If one wants to develop Karuna, then suppose that when you are sitting there is physical pain, there is suffering in yourself. So rather than continue to suffer as a result of that physical or mental pain, you try to do something about it, you learn to be friendly in relation to it, you learn to let go of it. This would be practising Karuna in relation to meditation.
And when you do that you can immediately experience sympathetic joy and feel happy: very nice, joy instead of suffering; I tried to do something about it and now there is a change taking place. So you can experience joy about the pain, happiness about it. Then you can experience the last quality, realising maybe I should not hold on to this joy, I should have a non-reactive mind to the joy. So you see how in one particular situation, a simple situation, one can develop Metta, Karuna, Mudita, and Uppekha, all four qualities.
The First Noble Truth is the fact of suffering. How is suffering considered a Noble Truth? What is noble in suffering?
It is noble because when we suffer we can reflect on what is causing the suffering. So when you suffer don’t see it as something negative, see it as a Noble Truth.
But what is more important is the Second Noble Truth. It leads one to find out what is causing the suffering, or who is causing the suffering. Now this is a very difficult teaching for us to realise: that we are creating the suffering. It is very easy for us to hold others responsible for our suffering. Then we don’t have to do anything about our suffering, the others have to do something about it. So if you can see the Second Noble Truth very clearly, the Third and the Fourth just follow from that.
Sometimes I define meditation as discovering the medicine for the sickness we have created ourselves.
If you learn to handle thoughts, work with thoughts, you develop mastery over emotions. Another thing is that when you have an emotion it is only thoughts that make it bigger. They can really blow up the emotion you are having.
An interesting aspect is how we create stories out of our thoughts and we don’t realise that we create the stories but we become victims of the stories that we create ourselves. Sometimes the stories can even become films, movies in our own mind from what has happened in the past and about what is going to happen in the future. We are sometimes creating very destructive films, movies, and we are the director, we are the producer, we are the actor, and we are the victim, all in that drama. I will give an example of what such a story is and how the story can become a kind of reality at that moment.
This is a story from the Buddhist literature. So there was a young monk who wanted to give up his robes. He hadn’t told his chief monk about his plans but one day the chief monk was having a headache, so he told this young monk to give him a massage, to rub some oil on his head. So while massaging his head the young monk was thinking: Now, maybe in a month or two I will be giving up my robes. And after I give up my robes, maybe I will find a job, and when I find a job I will get some money, and when I find enough money maybe I will find a girl and get married to this girl. But sometimes these wives can be impossible people and if my wife becomes difficult or impossible, I’ll give her a good beating. And he beat the old monk on his head!
We are laughing, but this is what we also do with our thoughts. So it shows that these thoughts can be so compelling, and that they can create fantasies for us and we take the fantasy as real. So there is a connection, a relationship, between the stories and emotions. In the Dhamma there is a very interesting Pali word to describe this process which takes place in our mind: papanca. What it means is constructing, manufacturing, concocting, projecting, all these things we do with our thoughts, and it is said there is a direct relationship between concepts and suffering. This is how our suffering is created.
As we all know, from the time that we wake up in the morning up to the time that we go to sleep there are continuous thoughts going through our mind which never stop. If you become aware, if you become mindful of the thoughts that go through your mind, then you’ll realise that most of the time the way we use thoughts is in this habit of giving plusses and minuses. So when you see this clearly, then the power that we have given to them may become less.
Then you realise that sometimes it is just an innocent thought that comes: Maybe the other person doesn’t like me; maybe the other person is giving me minuses; maybe the other person thinks that I’m silly or ridiculous, and so on. So if you are mindful you’ll realise it is just a thought that you’re having; who knows whether that thought corresponds to any reality? There is a strong imaginary aspect in our thoughts. This imaginary aspect and the reality are two different things. With awareness, with mindfulness, exploring, investigating, this may become clear to us and this will help us to work with and handle such thoughts, and their power will become less.
When we get angry unexpectedly, what do we do? The first suggestion is: Don’t be surprised! Because you are still practising, you are not enlightened, so don’t be disappointed, don’t feel guilty, don’t get angry with yourself because you got angry. This is very important. It can happen to meditators, especially when we take to meditation, that we form an image: I am a meditator now. I am practising loving-kindness. This is how I should behave. It is good to have an ideal but an ideal is one thing, reality is another.
So at that moment when you have not been aware and you got angry, what you can do is just be with that anger without feeling bad: no need to give yourself a minus. Please realise that. It is very important.
But what has to be done is after you recover from that anger, maybe after five minutes, maybe after ten minutes, maybe after thirty minutes, it doesn’t matter even if on the following day, when you have recovered then you reflect on that anger. And this kind of reflection has to be done in a very friendly, gentle way. Just to ask the question: What really happened to me? So you take your mind backwards and try to see the incident objectively, and also see the different aspects of that incident. So our anger becomes the object of meditation. In this way our shortcomings, our failures, become learning experiences.
This feeling of warmth is very important because now human beings are for various reasons becoming more and more cold. With mechanisation human beings are becoming more and more like machines, and one aspect of this is that they lack feelings. So having this warmth, having feelings for other people and for ourselves, is something very important, very beautiful.
