This week’s Dharma teaching

There is only one way to achieve happiness and that is to start to control and purify our mind. We cannot control others, the weather, our employees, our employer etc.
We achieve inner strength by focussing on the quality of patience and thus develop a mind of inner strength.

Our basic human desire is to experience happiness. Consciously or unconsciously we have this thought: I want to be happy and free from suffering. Whatever we do is a manifestation of this wish/need. When we awake everyday we hope that today is the day we will experience only happiness; we have an expectation not a hope as when suffering arises we don’t accept it! When things go wrong in life we get disappointed! We are perpetualy overwhelmed, disappointed so we have unrealistic expectations. We expect people to cherish us, to never let us down, that everything goes according to our wishes and desires …. How do we react to what happens? By accepting that difficulties are a part of life it gives us freedom to take control of our happiness and well-being. Difficulties are a part of life it is useless suppressing them. for e.g. when someone is doing something we don’t like, we tell them to change (if we
feel it is socially acceptable for e.g if we know the person well) or resent them. Has it worked? Controlling our external world is exhausting… our homes,possessions, partner… manipulating externals is unproductive and unsatisfying and ends up by creating more problems. Suffering arises from our mind. Looking outside of ourselves is doomed to fail. It is easier to wear leather shoes than to cover whole ground with leather! By relying on a mind of patience, contentment, love….. we will always find a place where we  are comforted becasue we are controlling our inner environment – well-balanced and positive. We do not feel overwhelmed and stressed and we feel we want to run away from the situation.

Transform life’s difficulties to a practice.

Meditation works by familiarising and acquainting our mind with virtue which is a cause of happiness. Suffering arises from negative minds of anger, selfishness, jealousy etc. Meditation is a method to abandon these thought patterns, delusions and negative minds and replace with positive, virtuous minds.
If our own mind is acquainted with love and patience instead of anger, aversion etc we are able to find happiness even in difficult circumstances. Meditation is a potent medicine: 10-15 minutes/day of meditation on a positive quality is like a medicinal. The nature of meditation is concentration, single pointedly placed on a virtuous object e.g. contentment, patience… We transform our mind by holding a feeling. Mixing our mind with the virtuous object. You talk yourself into it and allow the feeling to arise e.g. thinking how much patience would benefit us, talking yourself into a mind of patience, when
an accepting mind arises, fully and happily – we stop thinking of reasons and we stay with that feeling of patience: this is meditation. In contrast to negative thoughts – the mind stream (the mind is a formless continuum) of thoughts – if the thoughts are dark and bad – like a stream bubbling away – if you pour in some dirt it gets murky without the dirt the stream is clean and pure, undefiled. The mind is like this when it is free from delusions. Negative minds are not our actual nature, just like the stream, it is not intrinsically weak, impure or disturbed but only when we allow ourselves to foucs on the negative does it become impure. Meditation re-trains the mind … quality of life depends on the quality of our mind. No better gift to give yourself and to others! You become a source of strength to others. We can deal with our own problems and others’ as we are strong inside ourselves.

A mind of patience helps us develop inner strength. If we only can be happy when things are going well we will never be happy! A set of conditions – perfect home, partner, job, based on things will go well for us, it is not the nature of life things will still go wrong. How often does everything all come together? There’s always something going on. Inner strength is a  mind that is happy when things go well or badly! If we realise life is characterised by suffering – mental pain usually more than happiness arises – learn to accept difficulties in the same way as we accept wordly enjoyments. Our mind is impure due to
delusions, so we create an impure world. Mindset of creating our happiness not happiness for all! We need to learn to accept happy mind when difficulties arise. We think suffering arising for eg from difficult boss or happiness arises from new job but it is all a state of mind not in external things. Practice of patience decreases all our sufferings.Suffering is an internal phenomenon, part of our mind, a feeling, an internal experience for eg when you are sick, when you have a nightmare boss but these are external; our own suffering is a feeling, an internal problem so they are different. If you don’t allow situations to trigger in your mind negative feelings you have an outer problem not an inner problem and only an inner problem is our problem. Two people in same situation react differently depending on their mind people respond differently depending on the quality of their mind: is it experiencing pain or calm? An accepting mind is inner strength. We cannot avoid challenging situations but we can avoid unpleasant feelings! Through meditation we create a force field to protect us like a suit of armour to deflect negativity; a mind of patience protects us with armour of patience. Your heart is open but you don’t allow negativity to affect your mind, we protect ourselves from difficulties. Protect mind through patience, mind happily accepts. Change your expectations get more realistic e.g. how we expect a date to turn out, how our life turns out etc based on a wish of happiness. True freedom: cast out unreaslistic expectations, accept and change your mind. Accept difficulties readily to avoid mind of aversion , mind of anger etc.

“The heart of Dharma practice is meditation. The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and
peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will
experience true happiness; but if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy,
even if we are living in the very best conditions. If we train in meditation, our mind will gradually
become more and more peaceful, and we will experience a purer and purer form of happiness. Eventually,
we will be able to stay happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances.”
~ How to Solve Our Human Problems, p. 121

‎”Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” -Dalai Lama