Sometimes what motivates us the most is positive things which are around us. The motivation can be something that we can generate from very difficult time as well as something very nice. As I said in one of the last classes that our mine is pretty much like a kid’s mind in many ways, or let’s say like a kid in many ways. So sometimes kids learn or get motivated when they go through some difficult times or sometimes they can be motivated by event somebody inspired them or when they see something good in them or around as a motivation. Meditation to motivate ourselves, let’s go to gratitude.
Let’s have a quick meditation, the reason why we are having a quick meditation here is that wecan have some time to talk and some time for question and answer. The same thing that you can do later on with a bit more time when you have a bit more time. The rest of the six days that we don’t get to see each other, then you can spend as much as time you want on this sort of meditation where you can motivate yourself or you can train yourself in some way if that’s what brings positive things new.
So the gratitude, what the gratitude is you all know, I mean, the way people think in general is exactly alright no need to bring out some Buddhist points in this. The general way that people think grateful I think that is more effective for us to motivate ourselves. So let’s just feel gratitude for what you have, the way you have been, it can be your situation, can be the condition that you are living in, specially like during this Covid situation, there are many people who are having literally difficult time from many angles, not just that, but there are many situations that the world has been through in the last two years, not just human, but animals also have freely changeable times.
You all might remember the fire in Amazon, was there any fire somewhere in America, I’m not sure, but I know fire in Australia, and also a region in Thailand, there was also a fire, a forest fire, I’m not sure if there was any fire in Vietnam. Let’s take an example of Amazon fire, just one of these which happened in the last couple of years, thousand and thousand of animals, insects, no count, birds, you can’t just count, animals, pretty much dead bodies have been seen after, like thousand and thousand of them, perhaps even million, beings who wish to live as we do, who wish happiness as we do, who have a right to live as we do, who have family like we do, who wish everything that we desire – I mean of course they don’t need a car, beside that they need everything that we pretty much wish.
So we are very grateful, you’re living or sitting on a very comfortable sofa chair, whatever you are, is also something that you should be grateful of, because there are many people in this world presently on the patient bed in some hospitals or even outside the patient ward, there are many people who are literally laying down on the, I don’t know what is that, the bed with the wheels outside hospital waiting on a queue to be admitted. There are times that we complain “Ah to stay home like for this and that, much is so terrible”, there are people living in a hospital, in a bed many months, that air we breathe, people facing difficulties to breathe that.
This should be enough motivation for the meditation to motivate ourselves. So let’s start, relax, it doesn’t mean that you have to feel uncomfortable where you are. Sit comfortably, relax, that is simply as you feel called gratitude. Because everything that you are experiencing right now is because your own positive karma of your past, you have done something right.
The way you live, you might have been through a very difficult situation, hard works, you might have to do a lot of hard works, but all of those hard works paid in many senses. Those help you to buy the chair, sofa, bed, whatever is under you. That hard work has helped you to have a healthy body because the body runs only when we do something. You have a healthy body because you ate, eat healthy. So feel grateful for whatever you have been through, all the positive things that you have experience in your life so let’s start this meditation at this point.
(Meditation in few minutes)
So this is one of the very nice thing, it’s more like a refreshment for our mind. By knowing the fact that the nature of our mind is positive, so it always feels better when we reflect or think or spend time thinking something which is positive. So the topic that we will talk today will be ‘enjoy effort’ or how to get rid of laziness and the importance of that, just telling this so that you can have something to expect. So very happy to see the way you all meditate, the last question of meditation taking out, literally going through all the faces.
Very nice to see all of you, by going through a meditation on reflecting the gratitude, all the positive points regarding gratitude , you might have seen yourself “I’m very lucky, a fortunate one” with what you have or what you have been through. Each and everything that you have experienced in your life, erything that you have been through in your meditation is all because of some causes.
Let’s take the example of mango, the small kids that came from Ladakh with me over here, they were literally biting mango, because we have quite a bit of mango trees around, it is literally raw, it’s like completely green and raw and they’re not grown fully. But then these kids had some mangos while we are quarantined, they know what it is and how it is in everything.
The other day I saw few kids gathered at a small tree and they had that mango like falling and they were literally like biting it, this one is not sweet, then the other ones. So what I’m trying to say here is that nothing, no, none of this nice time that you have been through, have been there if there was no cause for that. Every mango tree has a mango seed before, every mango seed has to come from a mango, every mango has to come from mango tree. So if all the good things that you have experienced comes from something positive.
