16. Day 7, afternoon#
It’s the last day, the last talk of our meditation retreat. All week we’ve been discussing the practice of satipatthana or the foundations of mindfulness. We’ve been practicing satipatthana putting it into practice in the present moment, developing our wisdom in the present moment. We’ve been listening to these talks. You’ve been doing the practice here in a secluded environment, in a retreat environment where we’ve been able to note and know, start to see the functioning of our mind, even overcome some emotional states. We’ve all had the ability and the chance to overcome any resistance we may have experienced, overcome any emotional state or some kind of habitual thought pattern.
When we come out of the retreat, sometimes we have big expectations that somehow life is going to be miraculously transformed, we’re going to leave this place as a teflon-surfer and never be touched by anything again. We think we’ll deal skillfully with whatever comes our way. And we can and we will! There just may be some gaps in our awareness, when we leave here. From my own experience, having been in retreats for many years, more than ten years, I found transitioning to the West quite difficult. A lot is thrown at you outside of the retreat environment. Training and practicing is one thing, having to deal with the stress and pressures of modern life is quite another. But the training does work. It works very well! It’s difficult 267 to implement and it’s difficult to make solid progress when we have a very busy life style, but it’s not impossible. And it’s very possible to transform our daily life in a very meaningful way. This teaching can be used in a very meaningful way to change our expectations of life and to also allow us to not get caught up so much in the stories of our mind, get caught up in the stories of our imagination, get caught by craving – that’s what we’re getting caught by. We can’t expect to go on living the way we’ve been living thinking a little bit of dhamma is going to fix everything. We’ll just incorporate some mindfulness and everything will be fine, all our problems will be solved. It rarely works like this! There’s always some adjustment to our lifestyle that’s to be made if we want to make progress on the path. Certain activities to be let go of, certain people to be let go of. Certain things to be developed, certain practices to be done, association with people – these are all things that need to be developed.
How far you want to take this is up to you! You can choose how far and how fast you want to walk the path. This week we’ve been detailing some instructions, not only on the basic practices but on the full development of the path practicing in a very intense fashion. Noting and knowing, letting go, developing our awareness continuously, persistently, overcoming any doubts. Brushing away any boredom or laziness, not reacting to sensual desire or ill will, trying to calm the restless mind.
We’ve been working hard. You’ve all been working very well. Very pleased with the way you’ve been working this week.
Some of you have expressed some interest in wanting to know how we can put this teaching here, which we have been following, into our daily life. I’ll talk about that in a moment. But the path we’ve been explaining here is not impractical. Yes, I realize you have a busy life. We know that you won’t be able to meditate for 17 hours a day every day in your normal daily life. We are aware of that.
So there needs to be some adjustment to the training and to your expectations. We’ve been delivering a very high level meditation technique to you here this week. It leads us to removing gross levels of dukkha and takes us all the way to full and final liberation from samsara. The entire training is contained in this teaching. How far you want to develop that is going to be 268 up to you! It’s your choice.
Given some of you are playing football. It’s your choice. If you like to play football, you can decide «I like to play football in the park with my friends after work». And that’s a level of football you might be comfortable with. If you really like chasing balls, well you can go to the local club. Join the team. Maybe they train once a week and have a game, a social game, a social match on the weekend. You can train at that level if you want to. Bring football into your life a little bit more, a more serious level. If you’re really into it, you can go to a higher league, maybe try out for the state team. Maybe you want to try to get into the national team or the olympic team. Then you have to start training more regularly. You have to start taking care of your diet, you have to start going to the gym for your muscle development, you have to start listening to training advises and training videos. You’ll have to start training! You’ll have to start practicing, practicing with the senior players, developing your skill. You can take it to this level, the state level. If you really want to get going, if you’re really into football, then you can try to get in one of the premier leagues. It depends how much you like football. How far are you willing to train? That’s for each person to be decided for themselves.
It’s up to you! The information has been delivered. The teaching is there. You’re all intelligent enough to be able to listen and to focus on the teaching. How far do you really understand it? Do you know what needs to be done? Has this sunk in? Or, you’re just looking for something that’s going to cure some little problems in your life and then go on as normal. That’s fine too. The Buddha’s teaching is for people who want to practice at all different levels. You don’t have to become a nun, shave your head and live in the forest in a cave. Although you can! I know there’s a few of you thinking about it. Maybe the guys don’t want to become nuns, you can become monks.
