Start The New Year With The 4 Sublime Abidings | 31 Dec 2023

Ajahn Anan emphasizes patience and forbearance in his talk. He explains that life brings both pleasure and pain, highlighting the importance of mental strength in facing challenges. The modern world's material progress, he notes, hasn't matched spiritual development, leading to minds distracted by rapid sensory experiences and media.

Ajahn Anan stresses mindfulness and self-awareness as crucial for inner peace and wisdom. He advocates for giving, moral conduct, and meditation while warning against the dangers of negative influences and activities.

He concludes by emphasizing the importance of personal spiritual growth and inner development over material gains, for achieving true peace and happiness.

Transcript

The Buddha taught that it's important to have patience and forbearance.

We can see that in the Avatapadimokkha,

The Buddha taught on Kanti,

Forbearance as an important virtue.

All wise people,

Ascetics,

Monastics need to have patience and forbearance first.

So in studying,

Doing work and business,

You need to have forbearance.

Because sometimes we will have experiences that won't be what we like.

If we get wealth,

Status,

Praise,

Pleasure,

Then we are pleased.

Here we don't need to endure too much.

But if we have loss of wealth,

Loss of status,

Blame and pain,

Then we have suffering and torture,

So then we need to train the mind to have a lot of forbearance.

And we should see it as something normal in the world.

It is called lokadamma,

A worldly condition.

They come in pairs.

There is the side that we like,

And the side we don't like.

If we can train in having forbearance,

And if we can get past that which we experience,

Then the mind will have strength.

The mind is stronger.

We endure against the greed,

The anger,

The delusion,

And then it makes us gain inner peace.

We are within sila,

Moral conduct.

We train our minds to a higher level.

And there are occasions that we go to the monastery to make merit and to give dana,

And we may have to travel some ways to get there.

Training our mind is hard and difficult.

Sometimes it takes 40 minutes from our house.

Some places we need to drive one hour.

And the places which we may go every now and then may be 200 or 300 kilometers away.

Many of the monasteries in the west are like this.

So we need to have forbearance in order to find the dhamma.

But if we look back to the past era,

The people then had a high level of forbearance in traveling.

They had to travel by foot,

By cart,

By elephant,

By horse.

But these days,

Travel is more convenient,

Yet the minds of people are more hot.

They want things to be quicker.

And when they want it to be quicker,

There are many accidents occurring.

And we see that in the past,

There were diseases and they had no medicines to treat it.

But these days,

There are still diseases,

And some that also have no medicines to treat it.

This is the world that has developed materially,

But it has not developed in terms of the dhamma.

If material development is greater,

Then the world is very dark.

The minds of people are very dark.

And the new things which humans build and create,

They harm the mindfulness and samadhi concentration of people even more.

And more so for children who receive news and social media.

And having no samadhi and no mindfulness,

Then the mind goes with the world to all the sense objects.

There is less chance to train the mind to be firmly established.

When the mind is less firmly established,

Then there is less chance to know the dhamma.

One experiences sense objects more rapidly.

But the world says this is good,

And thinks it's smarter.

But that which is lost is the peace of the mind.

If our mind has no wisdom,

And it experiences a lot of sense contact,

Then the mind gets lost in those sense experiences.

The mind has gotten lost in the world already.

It is chaotic.

It has liking and disliking.

The anger comes up quicker.

The hate,

The fear,

The love,

The ill will,

It all comes up quicker.

So we have to see that this is a danger to the mind.

And we have to train the mind a lot,

So that the mind has self-awareness,

For the mind to have understanding.

We don't let time waste and pass by with no benefit.

So we don't need to receive a lot of news and social media.

But we have to give some food to the heart.

Receiving a lot of news and social media is not food for the heart.

It is a sense object.

And the more one has of it,

Then the more one wants to get even more of it.

The mind gets even more disturbed.

And when we aren't able to meditate,

Then we get bored of dhamma practice.

