Dear friends,
Congratulations.
Close your eyes and experience the contentment that comes from gratitude.
Congratulations not because you are lucky to win or lucky enough not to win the lotto.
Congratulations and happiness because in the end you are lucky enough to think about it.
By some extraordinary good fortune over which you have had no control whatsoever you are here,
Alive,
Conscious,
Reflective.
That gives us every reason to stop,
Think and allow ourselves to sit back in utter amazement.
Wayne Dwyer,
The celebrated American psychologist,
Made the following suggestion.
Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you.
Go outside and turn your attention to the five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.
Let's sit for a little while in awe and wonder and above all in gratitude for the gift of our existence in the here and Now.
Let's think.
Welcome back.
If you are listening to this,
You are among the most blessed people ever to have walked on the face of the earth.
Not because you are listening to me,
But because you have the gift of hearing,
The means to tune in,
To listen,
To hear what is going on around you.
If you are listening to this,
You clearly have electricity or battery power.
You have a computer or a smartphone or a tablet of some kind.
That magic machine enables you to connect with the world in a way that was the subject of science fiction only a few short years ago.
Here you are tuning in to meditations and ideas for your encouragement.
Ideas and reflections being uploaded for your benefit by people whom you have never met.
People who,
Up to now,
Perhaps you never even heard of.
People all offering you support and encouragement from all over the world.
This is all thanks to a world-wide web of communication,
The result of human ingenuity.
The result of cooperation between people on a planetary scale.
Many of you listening to this will be too young to remember the very first satellite,
Sputnik.
Sputnik was launched into orbit around the earth on the 4th of October 1957.
It was a sensational achievement at the time,
Hailed as our artificial moon.
It was launched by the Russians.
Within five years Telstar 1 was launched and it successfully relayed through space the first television pictures.
Telstar provided the first live transatlantic television feed.
But of course the communication was only possible as the satellite passed in line of sight between the transmission and the receiving points on earth.
First people had the idea of what might be possible if we had a string of geostationary satellites.
These would orbit in synchronicity with the earth's rotation.
Suddenly we had a system in place which allowed for reliable global telecommunications.
This array of satellites makes what you are listening to today not only possible but by now routine.
The global positioning system,
Also organised through satellites,
Allows us to find our way around cities and countries with directions.
We even have real time traffic information.
Satellites aid weather forecasting with a greater degree of accuracy than has ever proved possible in the past.
It has turned what was once a big wide world into a global village.
Albert Einstein offers us these words.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead.
His eyes are closed.
As the song says,
What a wonderful world.
Let's pause to allow ourselves time to express appreciation for the miracle of human ingenuity.
Welcome back.
Of course,
Familiarity means that we can take these everyday miracles for granted.
The wonderful fact of our existence.
The web of mutual cooperation through which we are supported by the community of life on earth.
The fact that today we can see in real time what is going on across the world is a real treasure.
Never before have we been able as a global community to understand as one the challenges facing the planet and its 7 billion inhabitants.
We have the means to see and the opportunity to avert a looming crisis,
Climate crisis,
Which we know is caused by our own activities.
We see and we have the means to overcome inequality and the unacceptable hunger and poverty still affecting a huge percentage of the people alive today.
This is a time of hope.
People living today are the first generation to have the knowledge and the combined capacity to make a difference.
We can protect the environment and improve the lives and the fortunes of every person alive.
Knowing the facts is our call to action.
Buddhist practice and religious commitment of any kind calls us to reflection and or prayer,
But it also encourages us then to get up from our sitting,
Up from our knees and work to bring compassion to bear on the situations which we see around us.
The Dalai Lama tells us it is necessary to help others not only in our prayers but in our daily lives.
Let's have another pause.
We might reflect on how we as individuals might play our part,
How we might contribute to the improvement of the lot of the many people who do not share our good fortune.
Welcome back again.
How can we explain the fact that sometimes we are lacking in gratitude for all the benefits with which we are blessed every day?
The fact is that we see and know so much but our inner lives,
Our inner conscience has not kept pace with our outer assets.
Eric Fromm tells us,
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
Admittedly it is a long time since I was young but since I remember it I can claim as a fact that my reminiscences here are within living memory.
I remember a time before television.
It was a bigger world then and we had less information on how the other half lived.
We may have had little but we were content with our lot.
We had no idea that other people had a lot more of the world's goods.
So there was less reason for dissatisfaction.
More than two millennia ago Socrates offered this advice.
He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have.
A downside arising from the communications revolution is that people can now see what other people have.
And in the absence of an inner sense of worth this knowledge often leads to feelings of jealousy and dissatisfaction,
Even personal inadequacy.
Television and communications generally have opened the doors of fancy houses and palaces inhabited by the rich.
We have seen for the first time what life looks like on the surface anyway for those who have made it up the financial ladder.
And then there is the advertising explosion tempting us with all the goods imaginable.
The advertisement suggesting that if only we have this or that new product life will be perfect.
We are suffering from information overload.
So we need to stop and consider what are the real values for which we stand.
Where can we find contentment and lasting happiness?
The Jewish scripture reminds us who is rich,
Those who are happy with their portion.
Now we don't wish to stifle ambition but we do need to put the brakes on our empty consumerism and look for happiness in activities of lasting value.
Benjamin Franklin reminds us,
Contentment makes poor men rich,
Discontent makes rich men poor.
Let's have a final pause to allow us to reflect on our attachments.
Let's consider how letting go of them will help bring peace and happiness to ourselves and to people we meet.
So to sum up,
We are blessed beyond measure in our very existence.
We have benefits which were beyond the imagination of our ancestors.
In our abundance we have been offered the gift of mindfulness and a supportive mindfulness community.
We have these quiet moments in which to come into the present and reflect on our lives motivations.
This gift of mindfulness is something which inspires us to look on the world and its people with compassion.
Mindfulness inspires us to make a difference,
To send out ripples of hope,
Initiating positive action day by day and making our contribution to a better world.
We'll end our reflection with another quote from the Dalai Lama.
We are visitors on this planet.
We are here for one hundred years at the very most.
During that period we must try to do something good,
Something useful with our lives.
If you contribute to other people's happiness you will find the true meaning of life.
So may each of us be inspired to do something good,
Something useful with our lives.
May we contribute to other people's happiness and in so doing may we find the true meaning of life.
Namaste.