You can decide that for yourself. In fact, while we’re talking about it, I encourage you. Be careful for what you wish for. A period of training as a monk or a nun can be very rewarding. It’s not compulsory to become a monk or a nun for the rest of your life. It’s a period of training in the Buddha’s teaching. A time we go in for intensive training. We don’t have to do it for 269 ever. It’s very beneficial.
So we can choose to live very simply by dharmic principals. We can maintain our level of virtue. Difficult sometimes in our social lives. Our social activities are leading us sometimes into different directions. We can also watch our intentions. Be aware of your intentions! Is your mind filled with intentions of renunciation, loving kindness and compassion or are you leaning toward accumulation, getting, achieving, becoming? Have a look at that. Know, one leads to happiness and the other leads to dukkha. Have a look a your intentions. Use wise attention on a daily basis to examine the motivations, the reasons and the causes for what you want to do, for what you are doing.
If you need to make a decision, examine it. What are the criteria on which you are you’re making your decision making? Examine that. Examine your motivations. Try to see things. Well, there’s two choices: this one is beneficial and wholesome to many people and this one is just greedy for myself. You have a choice! Have a think about it! Choose what is wholesome not what is unwholesome, what is positive, what is not negative. Choose something suitable and beneficial. If you’re going through a life transition, if you are turning your life around wondering to make a new start, a new career, something, a new job – when you’re thinking about that, when you’re planning that, use wise attention. Have a look what kind of person you want to be in society. If you need to make a job change or career change, and everything’s open to you and you’re not quite sure, then you can choose something that’s beneficial for others.
Yes, of course, you’ll be able to make a livelihood from it. You can make some money as well. You have to support yourself. Everybody does. The Buddha certainly agreed with that. That’s why right livelihood is the fifth factor of the noble eightfold path. We have to earn our livelihood in a honest and in a way with integrity. Truthfulness. When we need to make decisions about these things, choose a job that’s going to be beneficial for others, not just a job that’s going to get you more money. Money’s not the big criteria here. Money comes and money goes. Sometimes it’s around, sometimes it’s not. Don’t orientate your life towards the collection of money. That’s not what we’re here for. If you do a good job and you’re a reasonable person, 270 money is going to be coming in. That’s fine.
We’ve been saying all week, that the Buddha’s teaching is about removing the sense of self from the picture, erasing the ego taking things as not «mine», not «I», not «myself». We need to understand that selfishness needs to be reduced if suffering is to be reduced. Happy people are the ones that have reduced their sense of self to the point where they’re doing things for others. Not only for money, but they’re doing things because they like to give.
We also need to understand that any situation that we find ourselves in is a presentation of the manifestation of our old karma. Everything is arising through cause and condition. There is nothing that happens by coincidence. Everything is happening for a reason. It has conditions. If there is certain conditions in place, this is what we experience. Don’t appropriate that experience. Stop holding on to it as being «me» or «mine». Brush it off, let it go. Things happen to us. Someone abuses you or is rude to you, don’t hold on to that by hating them – you cause yourself a lot of dukkha. Laugh it off! Let it go! The Buddha said, we should be like the earth if someone speaks rudely to us. The earth doesn’t respond if someone pours dirty liquid on it or abuses it in some way. Make your mind like the earth! Make it sand! Whatever liquid you’re going to pour into it, it’s just going to disappear. Let it run through. It goes in one ear, and out the other. That used to be a term of abuse. It’s great when it does that! Perfect! We don’t have to hold on to any non-sense speech. Somebody says something rude – through it goes. Straight through to the keeper.
