..续本文上一页 has the opportunity to participate in this. The monks and nuns are dependent upon the lay community just for basic survival, so it is an important thing for the lay community to take that responsibility. That takes you lay people out of your particular problems and obsessions because when you take time to come here to give, to help, to practise meditation and listen to the Dhamma, we find ourselves merging in that oneness of truth. We can be here together without envy, jealousy, fear, doubt, greed or lust because of our inclination towards realising that truth. Make that the intention for your life; don”t waste your life on foolish pursuits!
This truth, it can be called many things. Religions try to convey that truth in some ways -- through concepts and doctrines -- but we have forgotten what religion is about. In the past hundred years or so, our society has been following materialistic science, rational thought and idealism based on our ability to conceive of political and economic systems, yet we cannot make them work, can we
We cannot really create a democracy or a true communism or a true socialism -- we cannot create that because we are still deluded by the sense of self. So it ends up in tyranny and in selfishness, fear and suspicion. So the present world situation is a result of not understanding the way things are, and a time when each one of us, if we really are concerned about what we can do, has to make our own life into something worthy. Now how do we do this
Firstly, you have to admit the kind of motivations and selfish indulgence of emotional immaturity in order to know them and be able to let them go; to open the mind to the way things are, to be alert. Just our practice of anapanasati is a beginning, isn t it
It”s not just another habit or pastime you develop to keep you busy, but a means of putting forth effort to observe, concentrate and be with the way the breath is. You might instead spend a lot of time watching television, going to the pub and doing all kinds of things that are not very skilful -- somehow that seems more important than spending any time watching your own breath, doesn”t it
You watch the TV news and see people being slaughtered in Lebanon -- somehow it seems more important than just sitting watching your inhalation and exhalation. But this is the mind that does not understand the ways things are; so we are willing to watch the shadows on the screen and the misery that can be conveyed through a television screen about greed, hatred and stupidity, carried on in a most despicable way. Wouldn”t it be much more skilful to spend that time being with the way the body is right now
It would be better to have respect for this physical being here so that one learns not to exploit it, misuse it, and then resent it when it doesn”t give you the happiness that you want.
In the monastic life we don”t have television because we dedicate our lives to doing more useful things, like watching our breath and walking up and down the forest path. The neighbours think we are dotty. Every day they see people going out wrapped up in blankets and walking up and down. ”What are they doing
They must be crazy!” We had a fox hunt here a couple of weeks ago. The hounds were chasing foxes through our woods (doing something really useful and beneficial for all sentient beings!). Sixty dogs and all these grown up people chasing after a wretched little fox. It would be better to spend the time walking up and down a forest path, wouldn”t it
Better for the fox, for the dogs, for Hammer Wood and for the foxhunters. But people in West Sussex think they are normal. They are the normal ones and we are the nutty ones. When we watch our breath and walk up and down the forest path at least we are not terrorising foxes! How w…
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