meditation. And when we’re when we’re meditating, what we want to do is to have a positive, peaceful, clear, focused state of mind. And it will be very hard to do that if the rest of the day, the rest of the time, we let our mind just go wild.
And not just our mind, but our behavior as well. So if we’re, like, totally out of control, wild, just doing anything and everything, and then we sit down and try to meditate, it’s gonna be quite difficult. So the way we live our life, how we behave, does have an effect on our meditation. So that’s why in Buddhism, we have some guidelines on lifestyle. And one one very important principle is ethics, living ethically.
And there’s a lot that could be said about that, how to live ethically. But basically, ethics in Buddhism is based on compassion. Compassion is where we empathize with others, we understand that others don’t want to suffer, and we feel that they should not have to suffer and that we will try our very best not to make them suffer, not to do anything harmful, anything that will cause suffering to others. So that’s the basis of ethics in Buddhism is living in a a non harmful, non violent way as much as possible. I mean, it’s not always possible to completely avoid hurting others, but we have to at least try to do that.
Try to be mindful of others and their feelings and I mean, like the golden rule, you know, not doing what to others what you wouldn’t want people to do to you. So and and then there are also what we call the five precepts, five basic guidelines for living which Buddhists generally try to live by and that is to refrain from killing, taking the life, destroying the life of any living being, stealing, taking what belongs to others. Or stealing can also include not paying what we should pay. So if we owe money, we owe taxes or we owe bus fares or whatever bills and we don’t pay what we’re supposed to pay then that also in is involved is is included in stealing. And then telling lies, saying what’s not true, not telling the truth.
Although we also have to balance that with compassion. Sometimes being totally truthful can hurt others. So it doesn’t mean we always have to tell the truth, like A friend of mine was once asked by this this man. He said, my girlfriend asks me, am I pretty? And if I tell her the truth, she’ll be very hurt.
So if telling the absolute truth is going to be very hurtful to someone, then we can find a way of you know it doesn’t mean you have to tell an outright lie, but but anyway, we have to consider other people’s feelings when it comes to being truthful. And then sexual misconduct, refraining from that, which mainly involves infidelity if you are married or in a relationship and you sleep with someone other than your partner or if you sleep with someone who is married or in a relationship. So there’s a third person that’s being cheated on and would be very hurt if they find out and so on. So so that and any other sort of sexual behavior that causes suffering to yourself, to others, to both and so on. So refraining from harmful sexual behavior.
And then the last one is taking intoxicants which includes alcohol, recreational drugs and there’s different interpretations of that one. Some, keep that very strictly. They don’t drink at all. They don’t take any drugs. They don’t smoke and so on.
But, other people may take it in a more flexible way. They may drink a little bit, smoke a little bit, but not over not go overboard, not not to where it becomes an addiction. Because the main problem with, alcohol and drugs is that we lose our mindfulness. Yeah, if you take too much, then your mind becomes unclear, confused, also you tend to be more out of control. So you’re more likely to do things that might harm others, for example, we see with drunk driving.
Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs can lead to death, can lead to really horrible, horrible suffering. So so on on on the spiritual path, we want to try to have as much mindfulness and clarity and, you know, being able to direct our mind and our other actions as much as we can in a positive way and not just be out of control. So that’s the reason for that particular, precept. So so that’s those are some guidelines. Know, it doesn’t mean you have to follow them fully and perfectly and exactly, but but these were taught by the Buddha and these are practiced by by Buddhists.
And and I think, you know, they’re very similar to what we find in other religions, other spiritual traditions as well. So they’re kind of universal guidelines on how to live a a good life, an ethical life. And then if we can live this way, our practice of meditation will go better. Our mind will be more clear and peaceful, peaceful, stable when we try to meditate. And we also won’t have so many disturbing thoughts because when we behave harmfully, we do things that are harmful, that are reckless, that are that are negative, then that causes our mind to be more disturbed.
We’re gonna have more sort of disturbing thoughts coming up when we do try to meditate. So it just makes it much harder to get anywhere in our meditation. So there’s a lot more that I could say, but we can leave it for another time. Or you can learn from books from other courses and so on. Any any last questions before we do our last meditation, our final meditation?
Okay. So let’s do a meditation one more time. Make yourselves comfortable. Doing your best to keep your back straight. But letting the rest of your body be as relaxed as possible, letting go of any tension you may have.
Since it’s warm and we may be feeling tired, so that makes it easier to feel sleepy during meditation. So to prevent that, if you can keep your eyes open a little bit, allowing some light to come in. And let your mind settle down in the present. Put aside thoughts of the past or the future or other places, people, and so on. Just put aside all other thoughts.