So, in our daily lives, we can bring in the dhamma in quite a few ways, many different ways. The most obvious one is to do some sitting meditation. Organize yourself a place and a time to do some sitting meditation. The time of the day is sometimes tricky to organize when we’re social, when we have jobs, when we’re busy, when we’re traveling especially. I suggest you find a time in the morning some time when the demands of the family and friends or the boss is not upon you. Early in the morning – great! Get up half an hour earlier. Set yourself a goal how long you want to sit and do it. Try not to start too long. When you leave here, you’re going to be doing three hours in the morning and three hours in the night, hmmm. Don’t start with such high 271 goals or priorities. Just start with 20 minutes or half an hour. If it’s a good sitting you can sit longer. The way I started sitting was by using an incensestick. It takes about 45 minutes. That’s your effort for the morning. Be aware with this technique, however, you may end up with a little bit of a winker, always looking at the incense, seeing whether it’s finished or not. Try to use your nose, that’s also functioning. You all know that joy. We used to have a clock in this room, I took it out!
So, setting up yourself to have a sitting practice is a good idea. Try to find a place at home. If you have a special place, if you can devote a whole room even better! If you can’t find a room, find a corner of a room. Get a sitting mat and place it there. That’s the place you’re going to meditate. And make a time to do that. Have a little corner. If you like candles and incense, by all means do that. And be strict with it. The most difficult thing of establishing a sitting meditation practice is just actually sitting down. Once you start sitting it’s fine. You’ve crawled down to the floor and folded your legs and sat down. It’s fine. It’s just walking over to the mat and sitting down that’s quite often the difficulty. Find a time. Evenings can be often interrupted by social activities. Meal preparation and such things. Once our schedule gets busted a few times, it’s hard to get it re-established again. We go from seven days a week down to three days a week and then occasionally to a couple of times a month and then to zero. And I’ll see you back here in a year. Come for a retune. Yes, welcome back, people.
So find a place. Even better in our cities, in our towns these days are many sitting groups. You can find them online. Find a meditation group to join. It doesn’t have to be this type of meditation practice. Just as long as they meet together and they sit in silence. You can do your own practice. This has many benefits. The group energy that we’ve been experiencing here this week pulling us all to the hall. You can feel what a good group energy is like. Everybody’s coming. Ok, everyone else is doing it, so I have to do it. I better take myself along. It’s a good incentive. I very much doubt, if I said, ok, meditate so many hours in your room, that you’ll be doing it by yourself. Come and do it as a group. So join a group. You may meet some new and interesting people as well. It’s good to meet some dhamma friends. The venerable Ananda once said to the Buddha: «Venerable sir, the holy life, associ- ating with good friends, paleana mitta, is half of the holy life.» 272 The Buddha said, «Oh, Ananda, do not say so. Do not say so. This holy life is one hundred percent lived with good friends.» So find yourself some good friends that can not only lead you along the path but be your companion upon the path. Introduce it to your existing friends or find some new friends. You’ll find that sitting groups often end up becoming quite social. It’s a bit of meditation, it’s a lot of coffee drinking, an enormous amount of gossip and chatter and we’ll see you next week. And you have some new friends on Facebook. So join a group if you can find one. There are monasteries all over the place. There are meditation centers. There are Vipassana centers. Different styles and different techniques. You’ve learned one of the techniques here. It’s the technique on which all the other techniques are built, the satipatthana. They all come from the same source. Slightly different approach in some ways but pretty much the same.
You can also do meditation around the town. Many of us have to take public transport when we go to work. Ok, maybe chanting is a little bit too much for the train but you can certainly meditate. Find yourself a place, sit down – don’t sit down cross legged on the floor of the train or bus, it may be a little weird – sit on a chair, close your eyes, bring the attention to yourself. Loving kindness practice is really wonderful. Sit in the train with all the ‘happy’ people at 7.30 and see the ‘happiness’ all over their face if they go to work. You can smile, radiate. I warn you about the slow walking meditation. That may be a little bit too much. You may have some authorities coming to visit you. «Are you okay, sir?» Just answer them really slowly, «yeeaahh». So we can do that on the train. We can do that on the bus. When you go to a place with many, many people, a big shopping mall or a big sporting field, a big train station, radiate loving kindness. Imagine all those people. Just send them your love.
Mostly our practice at home will be some form of maintenance practice where we maintain our development. We have some good sittings, some are a bit boring. But basically we are just maintaining as we go along. Developing, strengthening the practice, taking it to the level that we already have, becoming fluent with the meditation. We are practicing. And when we want to go a little bit deeper, when we feel that we have stalled a little bit, then we 273 can come and do a retreat. Seven days like this or longer retreats. 20 days, two months, seven months, three years. As you like. And you can make some rapid development. You will lose all your friends, but you will be quite wise. So do some retreats. Bring them into your life. There are lots of them around the world. Get some dhamma friends. This is very useful for our practice.
