..续本文上一页tise metta towards ourselves, we stop trying to find all our weaknesses, faults and imperfections. Usually when you have a bad mood or start to feel depressed, you think, ”Here I go again – I”m worthless.” When this happens, have metta for the depression itself. Don”t make a bad thing out of it, don”t complicate it – be at peace with it. Peacefully co-exist with the depressions, fears, doubts, anger, or jealousy. Don”t create anything around them with aversion.

　　Last year, a woman came to ask me about depression. She said, ”I suffer from depression on occasions. I know it”s bad, I know I shouldn”t, and I want to know what to do about it. I really don”t want it, I want to get rid of it. What do you suggest

　　” Now what is wrong with depression

　　 You expect that you should never feel depressed, because of an idea that there”s something wrong with you for being that way. Sometimes life just isn”t very pleasant, it can be downright depressing. You can”t expect life to be always pleasant, inspiring and wonderful.

　　I know how depression arises when there are unhappy things and unpleasant scenes around; I saw a lot of it in my first year in England. After living in a warm, sunny country like Thailand, where the people have great respect for the monks, always addressing you as ”Venerable Sir”, giving you things and treating you as if you were terribly important, I found that in England people treat you (the monks) as if you are crazy. London isn”t sunny and smiling, it can be drizzling and cold and people are not interested in you at all. They look at you and just turn away without giving you a smile. In Thailand, life was so simple and easy for a Buddhist monk. We had nice forest monasteries in natural surroundings and our own little huts amongst the trees. In London we were cooped up in a grotty little house day after day, kept indoors by the drizzling rain and cold.

　　So all the monks began to feel depression and negativity. We would just go through the motions of being monks. We would get up at 4 a.m. make it to the shrine room to do a little chanting, get that over with and then sit in meditation for a while, drink tea, go out for a walk – just going through the motions. We weren”t putting energy into anything we were doing; we were getting caught up in that which was depressing. There was also a lot of friction, a lot of problems in the group which had invited us to England, a lot of personality clashes and misunderstandings. When I reflected on it, I began to see that what I was doing was getting caught up in the unpleasant things that were happening around me. I was creating negative feelings around that. I was wishing I was back in Thailand, wishing the unpleasant things would go away, wishing it wouldn”t be the way it was, worrying about people and wishing they were otherwise.

　　I began to realise that I was dwelling in aversion on the unpleasant things around me. There were a lot of unpleasant things happening and I was creating aversion around it all. I was complicating it all in my mind, so I was suffering for it. We decided to put effort into just being there; we stopped complaining, we stopped demanding or even thinking and wishing about being somewhere else. We began to put energy into our practice, getting up early, doing exercises to keep warm – and we began to feel much better. Everything around us was the same, but we learned not to create problems within ourselves over those difficulties.

　　When you have high expectations for yourself, thinking you have to be Superman or Wonder Woman, then of course you don”t have much metta, because only very seldom can we live up to such a high standard. You become doubtful of yourself. ”Maybe I”m not good enough.” By practising metta towards ourselves, we can stop doing that. We begin to…

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