[Dhamma talk] The Noble Nature

This dhamma talk was taught by Sayadaw U Jotika.

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(I’ve) not (been) speaking English for nine months. So, I find it again a little bit hard to form the words and the sentences. So, imagine you go away to some place and not speak English for nine months. But anyway, I will learn to speak it again fluently in a few weeks. So, when I want to say something, I find it a bit difficult to find proper words and sentences. It doesn’t come readily to my mind. So I have to write down almost everything that I want to say. So, I’ve got a bunch of notes here.

This first one is something I read about the Buddha in a book, in Pali text, and I’ve read that in English too, English translation. And this is what the Buddha said, “Now, I went forth from the house life into homelessness to seek what is good”. And this word “good” in English translation. In Pali it is “kusala”. It could be translated as “wholesome” and also as “skillful”. Good, wholesome, skillful. So, he said, “Now I went forth from the house life into homelessness to seek what is good…”, what is wholesome, what is skillful, “seeking the supreme state of sublime peace”. So, when we think about good, what are we thinking of? When we think of good, bad, right, wrong, wholesome, unwholesome, we are thinking of values. We need values to live. So, Buddha went forth to find out for himself what is wholesome, what is good.

And when I first read this, in the beginning, I just skipped. I didn’t notice the importance of this sentence, this expression of the Buddha. But later, slowly, as I grew up and read it again, I thought this is very important. We don’t live by bread alone. We need values to live. That makes us human. Animals don’t think about values. I don’t think they think about values. They don’t have that intelligence to think of values. But we human beings are very special. So, we need to think of values. What are we living for? What is good? What is bad? What is right and what is wrong? What is proper and what is not proper? What is skillful and what is not skillful? What is wholesome and what is not wholesome? This is… This question and the answer, the right answer, makes us human. Otherwise, we will be no different, no different from animals. So, this is very important. So, why are you here today? And why am I here today? Why do we get together here? Why do we have this Buddhist society of Victoria? Just to find out what is wholesome and what is not wholesome, what is proper and what is not proper, what is good and what is bad, what is skillful and what is not skillful. And when we know the answer, we live according to our understanding of that values, of those values. So, that is why we are here.

And here is a question for you, which I ask the same this same question on Thursday. Do you sometimes feel like going away to a quiet place? Do you sometimes feel that urge or need to go away to a very quiet place? And live there for some time, very simple and quiet way of life. And think deeply about your life, about your values and your priorities. Taking account of your life, what you have done for so many years until now. What have I done? What have I lived for? Taking account of your life to find a clear direction. From taking account, then you see where am I going? Where should I go? What is my direction? Do I have a direction? Or am I just going round and round, and ups and downs, getting nowhere. So, to find a clear direction. Because to be lost is so confusing, so terrifying to be lost. I don’t know where I am and I don’t know where I am going and I don’t know where to go. That is very terrifying, actually. Very painful.

So, to find out a clear direction, to find out what you really want to be. What do I want to be? What kind of a person do I want to be? How you really want to live? We happen to be living in a situation. We didn’t really choose to live this way. Most of us didn’t really choose to live this way. It happened to us. For most of us, life happened. We don’t create our life. It happens. But we have the power to choose the way we want to live and to create that life. It is not easy, but it can. It can be done. So, to find out what you really want to be, how you really want to live, and to find out your place and your work in this life. Actually, your work is your place. What you do for yourself and for the humanity, for the whole world, for all beings, that’s your work and that’s your place. And what is your work and what is your place in this world, in this life? Why are you in this life? Why are you here in this life? Is there a purpose or is it just pure chance with no purpose? Do you feel that your life has a purpose? And if you do, you are very fortunate. So, that’s the call of your noble nature. If you feel like you want to go and reflect very deeply how you want to live, what you want to do, that’s the call, your nature, your noble nature is calling you. Come, come. So when I was very young. Oh, let me proceed.