Everyone want to continue having that luxury, nice, comfortable life, doesn’t matter even if you are living in a hut. If that is what you are dreaming and that is where you are satisfied and happy, yes, you wish to continue that because I saw like some monks who are very happy in some caves and they want to spend their whole life in a cave. While I was in Ladakh I’ve been to visit a monk who have been staying in one mountain for about thirty years, just by himself, in a small sort of clasts built on the rocks, I won’t say cave, because it was built the roof by the rocks, literally, in the middle of the mountain where you literally have to walk for hours, so he’s been staying there from like last 30 past years, he’s very happy, content. People are going him to receive some teachings, advices, suggestions, this and that retreat, so if you are happy that’s what matters.
But everybody wish to continue where they feel happy, so to continue this apple or mango that you’re experiencing, it’s very important to engage, to keep watering the mango tree or planting the mango tree. In other words, I would say like continue to do those things which keep you happy. The causes can be true, physical health and mental health, to keep your physical health you can do yoga or you can do any exercise that you like, you don’t need to run outside, obviously it’s cold out there, but then still there are lot more things that you can do indoors to keep your physical body healthy.
But in most cases, the uncomfortable that we experience, the sad and unpleasant time that we go through are mostly in a mental state. The physical and uncomfortable is something that you have sometimes. During world war, many people have gone through a hunger without a food and they have to rely on rushing in many places, that’s a different story.
It’s not like nowadays, the way we all are living is better than those kings like Egyptian kings or the mighty kings that you can think of. Perhaps it is all about the way you think, I mean, even if you are the President of a country, you have someone who’s watching you when you’re eating. Look, now you can have more freedom than that, sit comfortably on the sofa that is pretty much the similar sofa that they also sit.
You can order something, doesn’t matter whatever you order like. There are some presidents who are having some health issues that they can’t eat this, they can’t eat that, if you can eat those things you can think that you are more fortunate, comfortable than that, and then trust me, nobody is watching you when you eat up food, you can just close the door, that’s it. That’s a freedom, I think so.
So it seems you have things that you can order in terms of physical, there is a lesser time that you go through unpleasant time. Now the mental unpleasant, especially during this COVID, mental unpleasant, is always. You might have some relatives, friends who live far away from you and you might want to visit or meet, but you can’t meet obviously for our safety. There are things that you might wish mentally that you can’t get to do, for example, you might want to visit a market or this and that. No. There are a lot more things that we go through a mental unpleasant.
So for physical, as I said, you can do yoga or any other physical exercises, for mental hygiene, for mental health, for happiness we need to do things which can bring happiness. Understanding those things, as I said from the beginning, for the mental health, mental hygiene, one of the best mental hygiene or exercise is meditation, it can be any analytical meditation or it can be bless meditation or concentration meditation that we have been through before. Even if you know how to meditate right now, even if you can do, there are things that you might expect like it has to do right it now, you just plant a mango tree and you cannot expect a mango after like few days. Trust me, every mango tree took time to grow. You plant a mango seed today and you cannot expect a mango tomorrow. Maybe bamboo or some other bushes might go a bit fast, I really don’t know, maybe few inchs a day, but unfortunately not mango tree.
So similar, but still we look at ourselves, we have patience, it was not like we were born and then we start to walk right away when we’re born – You might have seen some stories like story of Buddha… – So hardly we could stand our own feet, and maybe our parents might have tracked “Look, wow you stood on your feet”. Then slowly we try to take some steps, but before that we usually try to wish to things, in the patient part always there, that we call down and do everything to reach to what we want. But slowly we manage to stay in our own feet and try to take some steps. But again, like two steps, fall and then three steps, fall and then, trust me, you have tried at least for about 50 times.
But think about through the meditation, are we also doing things with the same patience? Now you can literally walk or run and everything, although you might not be allowed it to run much outside, but still this temporary. The result that we can run, the reason that we can go and do in different places, the reason without walking it’s even hard to get to the airplane or without walking like you really cannot have a bathroom under use all the time. So all these fortunate to be able to walk is also something that we should feel gratitude because there are people who can’t walk at all. So the result that we are able to walk, that we take it for granted is also something that comes through lots of effort, with every effort we will get better, but still in all together, like you have been to a lot of effort. So, similarly, a mental health, happiness, satisfaction also comes through training your mind.
And we are bound with laziness which is a kind difficult. According to Buddhist texts we have like all that three kinds of laziness, we know that’s important to do, we know that we’ve got it too much and all these things, but these laziness are literally being there as a world distracting us to reach what we really wana go, or to achieve what we really wanna achieve. So let’s just touch those laziness, what they are trying to know, those world which avoid you to meditate or to constraint practice. So this laziness, you can imply or you can apply to anything that you are doing in the life.
So one of the laziness, the general laziness, there is known in Eastern, Western, whatever society or culture or place that you live, laziness of procrastination, the thing that “I’ll do it later, all day tomorrow, I still have time tomorrow”.
No, and sometimes tomorrow never comes, and you keep postponing, postponing and postponing and delaying and delaying. Even those people who died, there were many words that they thought that they wanna do next year. There are many people who died on the day they applied for a sort of insurance by which they can have penchant after 10 years or 15-20 years.