Mostly the practice is done, however, not just in half an hour sitting sessions. The real practice is done on a daily basis not on an hourly basis. We all face unwanted situations from time to time. We all lose our balance from time to time. We generate negativity in different ways when we are triggered. And we always look for an external cause. «That is what did it. It was him. It was that. That was the problem.» We start to blame others but the problem is not there. Because the problems is in here, it’s in our own mind and body process. So be prepared to confront your reaction patterns. This is what we do with the dhamma in our daily life. Try to bring and activate your awareness of the present moment into your daily life. 20 minutes or half an hour sitting in the morning is one type of practice. Bring your awareness of the present moment even just 20 or 30 seconds, even just a minute an hour. That’s when we start to get the practice rolling. It is in reminding ourselves – this is another aspect of the word sati, it means remembrance or bringing to memory, recollection. We are reminding ourselves to practice. Regularly. You should be able to bring your yourself into the present moment for at least a few moments every hour. Put aside some time. Find those activities where you find yourself waiting.
A good one to do is when you are having a cup of tea or a cup of coffee. You made the tea, it’s in the cup, it’s too hot to drink, put it on the table and just wait a few minutes. Cool down, bring yourself into the present moment and start noting. See what’s there, see what’s in your mind. Check your attitude. See how things are. Contemplate your reactions. Have you made a mistake? Do you need to apologize? Did you let yourself go some way? Bring yourself back! Overcome any emotional state that you may have for the day. Overcome any issues that you may have with a person. Clear it up. Don’t let it fester in the mind. Festering is what causes a lot of dukkha, especially in relationships with people, especially in the work environment.
Work is one of those strange things you have to go and spend eight, ten 274 or 12 hours with people that we wouldn’t normally hang out with. And yet we have to be with them very closely throughout the day. At times this can cause problems and we bring those problems home into our personal life.
Deal with those problems as they come up. Don’t have a collection of ill will or animosity to different people here and there. Don’t burn any bridges. It makes sure everything is kept comfortable. Make an effort to do that. If you’re not a person that usually forgives and apologizes, if you have an ego that won’t allow you, pride that doesn’t allow you to do that, then start working with that. Start to see that as a dukkha-inducer. This causes dukkha in your life. Free your mind from that. Work with it. Be on the lookout in your daily life for things that you need to work on. We all have our own little things. Some get angry, some get lusty, some get irritated, but then calm down very quickly, some get super angry and then very, very polite, some people get all cravy, lusty and addicted. Craving comes in nice and strong really affecting their mind. Have a look at that stuff. Patience needs to be developed. All these things can be developed. That is what the training is about. You will need to be intelligent and skillful to bring the practice into a busy Western lifestyle. Of course, it’s different if you live here. Things are a bit easier. You don’t have so much to deal with but the mind still reacts. You will have to deal with people, places and things. You still have to become cool towards them under any circumstance or situation.
So have a look at your reactions. Try to work with that. Work with your sitting meditation. Make your awareness more stable. Do your walking meditation. It doesn’t have to be the formal, four stage, super slow walk. You can do it walking your dog around the park. Walking on the beach, walking in the forest, walking to work. You can do all those things. You can even try meditating on the bicycle. I tried it. It’s kind of okay. You can really pay attention to only one foot though as it doesn’t stop. It just keeps going around.
So that’s a few things that we can do, a few orientations. When we go back home, find places, find a group, go to a temple. In various cities around the world, there are ‘conscious-events’, where people meet with other conscious people. You will find many interesting people there. New fellow travelers on the path. Those beings who are seeking evolution, seeking 275 transformation, seeking to remove their defilements. Not those beings who are blinded by following simply the path of sensuality, sensual pleasure. Or simply just chasing money, because that’s all anyone ever told them to do. «The job is to get money.» Off you go. So there is lots of different groups out there.
