Sunday Morning Meditation 19 January 2025

Hello, hello, hello. Good morning to you all.

So wonderful to see you all this morning. So many names and faces appearing on my screen. And first time, streaming from what is Maitri cabin, my little practice space at the top of the garden that Manu -I would say Manu and I – but mostly Manu has been putting together. So it’s a very comfortable space and I’m glad to be with you all for the first Sunday session of the year.

Teachings

What I wanted to talk about this morning, I think, as we start off our year, our first sessions of the year, I thought it would be good to just revisit the Buddha’s simple message, the very core of his teaching.

On one occasion, in response to some debate and some speculation, he said, ‘In the past and now I teach suffering and the end of suffering’.

And that is of course, the very heart of what he was sharing. Sharing in a very practical way as well, the nature of our predicament. The unsatisfactoriness that we feel; the craving that we have for praise, for pleasure, for enjoyments; for always wanting to change our circumstances, and the fear and frustration that we have with problems with other people: with receiving blame, with displeasure and so on.

And of course, the whole canon of Buddhist teachings is meant to address this. But very simply, as it was put in the Dhammapada, that the essence of the path is to avoid all harmful behaviour, to cultivate good, and to purify or cleanse one’s mind.

So this is the teaching of the Buddhas

And so to purify or cleanse one’s mind, what does that mean? That I’m impure, that I need to purify something? It’s not quite that. To purify our mind means to clear away the mental afflictions: those disturbances, those twisted mental states of attachment, aversion and ignorance, which is what keeps us caught up in the push and pull of life.

Always wanting life to be different, always wanting it to be better. Particularly our external world. We think that the external world is to blame for our unhappiness. And the external world is the key to finding lasting happiness.

‘If I could just get everything right in my life’, ‘If I could get the right job, the right house, the right partner’, and, ‘I could fix all my problems, the problems with the car, and with the kids, and with my health and this and that, and then I’ll be happy. If I could just get all of that right, then I’ll be happy’.

And so, as humans, we have put all our time and effort there: as a society, but also personally, individually. And we have achieved incredible things as a society, as a species, all in the pursuit of happiness, all in the pursuit of making life easier, making it more convenient, giving us greater freedom in life.

Isn’t that the reason for most of these inventions: the washing machine, the dishwasher, and so on? They’re supposed to give you more freedom, more free time.

In many ways, sure, we do have greater freedom and life is more convenient.

And the general population in the first world countries are wealthier than they’ve ever been, relatively.

But overall, are we happier? Have we solved the problems of our mind: of stress, depression, unhappiness, worry, fear? Or actually, are these increasing at a higher than ever rate?

And the research is clear. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide and levels of happiness and life satisfaction have remained relatively flat over the decades since the second World war.

Despite very real substantial economic and technological progress, things have not changed.

So humans are not happier, so are we missing something? Is something missing? And the Buddhist teaching was clear, and it resonates with various other contemplative traditions. It resonates with modern psychology. Look to your mind. Look within, really fathom and understand your own mind, your own causes of unhappiness, your own causes of happiness, wellbeing. And you’ll see very clearly, we all have a mind. We’re all able to, to investigate and check. And we’ll see that you can be happy even in really difficult situations, even if you’re impoverished. And you definitely can be utterly miserable, even when everything around you is seemingly perfect. As we know, depression, for example, doesn’t discriminate between those who have and those who do not have. Those who are in the best situations and those who are not.

The mind is key. The mind is key.

And for the Buddha, he said, firstly check your behaviour: avoid harming yourself and others. Why? Because, of course, you know it hurts others. But also for ourself, it leaves an ill feeling. It leaves unhappiness in our mind. Selfish behaviour, harming others to get what we want, it doesn’t feel good.

And one of the reasons we could say it doesn’t feel good is because it doesn’t align with human cooperation. If we think in terms of evolutionary reasons, for the species to thrive you needed to cooperate, you needed to share resources. Sure, there were different tribes that would fight against

each other, but to survive within the unit, you needed to cooperate.You needed to share. There needed to be kindness, compassion. You needed to care for each individual.

And so when you do that, when you care for others, and when you act, for the benefit of others and you avoid harming others, it feels good because it aligns with human nature.

So avoid harming, the Buddha says, first of all. And then he says, ‘Then help others do good,Think of the welfare of those around you’. And that does feel good, being of benefit, being a good person. It’s good for your self-esteem. It’s great for your own wellbeing, and it’s great for others as well.

And so, the Dalai Lama has been talking about this for years; compassion and warmheartedness are crucial parts of human happiness. And research is showing the same thing; compassion and warm-heartedness, crucial aspects of human wellbeing and human happiness.

So avoiding harm, doing good.

And then he (the Buddha) said, ‘Purify one’s mind’.

Identify the root causes. Why is it that you get stressed or frustrated about something? Don’t look outside. If traffic was the root cause of your stress, or your manager was the root cause, then it would be a cause for everyone. Everyone would respond in the same way. But we know that’s not true. It has to be about your mind, about your reaction. And that’s good news. because often you can’t do anything about the manager or the traffic or the things around you. The fact that your body is sick and so on; very limited control there,

But your mind, that is something we can do something with. And so it’s about your mind, your reactions. So look, check carefully, identify it, and then eradicate any causes of suffering. Do the work to retrain your mind. It’s this journey of checking our behaviour, first of all; our way of being in the world.

And then working with our mind, training our mind that brings us greater and greater happiness and wellbeing. And eventually this enlightenment that the Buddhist spoke of. It’s not going to be getting more money, being outwardly

successful with a big house and a nice car. It’s all very well, and it may be nicer to cry in a nice car, but in the end, it’s all empty, empty appearances that do very little for your overall wellbeing.

They give you some happiness. Sure, right? You get a nice new something: new car, new phone. First day. Great. How cool is this? Next day it’s still exciting, bit less. Next month, after you’ve shown it to everyone and nobody cares anymore. Next year, now it’s old. Now there’s a new model. Now there’s something I could upgrade to. And so what next?

Whereas inner wellbeing, that never becomes old, that never becomes stale. If you feel genuinely content, genuinely well, genuinely happy. There isn’t a point where you, where you say, I’m just so sick of being happy. You know, give me some suffering here. It’s not like that.

So it’s something I’m sure we’ve all heard. It makes clear sense. It’s practical. It’s easy to see. It’s not a very difficult or advanced idea. However it is something I think we need to be reminded of. And as I often say, we may have heard it before, but we should check, ‘How does my behaviour in day-to-day life tell me about my real understanding of this teaching, of happiness and suffering and looking to those inner causes? How much time, if I was to say 50%, 60%, 80%, 10%, how much time am I spending towards cultivating my inner qualities and focusing there? And how much time am I giving to my outer world?

And of course, we need to work on the outer world. We need to get things to a good baseline. But there should be some balance here.