Another point which might be relevant to some people is that loving-kindness can develop a sense of self-confidence.
We lose self-confidence when we consider ourselves as unsuccessful, worthless, useless, always failing. So it is a very negative self-image we have of ourselves, mostly as failures.
With more and more loving-kindness, especially towards ourselves, we can see how it works: we can see our own potentialities and we can become more and more self-reliant, and this can give us a lot of self-confidence in the sense that we can handle whatever arises. So it is not that difficulties will not arise; anger will arise, problems will arise, difficulties will arise, but you have the confidence if they arise: I know how to handle them, I know what to do.
When we die, we have a last chance to become enlightened. Because at the moment of death, if you can practise meditation, if you can really practise conscious dying, that will give us a great opportunity to free ourselves, so to create that opportunity is part of the practice.
There is a very interesting book from the Tibetan tradition: The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It shows how your experience at the time of death is determined by the way you have lived. So in simple terms, as I understand it, at that moment our emotions, especially unpleasant emotions, can surface and they can take many forms. At that moment we don’t recognise that they are simply emotions but as they manifest themselves externally we react to these external forms that we see.
So you see how this is related to meditation. How it is important to recognise how our mind works, how it works with our emotions, to recognise them. And what is interesting is, it is said that enlightenment also manifests itself and we have to recognise it, and if you don’t recognise it your last chance is lost.
So in practical terms, in our meditation we also should recognise our positive states of mind, just to know that they are there. When you know them, when you recognise them, then when they manifest themselves you just know that it is the free mind, the enlightened mind that is manifesting in this way.
So it shows clearly that when you have awareness, when you are conscious at the time of dying, you can know all these things, recognise these things, and we have a last chance to free ourselves from what is happening.
A very important quality in relation to loving-kindness is this quality of feeling grateful. Before coming here I spent some time in India and while I was in the place where the Buddha became enlightened I was reflecting on what the Buddha did after his enlightenment. According to the tradition, after he became enlightened he spent 7 days just looking at the tree which gave him shelter. Just reflect on this: Buddha spending 7 days showing his gratitude for a tree. So it shows what a very important quality feeling grateful is.
Do we feel grateful for things? Do we feel grateful for other people? Do you feel grateful that you have discovered the Dhamma, that you have a group of spiritual friends? Do we ever make an effort to develop this quality of feeling grateful? Do we ever feel grateful that we can see? There are people who cannot see. Do you feel grateful that you can hear? There are some people who cannot hear. Do you feel grateful that you are healthy and that you can practise meditation without any problem?
So these are small things, little things, which we take for granted. You should visit very poor countries like India and Sri Lanka and then you might realise that you should feel grateful for some of the things you enjoy. But do we ever think about this? In those countries there are people without food. So shouldn’t we feel grateful when we have food to eat?
There is another aspect of feeling grateful: when we have unpleasant experiences we should also feel grateful for them because we can learn from them, they become our teachers.
Please allow the mind to do what it likes. Let any thoughts arise, thoughts about the past, thoughts about the future. And let us learn to observe the thoughts without judging them, no plus, no minus, just thoughts arising and thoughts passing away; but please be alert, awake from moment-to-moment.
Learning to make friends with our thoughts. Learning to create space for our thoughts.
There is nothing wrong with thoughts if you can be aware, if you can know what thoughts are arising and passing away.
Don’t try to stop thoughts, don’t try to control thoughts, but create space for any thought to arise. What you are learning now is to develop a non-reactive mind in relation to thoughts.
Now let us learn to make friends with the emotions that we don’t like. Please allow those emotions that you don’t like to arise and see, as with the thoughts, whether you can make friends with them, create space around them, just allow them to be there.
If you are feeling sleepy or drowsy, please open your eyes because it is very important to be alert, to be awake.
It is very important for us to learn not to push away, not to control unpleasant emotions, but to allow them to arise and to make friends with them and to create space for them. So let us learn this very important aspect.
Let us now learn to do the same in relation to unpleasant sensation. Allow the unpleasant sensations in the body to arise. What you consider as strange feelings, unusual feelings, what you consider as abnormal sensations, let them arise. It can be in any part of the body.
Can we learn to relate to these sensations without giving a minus? To relate to them as just sensations?
Thoughts, emotions, sensations, learning to see them just as they are. Learning to relate to them without a plus, without a minus.
This is learning to have loving-kindness to our thoughts, to our emotions, to our sensations. Then they don’t become problems for us. Then they become our friends. This is what we are trying to do with this meditation.
When thoughts come we should be aware, mindful that thoughts are coming, and make friends with them, not to have a conflict, and then come back to the breath. But we can be aware of the breath for a few minutes, then again thoughts will come. This is the nature of the mind, that we don’t have much control. So meditation is understanding how our minds work, making friends with our mind and whatever is happening, and training ourselves to slowly, gently come back to the breath.
It is very important even when we are not sitting to continue to be aware and mindful of the thoughts that we are having. Even while relaxing, while eating, we are having thoughts. So whatever we are doing it’s a very good practice to be conscious of our thoughts, not only when we are meditating. We can learn a great deal about our thoughts by just watching them, just asking: What are the thoughts that I’m having?
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