Our forbearance reduces even more.

And this lessens our wisdom in the dhamma.

Then when we receive a sense object that enters,

Then our mind is disturbed.

When we get what we want,

Then we are pleased.

We are pleased,

But then we lose it,

And then we suffer.

So we meditate on that which we have got,

That it will have to decay and deteriorate.

Can we see that ever since we have been born as a child,

The heart sometimes beats quickly,

Sometimes slowly,

But our heart is beating all the time.

So each heartbeat is reducing the number we have left in this life by one.

And when we breathe in one time,

Then the breaths we have remaining are reduced by one as well.

So then we need to think and reflect on what we should do,

So that we have no burdens,

No worry in our heart,

And how we can live in a prepared way,

With mindfulness and wisdom.

Then when it is time to pass away,

We go with a mind complete with the merit and goodness that we have done.

So we need to build merit and build goodness.

We do a lot of dana,

Giving,

Have sila,

Keep the moral precepts,

And bhavana,

We cultivate our minds.

And that which damages our goodness is delusion.

It is the states of loss,

The abhaya mukha,

The pathways that lead to misery,

Like gambling,

Being bent on entertainment,

Delighting in nightlife,

And associating with bad people as good friends.

This makes us lose our mindfulness and wisdom,

And our humanness declines.

It is the path that leads one to be ill at ease.

So we need to associate with our mind that is a wise person,

Both on the inside and outside.

Those outside of us are wise people,

And our heart is a wise person too.

This is an important blessing of one's life.

The Buddha taught that the highest blessings of one's life are to not associate with fools,

To associate with wise people,

And to give homage to those worthy of homage.

So we give our homage to the Buddha,

Dhamma,

Sangha,

And to those who have virtue and goodness towards us,

Like our parents.

And this is the path that leads to our prosperity and spiritual growth.

So may you fulfill your duties and responsibilities well.

For students,

They need to learn well and succeed in their studies.

But also,

Don't suffer from studying too much.

You need to have your goals and be determined,

And also be complete with wisdom.

As we are Buddhists,

We need to have wisdom.

When doing our work,

We do it with proper attention and with mindfulness,

In a way that is circumspect and that doesn't cause harm,

And that is doing it with wisdom.

Then this is doing good,

Which will bring us good things.

People may think that by doing good,

Then they want to get money,

Wealth,

Status,

And rank.

But this is something different.

We say,

By doing good,

We gain goodness.

This is good already.

Sometimes people think that they do good,

But why do they get nothing good back?

The goodness coming back is not wealth and money.

But goodness is a virtue which is important and pure.

So we try to build merit and build goodness a lot.

And we especially give importance in our bhavana,

In making the mind peaceful.

It's like if we are building a house,

Then we have to make it worth living in.

It is clean,

It is filled with nice clothing,

And so we have happiness inside it.

This is building something on the outside,

But this is not building the heart.

We have to build this heart a lot,

And do it well.

We are giving food for the heart.

Merit and goodness is food for the heart.

Developing samadhi,

Concentration,

Is a great food for the heart,

Which though may be hard and difficult,

But we have to train in developing it.

We use a meditation word,

And we know the in and out breath.

Until the breath is more refined,

Until the mind is peaceful and still,

And then samadhi arises.

And then we can learn about dhamma,

About the change of this physical body that has changed another year already.

We add one year to our age,

But our time in this world has reduced by one year.

Then wisdom arises,

And we understand that all things have arising,

Staying,

And ceasing as normal.

This is dhamma.

It is the dhamma which the noble disciples of the Buddha have known and seen into.

We can learn and build our minds to gain this understanding.

And if we don't build our minds for ourselves,

Then who will build it for us?

It isn't something we can buy.

Those who have built their minds to be beautiful,

They can't sell it.

We need to do it ourselves.

Even the health of the body,

We can't sell it.

Whoever wants to have a strong and healthy body,

They need to build and do it for themselves.