Do you respect that call? Every once a while now and then, we feel that call very strongly, but many times we just ignore that. We think, oh, this is not important. I have to be with my friends and my family. I have to be doing what others are doing. It’s okay to be with your friends and family, but you need your own time sometimes to think for yourself, to find your own direction. In many ways, we are being pushed. We don’t really choose what we want to do. We are pushed or influenced to do what we are doing and sometimes it’s just a habit. So, do you respect that call? Sometimes it’s very weak. Sometimes it doesn’t… it’s not very clear, but you are just not happy about the way things are. I am not happy the way things are. What’s wrong with me? Actually, when you feel not happy the way things are, it’s right. You are not wrong. You are right. It’s the calling. It’s your inner nature, inner noble nature telling you that this is not the proper way to live. There’s a better way to be a human being. It is calling you. And if you resist or ignore that call, you feel very unhappy. So, do you respect that call? Do you answer that call? Do you feel that it is calling you? Your noble heart, your noble nature is calling.

And in that first passage that I read just now to you, Buddha heard that call and he answered that call. That’s why he became the Buddha. He wanted to know what is wholesome. He wanted to know what is good. He wanted to know what is skillful for himself, not just as a knowledge, not just listening to another person, telling him what is good, what is wholesome, and what is skillful. He wanted to find out for himself, and that’s the important point. Many people have told you what is good, what is skillful, what is wholesome. We have enough knowledge of that, but that didn’t really have a big effect on our life. We have to find out and live with it. Then only it will have some effect on our life. So, I have heard a Chinese saying which says that, “What you hear, you forget. What you see, you remember. And what you do, you know”. You know about something by doing it, not just by listening to it.

So, when I was young, I read a book… I always tell you about what books I’ve read. I read many books by Jack London, the author, Jack London. Some of you, I think, have read his books. And I have read his biography also, “Sailor on horseback”. But his one famous book, one most famous book, can you tell me? Can anybody tell me his…? It was made into a film also. Pardon me! Right? That’s right. Thank you very much. So, we are together here. Somebody knows what I’m talking about. “The call of the wild”. It’s about a dog. Actually, it was a tame dog. Somebody owned the dog, and somebody else stole the dog, took away, took away into the wilderness where they were looking for gold, a camp, gold mining camp. And then the man who took this dog away also died. And the dog became ownerless with no master. So, he just went wild. And it was a very wonderful story, wonderful story. “The call of the wild”. This dog became wild again, hunted in the forest, free. And he became the leader of the pack. So, when I read that book, I read it again and again. Because whenever I read the book, I read it again and again. Because the first reading, from the first reading, I couldn’t understand very well. But as I read it again and again, I understood the call of the wild. How it feels this little dog he wanted to be free. Roam in the forest, hunt for his own food, not wait for somebody to come and feed him. That was wonderful feeling I thought. It was risky. It was hard. But it was his nature to be wild. I am talking of a dog as I said, it is a person, his nature to be wild. And then later, slowly and slowly, when I reflect on this call, I thought of the call of the noble nature. For us human beings, it’s not the call of the wild. It’s the call of our noble nature. Do we feel it? Do we hear it? Do we heed that call? Do we answer that call? It’s very, very important.

So, if you don’t hear that call, I believe most of you or even all of you hear that call. That’s why you’re here. Those who don’t hear that call, or today, Sunday, they have a good time going around doing many things, enjoying. So, if you go and live in a very quiet place, very simple life, so that you don’t you don’t spend too much time that will disturb your mind, like not watching television or videos or not working with computers, reading anything. And let your mind calm down, quiet and silent. You feel that call deep in your heart very, very strongly. Very strongly. And once you feel that call, and once you answer that call and live it afterwards, you won’t be able to live without it. Many of my friends told me… This time, also some of my friends in Burma who are meditating wholeheartedly every day. They are also working, but they also were meditating every day wholeheartedly, whenever they get an opportunity, a chance, 5 minutes or 10 minutes. They tried to get in touch with their body, and they tried to get in touch with the mind. To be in touch with the body and mind is very important. So, some of them are 2 or 3 persons made some very big progress.