16.1. The ten pāramī#
In the Buddha’s tradition, there are what is known as the ten pāramī or the 10 perfections. These are also qualities that we can develop in our daily life. Those of you who have been around Thailand a little bit, you’ll have seen that in many of the Buddha halls, there is various paintings around the inside of the hall. Often these paintings are depictions of the previous 10 lives of the Buddha before he became fully enlightened. In each of the 10 lives, before the Buddha was fully enlightened, he perfected a particular mind state. And these have come down to us and are known as the 10 perfections. The 10 things that need to be perfected before one becomes a fully self awakened Buddha.
These are qualities of mind. Behaviors that should be developed. In the northern Buddhist tradition, they have six pāramīta. It’s just a few elements joined together from 10 to 6.
So we can try to develop these pāramī. Take this list of pāramī and put them on the fridge. Observe them. Think about what you’re going to practice today. What am I going to do today?
The first perfection is known as dāna. Dāna means generosity or giving or sharing. It means giving something of oneself. Letting go even. Being generous and helpful both financially and with your time and with your efforts. Try to perfect this. Try to bring this behavior into your life. Be generous! Share! When you have a meal, share it with someone. Try to incline your mind towards giving and sharing. This is a very wholesome quality, which has incredibly wonderful benefits. The results of that giving. The results of that karma hundred fold some say. So become a generous person.
The second pāramī is sīla, or virtue or morality. Try to maintain a level of virtue. Virtuous behavior, virtuous speech. Try to avoid those 276 unwholesome things. Killing and stealing, lying. Don’t take anybody else’s partner or lover. We don’t need to commit adultery. We don’t need to cause difficulties and troubles for other people. Try to avoid intoxicants that lead to heedlessness, that lead to drunk and stupid foolishness. Try to avoid these things. Be well disciplined and well refined in your manners. Clean and pure in your dealings with others. Don’t try to cheat anyone or rip anyone off. Be honest and straightforward. May your thoughts and actions and speech be purified.
The third pāramī is nekkhama or renunciation or letting go. We are developing the state of mind that inclines towards letting go. It’s leaning towards relinquishing. Going forth from the home into the homeless life. Letting go of our addictions. Letting go of our attachments, our collections of things. Moving forward. Clearing things out. Not hoarding. Not holding. Not being tied to stuff. Letting go of things. Not being selfish and possessive of things. Being selfless and disinterested. These things don’t belong to ourselves. Don’t hold on to them. Holding them leads to dukkha. If we hold on to them tightly and they change – dukkha. If they disappear – dukkha. If they get damaged – dukkha. Recognize that the act of holding leads to dukkha. And the act of letting go leads to freedom and release. You’re not going to be happy and free, if you try to collect a whole lot of stuff. If you’re trying to walk into two opposite directions, you won’t get very far!
The fourth pāramī is pañña or wisdom. Here we are talking about perfecting our own knowledge about our mind and body process. Becoming wise as to this thing whatever is going on in it. Physical sensations and feelings, perceptions, thoughts and emotions. All kinds of states of knowing. Pañña, it’s light. It’s the light and the truth. Try to bring more and more wisdom into your life. Activate your awareness in the present moment and see what’s there. Try to develop your wisdom in some way. You can read, you can discuss dhamma. But most importantly you should practice dhamma. You need to experience the teaching for yourself. It’s through experiencing it in an intensive way, that transformation takes place.
The fifth perfection is viriya or energy. We have spoken about that 277 this week. The perfection of energy. Make sure you are vigorous in all your activities and energetic. Be perseverant. Don’t give up. Don’t give up on the commitment that you have made. Finish what you start. Do the job properly. Don’t be slack, don’t be lazy even if it takes extra time. Put in the extra effort. You will be well rewarded. Effort is always rewarded. When we put forth effort, we feel good for ourselves, we know that we’ve done the best that we can do, and others around us, that support us, that help us, they also see it. They see you putting forth effort and energy. So they come to help us as well. There’s many benefits of putting forth effort. Be fearless in the face of dangers. Courageously surmount all obstacles.