Just let your mind be right here, right now, being aware of your breath coming in and going out. So in this meditation we will meditate on generating positive feelings to enable our mind to be more open, more positive towards others as well as to ourselves, starting to work on generating more love and compassion for ourselves and others. So love is wishing happiness for ourselves and for others. And compassion is wishing oneself and others to be free of suffering, to not experience pain or any kind of unpleasant, unwanted experience. So one way we can start to work on increasing those feelings is to contemplate how everybody, ourselves and others, deep down inside wants happiness.
This is what we’re looking for, what we’re trying to experience. And we don’t want suffering or pain or unhappiness or any unpleasant experience. So that feeling, that wish lies in our own heart and in the hearts of everybody else. No matter what color their skin is, no matter what language they speak, what kind of food they eat, what kind of clothes they wear, what kind of religion they believe in and so on. So whoever is a human being or a living being, we all feel the same way.
And if we can recognize that, we can help to open up our hearts and feel more love and compassion. So first of all, look into yourself, look into your own heart and see if you can identify that feeling. It’s like a little voice deep down inside that says, I just wanna be happy and I don’t want anything painful. I don’t want any pain, I don’t want any unhappiness or any bad things to happen to me. So see if you can recognize or get in touch with that voice, that feeling deep down inside of you.
Then also feel that it’s it’s completely okay to feel this way. It’s not wrong, it’s not bad, it’s not selfish to wish for happiness and wish for no suffering. It’s okay to feel that way and also we deserve to be happy and we deserve to not suffer. So now think of someone else. Think of a person that you care about, like a family member, a parent or sibling or a child if you are a parent.
Someone you have good feelings for and imagine that person in front of you. And then meditate on how they feel exactly the same way as you. Deep down inside in their heart, they also have this wish to be happy, to be peaceful, to be satisfied, and to not experience any pain or problems or unhappiness. And then also feel the wish for them to fulfill that wish. Feel that they do deserve to be happy and not suffer and wish for them to have happiness and no suffering.
To mind another person. This time someone you don’t have feelings of closeness, of caring towards, someone who towards whom you’re neutral. You you don’t really like them, but you also don’t dislike them. So it could be someone you work with or a neighbor or even one of the people here in this room. Now think of that person.
Imagine that person in front of you. And meditate on how this person also feels exactly the same as you and the person you care about. In their heart, they have the wish to be happy and the wish to not suffer, to not have any unhappiness or problems. And then see if you can feel the wish for them to have the happiness that they want and to be free of the unhappiness and problems that they don’t want. Feel that they deserve that.
Now bring to mind the third person. This time, someone you don’t like. Maybe better not to think of your worst enemy, someone that’s caused you a lot of suffering, but think of someone towards whom your feelings of dislike are more low level or medium level. Imagine that person in front of you. And then contemplate how this person is basically just like you and just like your friends and loved ones.
In their mind, in their heart, there’s a wish to be happy and to not suffer. And understand that that is what drives them to do all the things that they do, even the very negative things or the crazy things that we may judge. But where they’re coming from when they do those negative things is they’re just trying to be happy, trying to avoid suffering. Then see if you can feel the wish for this person to be happy and to not have any suffering or problems. So now open up your mind, open up your heart, and think that just as we and these people in front of us, we’ve we’ve been imagining feel the wish to be happy and to not suffer.
Same is true for all other people and all other beings. All the people in the world, all the people and beings everywhere in the universe, whoever they are, wherever they are, all of them just want to be happy and not suffer. See if you can feel how wonderful it would be if all of us, ourselves and all those other beings could be happy, really genuinely happy and peaceful, and be free of all the different kinds of problems, physical, mental, emotional. So now let’s mentally dedicate the positive energy of doing this meditation and the positive energy that we’ve created throughout this entire weekend workshop, however much time we’ve spent here. So all the things that we’ve done together, listening, thinking about, talking about, discussing, and then meditating on these teachings which were given by the Buddha for the benefit of all beings.
So we’ve generated a lot of positive energy or merit through doing all of these things. And this is the cause of happiness, the cause of spiritual growth, progress along the spiritual path. So let’s mentally share this with others, with all those beings that we’ve been thinking about. So may our positive energy bring about the achievement of happiness, both ordinary temporal happiness, like just having our needs fulfilled and our wishes fulfilled, up to the very highest happiness, the peace and bliss of enlightenment. And may we may it bring about freedom from all suffering, all kinds of physical, mental suffering, as well as the very causes of suffering, which are the negative thoughts, feelings, emotions in our mind, such as greed, hatred, ignorance, and so on, and also karma, negative karma.
So may we all be free from all of these causes of suffering as well as all the different forms of pain and unhappiness and problems and suffering that come from these. May all of those disappear completely from ourselves and everyone else. Okay. So relax.