One of them made a big breakthrough. And this person has her own business now. She’s a young woman of about 30. And since she was very young, she was very different from other people. She didn’t get involved in too many things. She didn’t spend too much money or time buying beautiful clothes or watching movies and TVs. Too much time. So, she started meditating since she was about 17 or 18. So, slow progress, she was making slow progress. And last year she made a very big progress, a very big breakthrough. And since then, her business got better. Surprising. Why is that? Because she’s very honest, very fair. She wants to help people. So, since her business got better and better, she she has to spend more time talking with more people, planning and even counting a lot of money. You make money. You have to count how much you have and make it into packets of 100,000, 100,000 like that. So, I saw her counting money. Every evening, she would sit down and count money, big pile of money. She said, “When I was young, I dream of that. I dream of one day becoming rich and counting big notes, not small notes, counting big notes, packing them”. She said, “I dream of doing that. Now, my dream has come true. But I am spending so much time working, working, working for money and I can’t go on doing that. I don’t have enough time to meditate”. So, she is now planning to have some more assistance. So that, they will take much of her work and she will have more time to meditate. She said, “I cannot live without being in touch with my heart, without in touch with my noble nature”. And doing a business, if you have the right attitude, it’s noble also. You do your business to help people and you make some profit. The more you help other people, the more profit you make. Although she makes a small percentage of profit, because the volume is very big, overall, she made a lot of money.

And another is a doctor, another man who made some big progress is a doctor. He practiced medicine for a few years, and then later he got into business and made some money, quite a lot of money. And then later he became a journalist. He stopped doing business. Although he had a medical degree, he is not practicing medicine. He’s not doing any business anymore. He is now writing. He is expressing his thoughts. He came and lived with me for four months as a monk, a temporary monk, and meditated for four months. He did very well. He got very close to a breakthrough point and he stopped there. He said, “I know what will happen if I go on”. At that time he was not married, but he had planned to marry. He said, “I promised that woman that I’ll marry her. So, I must go now and fulfill my promise”. Really, he said, “I told, I will tell that woman” that he loves. He said, “I will tell her that one day I will take robes again”. So, he went back and he kept his promise. He married that woman and now he has a young daughter, very lovely, very intelligent daughter. And he is now writing articles, very creative, very creative, becoming very successful in writing too. Why did he give up his business? He was making quite good money. Because of his calling. His work, he said, in this life is to write, to communicate to people what he knows. So, this is another kind of answering your calling. And he is a good meditator. He meditates every day, a very honest man. And those who knows him respect him very much. Even very older people in high positions respect him very much. They know he is authentic. They know he is real. They know he is doing what he is doing wholeheartedly.

So, listen to your call. These people, they have listened to their call, to the call of their noble heart. And they are doing what their heart suggests them or leads them. They let the noble nature lead them. This is very important point. Who is leading you? If anybody outside leading you, someday you will be led astray. But get deep in touch with your noble nature, you will not do anything wrong. If you can’t go away for a few days or a few months, don’t worry. If it’s not possible for you now, it will be possible in the future. But right now, make time to be alone, to meditate a few minutes every morning, when it is quiet and peaceful. Get up early in the morning and meditate. Get deeply in touch with your heart, with your noble nature. Be mindful. Pay attention to the body, to your body, and to your mind, and increase it gradually to at least 30 minutes a day. And then try to be mindful whenever and wherever you remember to be mindful. It is natural to be forgetful too. People forget, to get involved, they get stuck in many things. So, there is something noble in your heart without which your life is valueless and meaningless. Find it and live it. That is the most important thing for us to do. Even when you learn the teachings of the Buddha, unless it goes right into your heart and comes out again, it will be just knowledge. But if you live it, then it becomes wisdom, not just knowledge. Living teaching, living knowledge.