The sixth perfection is kanthi. It means patience. Patience is the highest practice. It’s the highest tapas – not the Spanish tapas, but the Pali tapas. Tapas is a spiritual practice that leads to removing of defilements. In India it’s still practiced by some saddhus and rishis. They try to inflict damage onto their body in the idea to develop a lot of dukkha and experiencing a lot of dukkha, they will be able to come to the other side faster. It is a misguided belief that we have a vast store of dukkha to experience and if we experience it quickly and completely in one life, then we break free of our dukkha. That’s not how the Buddha teaches things. Dukkha is conditioned. The Buddha’s teaching is about removing the conditions. When we remove the conditions for the arising of self, self doesn’t arise. When self doesn’t arise, dukkha doesn’t arise. It’s the wonderful thing about stream-entry. When you reach the first path of enlightenment, when we have entered the stream, it cuts off so many causes and conditions. It cuts off identity view, we talked about the other day. Sakaya diti. The path of stream entry cuts off identity view and self no longer arises. When self no longer arises, then the billions of karma that we have done, most of them don’t have a chance to come up. We have cut off the pathway. We’ve blocked the pathway for the arising of old karma. It’s conditioned stuff. We have cut off the sense of self. The sense of self was the thing that those karmas could manifest by. A maximum of seven life times. The Buddha was once sitting with the monks, put his fingernail into this dirt, picked it up 278 and asked: «Monks, what is more. The soil in my fingernail or the soil of this great earth?» «Oh, venerable sir. The soil of this great earth is enormous and massive. It can’t be properly measured and quantified. And the soil in your fingernail is such a trifling, tiny little peace. It hardly even compares.» «So too, monks. So too, those beings who have not yet achieved stream entry, have as much karma as the earth has soil to go. And those beings who have entered the stream, have only this much dukkha to experience.» So I encourage you, to put forth effort and your patience to reach the path of stream entry, the first stage of enlightenment. Very doable in this life. There are people around this country and in other countries, that have done it, that have broken through and become stream-enterers. We all have that opportunity. We are all blessed with the supreme opportunity. There is 34 million tourists coming to Thailand every year. That is two million a month! Here we just get 50! You are 50 out of 2 million. You come here for a reason. Beings are related through their karma. We are related through something. «Through an element is monks, that beings come together and meet together. Beings of virtuous tastes flowing together, meeting together the beings of virtuous tastes. As it has been in the past, as it will be in the future, as it is now in the present.» Beings come together because they share an element. It draws them together like a magnet. They stay for as long as the karma is powerful and then they separate. This is not something that is unusual. This is just the way things are. This is how things are functioning. So be aware of that in the connections that you make with people. Look out for those connections that can be very beneficial for your spiritual development. When you meet someone who seems to be very present, hang out with them for a while. See what they have to share. What they have to offer. Patience. Be able to bear or forbear the wrongs of others. When somebody does something nasty, we can handle that. That is what patience is. It’s not just being patient standing in the queue at the post office or bank, that’s just waiting. That’s our opportunity to practice a little bit of standing meditation. Become aware of the whole standing posture. The feet touching the ground. Instead of pulling out your iPhone starting to swipe and 279 check, seeing what kind of cupcake your best friend had for breakfast, bring your awareness to the present moment. Don’t spend your time on foolish nonsense. Don’t waste your life. It’s precious the time. If you have any time spare, be present. See how it changes your outlook to things. See how it de-stresses you. You may become completely chilled out and move to Koh Phangan permanently.
The seventh perfection is sacca or truth. Truthfulness. Be honest and truthful who you are, what you’re doing. Make sure what you say is truthful. Honest. Don’t hide the truth just to be polite. Develop your integrity in your speech. When you say you’re going to do something, do it. When you say you’re going to do something by a certain time, do it. Sometimes things get in the way but try to adhere to that principal. Try to be an honest, upstanding person. A right kind of person in the community. If you find something, hand it in. Be that person. Don’t be a selfish person. Don’t swerve from the path of truth.
The eighth perfection is adiṭṭhāna, meaning resolution or determination. Be resolute. Don’t let your resolutions become like your New Year’s resolutions. Finished by February, forgotten by March. Try to keep up your practices, the things you do. Have a mind which is resolute and firm and yet soft, gentle and pliable. Set your goal and work towards it. Complete your tasks. Have your principals if you like – just don’t attach to them.
