To train the mind to be peaceful is harder to do.
Like today,
We take up the moral precepts.
We are determined to have the five precepts on the lunar observance day.
And those who have mental strength take up the eight precepts,
The uposada sila.
The strength of this sila,
Moral conduct,
Promotes and supports us to have samadhi concentration.
It's samadhi that is well established upon sila.
We can see the many benefits of sila.
The Buddha compared sila to a fragrance that can go against the wind.
One who can keep the five precepts well,
Or can keep the higher eight precepts,
Then in whatever life they are born into,
They will have all their limbs and faculties complete,
Have beauty,
A strong body,
And have outer and inner wealth.
Because sila is an inner noble wealth.
When we have inner wealth already,
Then we are able to maintain the outer wealth.
Can we see that someone without sila,
Who has bad conduct,
Does corrupt acts,
Even though they may have 800 kilograms of gold,
But ultimately they can't keep it.
The wealth they have disappears,
And all the fame that they have accumulated is also gone.
This is just because of breaking the one precept of adinatthana,
Taking what's not ours.
It becomes all wasted in all aspects.
So here if we have sila,
We are able to maintain our body and speech well,
Then this is something excellent in this world.
And more so when we are training in samadhi,
Having a meditation object,
Knowing the in and out breath.
We are trying to keep the mind in the present,
And it takes time to develop.
Some days we can get the mind to be peaceful,
But some days we can't.
But don't be discouraged,
Don't retreat,
Keep on fighting with it.
One day samadhi will get better.
In the beginning we couldn't sit at all.
We couldn't even sit for 5 minutes and had just hotness in the heart.
But later on we can sit,
And can sit longer,
For 50 minutes,
For an hour,
Or even many hours.
We have a little bit of peacefulness arise,
We are able to sit.
Later we develop more,
And we can also sit meditation for longer,
And gain more peacefulness too.
And later on we may not need to sit for long,
Just 30 minutes,
And the mind starts to be at ease.
The hands disappear,
The feet disappear,
The body feels more light.
The feeling of the body is half gone,
We feel more at ease.
We have just half of the self left.
We do more samadhi,
And it gets more empty and spacious.
The body feels like there is no body,
It is light.
We keep doing samadhi,
And the body feels like it has no body at all,
Like we are sitting in the air.
This is the feeling of the mind.
At this time our mind has peace.
When the mind has peace,
We will see the happiness that arises from samadhi.
At this time there is no anger,
No ill will,
No worries,
To cover over the heart at all.
Even though there still are kilesas,
The mental defilements,
But at this time our mind is peaceful.
It is the mind brought to peace,
But it's not yet the peacefulness of the defilements.
But we already have this level of happiness.
When we contemplate and look at this body that we love,
Attach and hold on to,
We have some more understanding that it's probably not us.
Our mind has a bit of wisdom arise.
It's emptiness.
The mind is more empty.
There is peace arising.
When we see the benefit of the practice like this in a deep way,
Then our faith in the teachings of the Sama Sambuddha,
The perfectly self-awakened one,
Is more firm.
The faith in the Buddha,
Dhamma,
Sangha is stronger in the heart.
Our heart inclines to practice following.
Like all of you who have faith in the beginning to give dana and to keep precepts,
This is us giving our practice as puja in homage to the Buddha,
Dhamma,
Sangha.
It's not something small or trivial.
It's got lots of benefits.
We have confidence that giving has lots of benefits.
There is the giving on the inside and the exterior giving.
The giving of fearlessness,
Which has even more benefits.
And some people may have more mental strength to give their body as dana.
This barami,
Spiritual perfection,
Is resolute,
Not on a normal level.
I want to share a story of a man named Ben and a woman named Susan.
They met by chance,
Sending their children to the same kindergarten.
And this started a friendship for more than 10 years between the children and family.
But later Susan got sick because there was a problem with her kidney.
She was unwell.
Her kidneys had failed.
Here Ben had metta,
Goodwill and love.
Because he saw Susan had lost weight and her body was not healthy at all.
They had closeness,
Fondness and metta for each other.
And in Susan's family there wasn't anyone who was able to donate their kidney to her.
And so it made Ben strengthen his decision and metta to donate one kidney to Susan to go through with the kidney transplant.
He consulted his wife about his thoughts and they soon learned that having given one kidney,
One could still live on if one takes care of one's health well.
And Ben's oldest son was a best friend of Susan's son as well.
So the pair gave a present that had the most value in their life to Susan.
Even though they were from different families,
But he could donate his kidney out of a deep love and metta.
This is a gift that is harder to do.
It is on another level which we call uparami,
A higher spiritual perfection,
Made by donating one's organs.