So, for animals, it’s the call of the wild. But for us, human beings, it’s the call of the noble heart. That’s the way I put it. If you have better words to say, find your own expression for it. Have faith in your nobility. Have faith in your nobility, not just faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, in your nobility. So, when you meditate and you get in touch with your body and mental process, what happens? What do you see? In the beginning, mostly when you watch your thoughts, what do you see? What kind of thoughts coming most of the time? “I want this”. “I want that”. “I don’t like this, I hate that”. So, usually this happens to us. This has been happening to us since we were very young. For so many years that it becomes a habit. Negative thoughts becomes a habit. So, one person said, “Self knowledge is no good news”. I don’t remember who said that, but he said it so well. “Self knowledge is no good news”. But when you watch your mind and see these negative thoughts, don’t resist, don’t criticize, don’t judge, don’t tell yourself that, “Oh, I’m such a bad person”. It’s quite natural. You don’t… You can’t go around. You have to go through. So, by paying attention to all these greedy thoughts and angry thoughts, you learn from these thoughts. You know how these thoughts influence your mind and body. You know how these thoughts influence your behavior, even it shapes your future also. Many of my friends, I noticed them when they meditate and become very calm and peaceful, their facial expression totally changed. And after a while, even when they are not really meditating, the way they live their life changed.

So, most people are afraid of finding out the reality of themselves. One person in America… I taught her to meditate and to pay attention to her body and mind. She said, “I want to forget about myself. I don’t want to think about myself”. And I asked her why. She said, “I’m so bad. My thoughts are always negative. I want to watch or read something so that I can forget. I can get deeply absorbed into my reading, so that I won’t think about myself”. So, this is also very usual and natural. We resist self knowledge. But if we go on resisting self knowledge, we will not really find out who we are or what we are. And we cannot overcome this negativity and we cannot develop the positive side of ourselves. So, because that knowledge, self-awareness, includes knowledge of our dark side. Knowledge of our dark side is very important. The knowledge of selfishness, knowledge of conceit, envy, jealousy and knowledge of laziness too. We don’t take it so seriously, laziness. Because if we are lazy, we cannot develop our good qualities. Because to develop our good qualities, we need to work consistently, persistently, all the time. In the beginning, it’s hard work.

So, once you know, once you are in touch with your mind and see what’s going on, clearly it demands you. So, it is demanding. Once you see it very clearly, you change. You change for the better. You try your best to change. So, mindfulness demands honesty. If you are not honest, you cannot be mindful. Because you will distort what you see. You will cover it up. You will turn away. So, mindfulness demands honesty. Therefore, it takes great courage to know ourselves as we truly are. Great courage to ask yourself, “Am I courageous?” “Do I have enough courage to really see what is going on in my mind? What is going on in my life”. But unless we see as we truly are, we cannot move forward. To move forward, to make any kind of spiritual progress, we need to pay attention. We have to be mindful, and we should see whatever is happening in our body or in our mind with courage and honesty. Sometimes, we feel ashamed of our defects, our misconduct. We feel ashamed of our defilements, of our shortcomings. So, we justify, again and again, “Oh, it’s okay. Everybody is doing that. What’s wrong?” Some people, they just justify. But watch that justification. If you justify again and again, what does that mean? Guilty. Yes, you know it’s not the right thing to do. So, too much justification is a sign that you already know it’s not the right thing to do. But you go on justifying. And it’s a waste of so much time and so much of your energy. So much of your life you waste.

So, watch your mind and see what it’s telling you. Your noble nature is always telling you that, “No, this is not right”. You are justifying again and again that shows that you know, you know it’s not the right thing to do. Why don’t you have the courage to accept it first. Even though you can’t change it immediately, first you need to accept it as a fact. “Yes, I am conceited. Yes, I am too proud. Yes, I am deceptive. I am deceiving myself and other people too. Yes, I know I am not living from what my noble nature is telling me”. So, first accept it as a truth without distorting it. So, we try to forget ourselves or we distort what we see. We become dishonest. So, when you become dishonest, no spiritual progress anymore. So, just now we have chanted [in Pali] sutta or “Let them be able and upright”. And this word “upright” here in Pali means honesty, honest, very honest. And here another translation is called “straightforward”. It’s not straightforward in communicating to other people. It’s straightforward in communicating yourself, in telling yourself what you have seen. This is it. No justification. So these two words, upright and straightforward, actually means honest and very honest. So, honest to yourself. So, we are stuck in dishonesty.