So we always think that we’re gonna leave tomorrow, the after tomorrow, next year, after the decade…, sometimes we don’t leave that much. We have to have such a plan and it is very important to have such a plan, so to remove this kind of laziness like delaying, the attitude of delay, is very important because it comes in obstacles between us. The point to avoid this attitude of delay it’s by thinking that you might not have opportunity to do something tomorrow.
If you think that there is something that you could do in your life, achieve in your life, or you are free, you have time, you might have to do something tomorrow. Who knows? So when you have time, use, make the best use of it. If you think that oh somebody has been so kind to you this and that…, don’t think that “I’m gonna do it next year or after 10 years”, who know? Whether that person is alive or not, whether you are in a condition or not, now you are in a wonderful condition to train. I think that if I train myself with the meditation, even if I go to coma and then literally rest for like 20-30 years, I can say that the time that I might have to spend in coma would be much better. Then my version without practice meditation, then everything matters, even if little bit of meditations, it matters, because you can’t hear later, you cannot learn something new and you cannot grow that in you, without learning it’s very difficult.
So, thinking of impermanence of the situation, opportunity, condition that you have, thinking about “Oh now I can exercise, I can do something”. Who knows, we might have some stroke tomorrow. So if you do some exercise today, it might have what? Who knows there will have some difficult times like mental difficult issues tomorrow.
If you do some meditation today, of course, now when we have time later better use of it. The rest later, work first, that’s how even in the mundane world, every successful people try, grasp every opportunity, every opportunity in terms of time that the world has laid down in front of them. You have to be careful with the things that you should buy your times. Remember physical back pain and this and that is something that you cannot avoid time to time. You might have some headaches for this and that not much of things you can avoid. Trust me, because doctors are also suffering, doctors are also having strokes, doctors are also having all the sickness, you can’t find a sickness that doctors don’t have, understandable.
But there are some meditators who don’t have mental problems at all. We’re like magnetic, right? That you can use. So I think that physical issues we can avoid till some end, nobody is more than 150 years old that shows some facts that we also not gonna be there after 100 years, but there are things that you can do to keep this body healthy, comfortable and you can do much more based on that. But still the mental, as long as you live or if you believe in next time, even in next life. If you train your mind and make it a compassionate, nice, good, this and that, doesn’t matter if there is Buddha, there is Jesus, there is Allah, there is Guru, there is Ishwar… whatever there is, they all will rejoice that part.
If you’re loving, compassionate, kind, all of these people or God or whatever they are, rejoice, they also appreciate that. If it is the heaven? Maybe, of course, then you can go to heaven, if there is a next level, then you can go to the next level of heaven and whatever there is. Even if there is nothing out there or up there or whatever, you can still find happiness while you are alive. These peace of happiness, people spend everything, so that peace of happiness is not something that you can spend. You can achieve by spending something if it is not a time. And that time need to be adorned with little bit of effort and wisdom which thing that I might not have time tomorrow, I need a couple use of time. This will help you to get rid of the laziness of procrastination.
Now the second one is laziness of being busy thing that doesn’t lead you to what you want to achieve. Laziness of being busy is something like you have to do meditation, but now let’s be busy, doing something like maybe a cover of the book, that’s what one of my kids was doing and a cover of the book, the book is not going to run away, keep there, while you are practicing, you gotta practice, keep the cover of the book later. I’m sure that the book is not cold. Give that a time because you need to know which one that you should prioritize.
So laziness of being busy in thing that is not important, it’s more like a student spending their whole time playing games, video games or whatever games, you can’t know that the Bachelor or the degree that you are gona achieve is gona achieve your whole life, that is the time you cannot go to university all the time. Now while you are there, if you think that I’m going to get this degree like 10 years later, like 20 years later, then yes, go out, do something that matters now, if you intend to study later. But if you intend to study now and get a degree, anything you’re spending your time for that and then do it nicely, so that you can achieve what you want to achieve. It’s very important to prioritize things, you know what you have to prioritize. If you want happiness, you have to prioritize on something. We can go and clean the leaves below the tree all the time, but then trust me, the leaves will never end falling unless I need the tree stop growing.
The third laziness is the laziness of discouragement. Maybe nowadays, you can see like self-esteem, there is also laziness, like “ah I can’t do that”, it more like you put your hands up before you even started “Ah, I can’t do that, oh, that’s difficult”. From a Buddhist perspective, we say that each and every one of us will also become Buddha. So Buddha is like the highest achievement, erased or eliminated all the negative emotions. Buddhist teachings say that each and every one of us can do that, we have that potential that the Buddha had, the same potential. Buddha was born in an Indian family, so more likely the bigger eyes, me being born in a place where everyone has the smaller eyes. If I have that stand, the self-confidence to achieve what Buddha did, you all should have, you all seem to have bigger eyes and that’s how I might have as well. The reason why I’m saying that people find all this crazy excuse to say like “I can’t do”. Now, we just found out that crazy excuse.