Here,
Even though we don't do it to that level,
We will give dana on a normal basis.
We are fully willing to give and fully willing to be charitable and generous.
When we do dana more,
What benefits does it have?
In our life,
If we have lots of wealth,
We will ask ourselves what we will do with it to give benefit and we will conclude that we will give dana.
Here we see the benefit of giving already.
Even if we have a lot,
We practice dana.
We don't have a need to accumulate a lot of wealth in this world.
So when our minds are at this level,
It is more firmly focused on bhavana,
Mental cultivation.
Like this,
We are not searching for a lot of wealth,
But we are searching for inner wealth,
Which is training the mind to be peaceful.
When we have trained our minds to be more peaceful,
That is we have sati,
Mindfulness in the present,
Trying not to think back to the past or future.
We sit meditation every day,
Twice a day,
Sitting each time for 45 minutes or an hour.
Even though we are tired from work,
If we can sit samadhi and our mind gets peaceful,
Then it's very light and feels very at ease.
Like we are resetting our body anew and it gets rest from that samadhi.
The mind and body are light.
Here we see the value in training in samadhi.
If we don't see the benefit of samadhi,
Then it's hard to train in it.
And in one day,
We will have a lot of mindfulness,
Not letting the mind be all scattered.
These days,
There is a lot of information and news.
And if we take it in a lot,
It's like we are putting in rubbish,
A mental object that is like rubbish and putting it in our minds.
So training in samadhi to become more peaceful,
It's harder to do.
We need to take in just a little news and media,
Just that which benefits us is enough.
There is a lot of news about that house,
News about that person,
News about that country,
And they put it on social media.
And we go and learn and know all about it.
Then we get all mentally scattered and we are not peaceful.
We sit meditation and those proliferations follow us again.
So this is an obstruction to samadhi.
We need to be very careful in the materially developed world of the present day.
It will be an obstruction to training our mind.
When we take in just a little and we try to have a lot of mindfulness and to make our samadhi firm,
Then we see the benefit of training in mindfulness and samadhi,
That there is so much happiness.
There is no need to have disturbances.
We just stop thinking,
Stop fantasizing,
Stop proliferating,
Stop being lost in thought,
And it's peaceful and at ease.
Here,
This mind that is peaceful will make us know and have wisdom arise.
Even though we may be seven years old,
We can see the Dhamma.
Because seven years is just the age when the body and the brain are fully developed already.
At the age of 70,
60 or 50,
The brain is also fully developed.
But mindfulness and samadhi are not firmly established.
The wisdom to see the Dhamma,
It doesn't see.
When Lady Visakha was a seven-year-old child,
Her samadhi was present and firmly established.
The body and brain was fully developed.
She listened to Dhamma,
Contemplated it,
And attained to Sotapanna,
The first stage of enlightenment.
In the time of the Buddha,
There were many children who were 15 to 16 years old who attained to Sotapanna.
Why?
Because of the barami they had built of dana,
Sila,
And inbhavana.
Their minds were peaceful,
And they had learnt to the level that they could understand things clearly.
Just like how we are training ourselves in this life,
We have merit and barami,
And we may be able to understand and see rupa and nama,
Material and mental phenomena,
Decay,
And it being not truly ours.
We can see this in this life,
Or it is shaping our character and causes into the future,
Into the next day,
Next month,
Next year,
In the next life.
We are practicing dhamma every time we have mindfulness,
And we are getting closer to the Buddha every time.
We are proud that we are coming closer to the Buddha,
We are coming closer to his purity,
And we build our inspiration to train our mind and heart well.
So may you be determined.
We travel from near or far through our faith.
Like today,
We eat,
And we can train in a simple way to have mindfulness while we are eating the meal.
Chewing,
We have mindfulness.
Swallowing,
We have mindfulness.
We don't talk.
We see how many mouthfuls we eat.
Does this food have danger to us?
Contemplate along with eating,
And make the mind peaceful while eating.
This is bhavana meditation already.
Going from the monastery back home,
We chant Ittipiso for many times.
This is bhavana.
We bhavana while going and coming back,
And while in the monastery,
We gain merit all the time.
This is the merit from bhavana,
And we need to be determined in it.
We are not interested in anything else.
We are just interested in our minds.
This peacefulness of mind will lead to wisdom,
And wisdom makes our sila better and our samadhi more firm.
May you be determined in this.
Even though we don't donate to the level of upabharami,
But we are fully ready to give dana,
Make merit,
Keep sila,
And to give up all the bad moods and mind states within our heart.
Practice samadhi until we can do it.
Have inner fullness and happiness,
And have wisdom arise.
May you all set your hearts on this.
May you grow in blessings.