For a long, long time, many months, maybe for a few years, I was trying to find something to live. And then I came to one conclusion, honesty is my religion. I will be honest. I will try my best to be honest. And I found it very hard when I became honest. My relationship with my parents became very stormy. With my friends also… Because if you tell lies, “Well, relationships are very good”. But if you tell the truth, they won’t accept you, they reject you, they criticize you, they call you bad names. Then, they call me communist. They rejected me. My parents rejected me. My friends rejected me. My teachers also. They always say, I am, I’m wrong. My thinking is wrong. So, it was very painful experience, actually. But anyway, that was what my heart told me to do. And I have no choice. If you listen to your heart, you have no choice. I can give up anything else, but I will follow my heart’s dictate. So, to be honest, it is my religion. I didn’t believe in what the Buddha taught, but I like most of what he taught. And I couldn’t understand most of what he taught, which is quite natural. So, if you are dishonest, you are stuck. But if you are honest, then you can make real progress, real progress. So, we are afraid to give up our habits. We don’t want to change our way of life. But when you see very clearly what is happening in your body and mind, what is happening in your life, it demands to change and it is very scary. The change is scary.

So, here’s a question. I don’t know why I put it down here. One person asked me, “Can I use drugs and still be a good meditator?” My honest answer is No. Why do you want to use drugs and still you want to meditate? Why do you meditate and why do you use drugs? And some people say it’s okay. Drugs helps you to become a good meditator. You can become enlightened, if you use drugs. And I think this is dishonesty, very straightforward. So, never try to deceive yourself. Don’t try to twist the teaching of the Buddha and never mind the teaching of the Buddha, look deep into your heart. What are you doing? You are justifying your behavior. So, if you are using drugs and telling yourself that, “Yes, I am using drugs, but I know it won’t help in my spiritual progress”, that is honesty. I like that very much.

So, any dependency makes you weak will. Any dependency on anything or (on) any person makes you weak will. And to make progress in spiritual spiritual practice, you need a very strong will. Even though you make mistakes, you correct your mistake and you go on and on. You go on and on. It’s a hard life, actually. But once you do it, you enjoy it very much. You have so much vitality. The willingness to know the truth at all costs is a necessity to live a spiritual way of life. Courage to accept the truth about yourself, willingness to change is a necessity. No change, no growth. No change means no growth. How can there be a growth without a change?

And also I’ve heard some people say that you don’t need to keep the precepts. If you can’t keep the precepts, it is okay for a while. Because you are trying, if you are trying. But understand that to make any spiritual progress, it is a necessity to keep the precepts. Again, it is a necessity. So, to practice this Eightfold Noble Path, you have to practice all eight, not just 1 or 2. But mindfulness is the heart of all eight. When you become more and more mindful, you become more and more honest. Then you are more able to keep the precepts. You are more able to have the right livelihood. When you are more mindful then your mind is becoming… your mind becomes calmer, more concentrated. When you are more mindful, you have more energy, you have right effort. Then, you develop seeing clearly, right view, then right thinking. So, be very honest and try to practice all eight. Eightfold, which means the eight practices make one whole. It’s like a circle divided into eight parts. If you leave out some part, it’s not a whole. Something is missing. So, when you are mindful of what’s going on in your mind and body, you see what really is. And you say, “This is happening”, which means you accept. You don’t resist, you don’t twist. You don’t distort. “This is happening”. When there is greed, you say, “This is greed”. When there is lust, you say, “This is lust”. When there is deception in your mind, you say, “This is deception”. No justification, no twisting. So, you accept it. You don’t distort it. You don’t hide it, which means you are honest to yourself.