The ninth perfection is mettā or loving kindness. We have been practicing it all week. That special intention that we radiate to other beings wishing them to be happy. Filling our mind with the strong wish and desire for other beings to be happy. It’s a wonderful way to get around. It’s a wonderful way to live. If you have any spare time, incline your mind towards loving kindness. Be friendly and compassionate to others. See what difference it makes in your life. Be friendly and smiling to people that you come across. Show your love, your compassion for other beings.
The tenth pāramī, we talked about this morning. Upekkha, equanimity. The development of equanimity. Calmness, peacefulness, balance. The balanced mind. The mind that is in the center, neither swaying left nor 280 right. Neither getting upset nor reacting with attachment or aversion, with liking or disliking. It’s the mind that can stand still. It’s the big tree during the cyclone or hurricane. It doesn’t get uprooted or thrown on the ground like a bag of toothpicks. It stands solid. This is what equanimity can do for us. We can handle any situation that is going on.
Develop these! These aren’t things that just automatically happen. These are things that we can develop every single day. You can choose any of these perfections and try to develop them. You can choose one a day. You can choose one per week if you like. Really try to focus on developing that. Really bring those qualities of mind into your life. You will find that these qualities are really wonderful for your meditation practice. In fact, here in Thailand, if you start meditating and your results come fast and quickly, the monks and nuns will say you have good pāramī. You have good perfections. These are like little bank accounts that we are trying to fill up. Our practice develops as our perfections are fulfilled. The more perfections that we are doing, the better our meditation is going to be. These are states of mind which orientate us to letting go, to calmness, to stillness, to seeing things as they really are. We can develop these pāramī.
So these ten perfections, we try to develop them in our life. We try to get them going. Develop them as much as you can! So this is a further set of practices that you can do whilst at home. That will be beneficial for your dhamma life. Putting in place a strong foundation of dhamma life, is what we really need for our meditation practice to get deeper and deeper. We can go only so far with a certain lifestyle. After that, if we want to get deeper into the state of peace, we have to start to make some changes. Changes that affect our mind, that affect our outlook on things.
So talking of the 10 perfections, there will be a chance for you to practice the first one tomorrow when you can give a donation. This meditation center here operates on a donation basis. When you’re giving something tomorrow you’re not paying for something, but think of it that you’re making a gift of dhamma for others to receive. Someone else can experience it just like you have. Happily and freely we give a gift of dhamma so that others may experience it. This dāna that we’re doing here is of very profound and very deep meaning. «The gift of dhamma excels all other gifts.»
281 Your opportunity to give a donation of dhamma is an extremely powerful karma. One of this potentiality that you haven’t come across before. The strength and quality of it, karma, is measured by four things. It’s measured by the purity of the giver, the purity of the receiver, the quality of the gift and the intention behind the gift. The purity of the giver, that is you, is great. You just have been meditating for seven days. Your mind has become purified somewhat. At least the hindrances have been suppressed for some period this week. We have been taking the eight precepts which is kind of the maximum for lay people. So we’re developing our sīla. The quality on the virtue of the giver is very high. The people that will receive your donation next month, their sīla will also be very high. The gift that you are giving, the gift of dhamma, well, the Buddha says no other gift excels it. It’s the highest, most profound gift, that you can give to somebody. And then all that remains is your intention. I want you to spend some time tomorrow, making an intention. «May this gift be for the gift of dhamma. May this gift be for other beings to realize the teaching.» Really do intend that. Make a strong intention. I encourage you to even write it on the envelope to put it in concrete terms. In this way your donation, your gift will have the strongest possible benefit that you can imagine. This type of karma is the type of karma that brings us back to find the dhamma again. You have given dhamma. So you’re going to receive the dhamma in return in this life and in the next lives. You will come back and you’ll meet the Buddha’s teaching. You won’t be lost in a sea of samsara swirling in the rounds of rebirth. This type of karmic intention is very powerful. So we hope you take the opportunity to do that. Everyone has their own means. How much you give is up to you. Don’t be stingy. Give with an open heart. Give just enough that it hurts a little bit. Don’t make yourself broke. So have a good think about that tomorrow morning when the opportunity arises. I can’t emphasize this enough. Really incline your mind to giving the gift of dhamma so that other beings may can become enlightened. This is a supreme gift that you can give in your life. It will be extremely beneficial for you.