Some people might say “I can’t do Buddha because Buddha was this, then I try to make one different thing”. I also have one different thing than what Buddha had, but still I think and I strongly believe that I can achieve, you can also achieve. Even if you don’t become a Buddha, you at least become or achieve an happy mental state even if you are one hundred and two years old, or if you wanna live for one hundred and ten years old.
And as I said, the example before, you don’t need to discourage because not everything grows overnight, the reason why we can run, this also because of lots of effort, every effort comes, after every effort you became better. Every effort, one minute of meditation, your mental status better. 10 plus 10 is 20, we all know, it is so easy. Trust me, it was so hard for one of these kids to learn that, it was difficult. And I’m sure that after a few days, or like a few months, he likes 20, “I know it” and then if I try to repeat then he’s gonna say like “oh master, I know these”. But in the past situation and there are times when he finds these are very difficult, he literally count everywhere, I mean, he’s looking like he’s trying to find every corner for this and to count 10 plus 10 is what? The reason why he couldn’t count 10 plus 10 was because he was not going after 13. After 13 he get back to 7 or 8 and then he miss the thing, so discouragement.
When we have everything that one can achieve, look at the history of those people who people address them as a successful person, they failed many times, many times in many circumstances, doesn’t matter whether it’s a business, whether is an education, like Gandhi which we have in Indian currency like a note, bill, people say that he was failing like Fort Standard for about few years, I’m not sure whether that’s true, but that’s what people said, I read his biography, although I might have somewhere, there are many stories like that “oh he is so smart…, but who was failing these, he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t understood that he took him this and that much of time like years”. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t have that potential in that, you also have the same potential to practice meditation and achieve control, you will be able to control yourself in many senses.
It is always nice to have these sort of classes, because sometimes I tell some things and then some of these things also help me, and also sometimes our minds are really neat, like generally people when they have difficult time, they go and tell their friends and then they rely on their friends and await their suggestion. Now you can feel a little bit of meditation, you can be your own teacher, you can be your own friend who console or show ideas…
Then you can be that of yourself, like many of the kids especially those who learn and study in colleges or like when they are around teenager, they have issues, of course everyone have, and sometimes they have like strange issues, then they go to their friend and if that friend is nice, they might get a good help and it helped them to solve the issues. But sometimes they have issues they go to the friend, the friend teach them something that literally doubles the issue, creates more times, few more times the problem that he or she used to have before.
Sometimes our mind also do the same thing. Somebody said something wrong to you and then instead of just understanding that the person is having some hard time, you just say something bad and then the situation is doubled, before you were innocent, now you are totally involved.
Question and answer
The mango tree if it grows from a graft, it can give fruits faster than from a seed, although its life will be shorter. How can we apply for getting fruit faster in meditation? All the pros and cons are?
The way to get the fruit in meditation faster is when we have a nice teacher, nice guide, good condition, little bit of hard work, little diligence to get rid of these three laziness, so these are some of the ways of grafting to achieve the fruit of happiness, calm, peace, harmony, compassion, contentment, satisfaction in our mind, in our heart, in our life.
So let’s do a bit of dedication. Sometimes I’m used to do these dedications at end of these practices, but then sometimes when we don’t do, I do it personally. But let’s do it together and we have time. I mean, usually I do the dedication of the merits every time I finish a class, sometimes in a class, sometimes out of the class. But we don’t seem to have a question. So maybe dedication.
By the merits or by the knowledge that we have gained and I have shared or experienced that I have gained,
And if you have learned something new or even if you have just witnessed something that we have already known,
May all these be a condition and a cause for our happiness and maybe be able to share this happines to all the people and beings and animals who live around us.
By understanding, exploring a bit about meditation maybe we be able to bring peace and harmony,
And maybe be able to generate love and compassion within ourselves through which we can help many others who are in need by feeling the gratitude,
May we be able to engage in many of the causes as if we plant that mango tree so that we can be able to have many situations and conditions where we can continue, have an opportunity to fill this gratitude and we will be able to share all these merits that we have accumulated to bring peace in this world.
And may the merits that we’ve accumulated from this with the conditions and the causes for others to get rid of the pain, sickness that they’re experiencing.
May this be the condition of the peace in the world, the elimination of the Covid from this world.
May positivity spread and make the teachings of love and compassion reach to each and every heart, will be grown./.
Source.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11KVsOlPDlrE09JEdBiVBnYRtnsuGtfRk/view?usp=drivesdk
Noted down from the Dharma Talk of Lama Nawang Kunphel on May 16th 2021, organized by On The Road Yoga.