So, unless you are honest to yourself, you cannot be honest to others. There is no way you can be honest with other people, if you deceive yourself. So, that honesty makes you real and authentic. Honesty makes you real and authentic. Once I read some things from the diary of Leo Tolstoy. You know, everybody knows Leo Tolstoy? He was very famous. In his 80s, very old, beyond 80 years old, he wrote in his diary, “I want to live my life honestly”. In his diary, he wrote that. And as much as I know about himself, he was a very… He did everything unwholesome when he was young. But after a while, he learned from the mistake, and he stopped doing all those things, and he became a very spiritual person. Although he was not a Buddhist, I respect him very much for that. And he tried to live his life with a lot of generosity, a lot of kindness, a lot of honesty. But in his 80s, he wrote in his diary, “I want to live with honesty”. What did he mean? He still found himself not honest enough. So, to live a real, authentic life is much more satisfying, much more satisfying. You can feel that, “I am real. I am not a fake. I am not an actor”. So, without honesty, nothing is real.

So, when you become more mindful, you become more creative. And that will help you solve a lot of your difficulties in your life. Mindfulness will teach you and find you a way to solve your difficulties. You solve your problems creatively. Because you are mindful, you’re patient also. You see from many directions. When something happens, you look around, you look from many directions and understand the situation completely. And without any bias, you ask the question, “What is the best thing to do now?” And you find the answer. If you are honest, it’s not difficult to find an answer. Many of my friends told me, “If you’re honest, everything becomes much easier”. So, you don’t follow any formula blindly. When you become more mindful, you don’t follow any formula. Every situation is a unique situation. Every relationship is a unique relationship. So, you look very deeply into that and do what is the best in that situation, at that moment. So, you become… You live creatively. You become skillful in living. And this skillful in living is very important. We are skillful in doing many things. Nowadays, most people are becoming very skillful in using computers. Because they spend so much time, so many hours a day using computers. So, are we skillful in living? So, when you have become skillful in living, then you are less influenced by other people and circumstances. You are less influenced.

Be authentic is to be virtuous. To be honest, to be real, to be authentic is to be virtuous. And to be real is to be courageous. And to be courageous is to be powerful. Do we want to be powerful? Do we feel power inside? Or do you feel powerless? Do you feel driven or pushed around by circumstances, by people? Or do you feel that I am doing something because I like doing it and I choose doing it, and I’m doing what I love doing it. Can you say that? Or do you say, “Well, I can’t help it. They demand me to do this or that, or the circumstances are so bad that I have no choice”. If you say that, then you have no power. You feel powerless. And it is very painful to be powerless, to feel powerless. So, when you become more mindful, you become more and more whole, whole, not fragmented. So, to grow toward wholeness is the greatest joy in life. The more mindful you become, the more you become whole. So whole, wholesome, they are similar in meaning. They are related words and whole, wholesome and health and healing all are related in meaning. If you… I’m not familiar with Latin language, but I have read in a few books, it says that health and whole have the same Latin root. So, if any of you can find that out in any Latin dictionary, I really appreciate that. If you can tell me.

Health and whole is related. To be healthy means to be whole, which makes sense. If you don’t feel whole, how can you feel healthy. If part of you is missing, how can you say you are healthy? So, to become whole, you need to be in touch with all aspects of your mind: Good and bad, wholesome and unwholesome. Understand it deeply and accept it as a fact. And then gradually you will become. So, because you are more mindful, more aware, there’s stability in your mind. When you become more mindful, there is more stability in your mind, mentally stable. So, I have heard… I hear so much about mental instability these days. It’s dangerous. It’s becoming dangerous, I think. There are many people who are not mentally stable. I have great compassion for them and I am willing to help them in any way I can. I am not being unkind to them. But I want to say that this instability is dangerous. Any kind of instability. So, mindfulness stabilizes the mind. This mindfulness has a stabilizing factor. If you are too excited because you are happy, when you pay attention to that excited state of mind, it becomes calm again. You don’t get so excited. And when you are too excited because you are angry, you pay attention to that anger, to that feeling, to that thought, it will calm down again. So, mindfulness has a stabilizing power. So the more mindful you become, the more stable you are, which is very important. Especially, it is very important to develop your spirituality. So, you have balance, you have stability. Your mind becomes stable. You have emotional stability.