So we can see that we have everything,

But what we lack is exercise.

In doing exercise,

We need to try to move so that our heart beats harder and our blood flows.

But to exercise by the way of the mind is to not think a lot.

We must stop thinking,

Stop proliferating,

Stop ideas.

Then the mind has strength.

It has strength.

So we need to train the mind to stop thinking,

Creating ideas,

And proliferating.

If our mind is still thinking and proliferating,

Then we use the meditation words,

Bhutto,

Dhammo,

Sangho.

Or we contemplate this body as a heap of earth,

Wind,

Water,

And fire elements.

This is up to our proficiency.

Or we can develop metta,

Loving-kindness meditation.

All these methods are for the mind to be peaceful and still.

Because the mind which is not peaceful and still will,

When it is experiencing sense objects,

Run out to it all the time.

We can notice that since waking in the morning,

The mind is thinking and proliferating already.

There are some good thoughts and some bad thoughts.

If we can get control of it by using the meditation word or through contemplation,

Then the mind can be peaceful.

This is training the mind,

Building the heart.

We call it building the house for the heart.

We give food for our heart by making merit and goodness.

And this we need to do ourselves.

We restrain our actions and speech with sila.

We get control over the mind to have samadhi arise,

And be able to progress the mind to have wisdom.

Today is the last day of the year.

However it has been in the one year that has passed,

We have experienced both the things that we liked and the things we disliked.

We have had anger and ill-will,

But we let it pass.

Make it pass along with the time that passes,

And with everything that naturally passes.

All that which has not been good has been a learning lesson for us,

Something that will progress our mind to be better.

And we improve in the qualities that we lack.

Like in whichever of the four sublime abidings we are lacking in,

We improve that one.

If we lack metta,

Goodwill,

Then we develop more metta.

If we lack compassion,

Then we train our minds to have more compassion.

We give our sadhu,

We give our mudita,

We rejoice with others.

When we see whoever it is that does goodness,

Then we say sadhu and anumodhana.

We say well done,

And rejoice in their goodness.

They gained goodness.

And it's not that by doing this we will lose our own goodness.

But if they get something good and we get jealous,

Then we lose our goodness,

And with no benefit to us,

Gives us no benefit at all.

But if we sadhu with them as well,

And we rejoice with them,

Then we gain happiness as well.

Like they are our child,

Grandchild,

Relative or sibling.

But if we have too much of a sense of self,

Then there is the mind that is not good,

Which is in an abnormal state,

And which is the cause for suffering to arise.

So we need to train in developing the four sublime abidings to be prominent and to come up quickly.

And the samadhi that we can gain,

We maintain it by having forbearance and the four sublime abidings.

Then our samadhi will be firm,

And it will bring up wisdom.

So practice doing a lot of goodness.

Do it often,

Until it is full.

We do it until we are full of heart.

The heart is happy.

It's like we eat something delicious,

And we are happy and pleased.

Doing goodness is the same.

And when we think of that goodness,

We feel more full of heart.

So through this whole year that has passed,

Whatever experiences we have had,

May we let it pass.

May we develop it to be better in the soon-to-be coming year.

And most of us here are intent to build goodness and virtue.

So may we not let our minds go off the path.

May it stay in the path.

The path that is with good moral conduct,

And that abandons the states which lead to loss and decline.

Be firm in goodness,

In your generosity,

Morality,

Meditation,

And with noble inner qualities.

In the new year that is coming,

We will gain new things,

And we will also develop the mind to be better than the old one.

If it is just the year that is new,

But the mind is old,

Or the mind is worse than before,

Then it has no significance.

We may get new things on the outside,

But those new material things will get old.

Instead,

It is the mind that has a lot of value.

So we must make it newer and better than it was before.

And if we are able to develop the mind to have purity and radiance,

Then the best and most excellent thing is this mind.

May you all set your hearts on this.

May you have happiness and growth in the Dhamma.

May you grow in blessings.