Music Dear friends,
Welcome to this third and final group of aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path proposed by the Buddha.
As mentioned in earlier parts,
The Eightfold Path consists of practices which are recommended in order to free ourselves from suffering.
The eight headings can be divided into three groupings.
Group one is moral conduct action and right livelihood.
Group two can be described as mental discipline,
Which covers right effort,
Right mindfulness and right concentration.
And the subject of this talk,
Group three,
Which deals with wisdom.
Wisdom comprises two parts,
Namely right understanding and right practice.
In the following four parts,
It will help if you study and consider these eight principles individually.
But these eight suggested virtues and practices are interrelated and they support one another.
And in so far as we can,
We should try to work on them all and attempting that general approach,
We will see that each practice will help the other along.
But before we begin,
Let us take a few moments to bring ourselves to a state of rest.
See if we can let go of the concerns of the day and let us try to provide space for this time of quietness in which our inspiration and motivation can hopefully flourish.
Please make sure that you are in a comfortable position.
You might have a favorite place where you meditate regularly or it might be just a newly found corner where you have taken up the practice.
In any event,
See if you can find a space where you will be undisturbed for the next little while.
So welcome to your quiet space,
The place for this short period.
Whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey,
You are welcome here as we explore together the wisdom as proposed by the Buddha.
Let us take a few deep breaths,
Breathing in and breathing out.
Breathing in breathing out heart.
Breathing in light.
Breathing out heaviness.
Breathing in love.
Breathing out jealousy.
So having worked to bring body and mind into the one place,
Hopefully we have arrived in the here and the now.
And now we're going to take a look at wisdom under its two headings,
Right understanding and right thought.
What do we mean by right understanding?
To achieve right understanding we have to step back to really look at our world and our place in it.
In some amazing way and without any input on our part we have arrived in this existence.
What are we to make of it?
Can we try to understand that happiness is unique?
What are we to contribute to the world?
Looking at our relationships with the people we meet,
Can we ask ourselves what contribution can we make to the sum total of human happiness?
Life passes quickly.
When we come back to look on our lives,
We end up being left undone.
If we were to start over,
What would we be doing differently?
If there is something that springs to mind,
Then why not start over right now while we have the time and the energy to do something about it?
We know that what goes around comes around.
We know that we are not only the victims of our punishment from outside.
It's a matter of observing from within how we feel much better having done the good than the bad,
Having shown kindness rather than selfishness.
In all this we know in our hearts that we reap that we will be the recipients of kindness and goodwill.
If we approach life feeling that everything and everyone is against us,
We are likely to notice the unpleasant things around us and we might even attract them by the negativity that we give off.
Feeling disgruntled,
We notice even more reasons for disgruntlement and when this is noticed we get out of the wrong side of the bed.
Right understanding means noticing our world and our place in it.
Let's take one minute,
60 seconds to quickly look at how through we can reach them like this.
Policeman What did you see from the video?
Yes.
Every day we take these short Welcome back.
And now we take a look at the second aspect of wisdom as proposed by the Buddha,
Right thought.
In the end our thoughts determine who we will become.
In the Dhammapada we are told,
Speak and act from unwise thoughts and sorrow will follow you as surely as the wheel follows the ox who draws the cart.
Speak and act from wise thoughts and happiness will follow you as closely as your shadow.
Unshakable.
If we stop for a while we will notice the stream of thoughts that pass through our minds all the time.
Notice how the deluge hardly ever stops.
Often our thoughts are replays of past events,
The good and the bad.
At other times our thoughts are focused on the future,
Sometimes daydreaming,
Sometimes looking forward with dread,
Anticipating the worst even though we know from past experiences that the worst seldom comes about at all.
Now we do need to learn lessons from the past,
Looking back in grateful appreciation,
Looking back and thinking how we can do better next time.
We need to plan now for the future,
But these activities should be based on present moment focus and present moment action,
In other words an active focus on how we can do something now about the matter that is the subject of our thought.
Our thoughts are the guardians of the gateway to our minds and the gateway to our actions.
Therefore we must work to see that the thoughts we entertain are for the benefit of ourselves and the people with whom we come in contact.
Just think of the practice of loving kindness,
How we begin by thinking of ourselves and repeating a mantra such as,
May I be well,
May I be happy,
May I be at peace.
And then we move on to someone dear to us and we offer the same mantra in their respect.
First we move through different classes of people,
Those we know vaguely,
Then those with whom we have difficulties and in relation to whom we might even harbour feelings of positive dislike.
And finally we look out over the whole world,
Offering it the blessings of peace and happiness and wellness.
This exercise and the good feelings which it produces is a counterbalance to any negative feelings which we may have.
We learn to nip these negativities in the bud so that negative actions which follow from negative thoughts will not get off the ground.
We water the seeds of goodness within us and we encourage the good seeds to flourish.
We allow the weeds of selfishness to wither through lack of attention.
It all begins with our thoughts,
Our right thoughts.
So may your time of reflection encourage you day by day in all aspects of the Buddha's Eightfold Path.
May you be inspired to practise moral conduct through right speech,
Right action,
Right livelihood.
May you be strengthened by mental discipline,
Encouraging you in right effort,
Right mindfulness,
Right concentration.
And may you be open to the gift of wisdom.
May you benefit the world through your practise of right understanding and right thought.
All this will not be achieved in a day,
A week or even a year.
This is the work of a lifetime.
But life comes to us in manageable chunks.
A day,
An hour,
A minute at a time.
So as these little pieces of time are gifted to us,
May all of us do our best to use them with the basic attitude of goodness and kindness in mind.
That cannot do any harm at all.
Faithfully followed,
It will amount in time to a lifetime of goodness.
May it be so for you,
For me,
For all of us.
Namaste.