That stability is a kind of strength again. When you are stable, you feel strong. Nothing can move you, because you are so stable, like a rocky mountain, stable and strong. So, I am reading a book, “Stand like a mountain, flow like water”. Stand like a mountain. So, mindfulness can help you do that. You can stand like a mountain. And you can flow like water, both. You become strong inside. You develop inner strength by being mindful all the time. That inner strength helps you do all that you need to do. When you want to do something really important and big, you need a lot of strength. You need a lot of energy. It helps you go through your difficulties and it helps you become wiser and stronger. When you become more mindful, you become more in touch with all aspects of your mind and body. When you become more mindful, you become less biased. You become more honest. You see your mental state without much distortion. You see things as they really are. So, you don’t react unwisely so much. So, when you become more mindful, you become wiser. So, there is less unwise reaction. There is more wise response. Therefore, you make less mistakes. Less mistakes means less suffering, less pain, less unhappiness, less regrets, and better relationships.

So, all of you can become whole and healthy. We have that potential. The more mindful you become, the more healthy you become, bodily, mentally, and spiritually too. The more mindful you become, the more wholesome you become. And because mindfulness itself is wholesome, healthy. So, the more you become mindful, the more you become whole. So, moving toward wholeness, you need to be mindful. Most of us are divided, fragmented, more or less. So, I’ve read another book and it is called “The Divided Mind”. The Divided Mind, very interesting book. Can you guess who wrote that book? Anybody read that book? Written by Doctor Ronald David Laing, a very prominent psychiatrist. He lives in England. He lived in England, I think. Very open minded doctor. So, you see… the title of the book is The Divided Self, I think. I don’t remember exactly The Divided Mind or The Divided Self. I think it’s The Divided Mind. Well anyway… We can become whole by paying attention to all aspects of our mental states. So, most of our problems are rooted in our spiritual poverty. I hear so many problems all over the world. And when I look deeply into the source of the problem, I found that the source of the problem is spiritual poverty. We are not developing our noble nature. That is why we are creating problems and trying to solve it. How can we solve the problem if we go on creating it? So, we must try to become spiritually rich, not just materially rich. So, prosperity does not mean only material prosperity. It also means spiritual prosperity. So, the first big step in our practice is to become mindful and to become real. That’s the first big step we should take: To be mindful and to be real. Then we can take some other steps.

So, to conclude my talk today, here’s a poem. Have you ever seen a mountain lake at sunrise? A mountain lake at sunrise. Imagine yourself deep in the mountains, very high, like in Himalayas and snow capped mountains, snow melting slowly filling the lake. And it’s very calm and quiet. The surface of the lake is just like mirror. Identify yourself as that mountain and that lake. You are the mountain and you are the lake. So, have you ever seen a mountain lake at sunrise, with water so deep it resonates in a piece. It reflects the beauty all around it. It filters the sun’s light and invites profound self-reflection. I have seen a mountain lake at sunrise. There is no other time that is better. The only thing more powerful than the sight is the quietness. Very beautiful image and it is all about yourself. This poem is not talking really about the mountain and the lake and the sunrise. It’s all about you and me.

Viet Hung | A Happiness pursuer | Author of The Happiness Journal, Tản mạn về Hạnh phúc and NGẪM CAFÉ
Sách tôi dịch: Trái tim thiền Phật giáo, Thiền cho người mới bắt đầu, Nổi loạn và tự do, Bài chú giải Kinh Mangala Sutta, Sức mạnh của sự hoài nghi và thiền chánh niệm (Vipassana), Những nguyên lý để sống hạnh phúc, Chúng ta đang sống vì điều gì?, Sự cho đi và Tình thương yêu, “Lấy tâm mình làm bạn của chính mình”, Cảm xúc, Thiền với sự hình dung, Căng thẳng
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