In this episode, a Buddhist monk shares the benefits of being other focused vs self focused. Focusing on one self oftentimes can leave us unhappy and unfulfilled. In this podcast we discuss why focusing on the other or developing an other focused mind opens us up to happiness and a more fulfilled life.

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Welcome to another episode of the today dreamer

podcast, where we explore through conversational space ways in which

to develop our practice of presence.

Integrating dreaming and doing into being in service of a blossoming

of the emergent world story.

This is why the show is alive.

And it's here for you.

This conversation is also here for you.

A little while ago.

I met up actually quite a while ago.

I met up with a Buddhist monk to talk about life.

Yeah.

People have just from all over the world, really engaged with that conversation

and found a lot of value from it.

So I decided to meet up again with the same Buddhist monk, uh, again,

Don king from the Cadabra meditation center in Monbulk Victoria, Australia.

Yeah.

And we had a conversation about the true path to happiness.

And this is that conversation.

Before we do get into things.

Uh, I'd like to just share for everyone out there that is finding

some value from these conversations and feels like they are ready to

deepen their connection with the show and take things to the next level.

The number one way you can support the show and the number one way you

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metastatic station center.

Um, so you can check out more of this stuff more, the video is more, they work

in the show notes section of this episode.

What else is there to say?

Well, I don't think there is too much else before getting into

things, but I would like to.

Share that there will be a special guided meditation.

So please, uh, stay through to the end of this episode.

And if you haven't already click the subscribe button, hit

the little notification bell.

If you're watching on YouTube, let's, um, let's take a breath together before

moving into the conversational space.

So I'd like to invite you now, wherever you are amongst whatever's been going

on in your day to just pause if it feels right, gently close your eyes now.

So we can do that together.

Just began by slowly, yet, naturally taking a deep breath in through the

nose and into the depths of your belly.

It's kind of a slow as naturally possible.

I mean, enjoy the feeling, the subtleties of the breath.

Take your time with it.

Whenever you reach the peak.

Just pause for a moment.

Now, anything that's happened to just float away, calming the

mind and easing any tension.

When you feel called the deuce.

Gracefully exhale on the way out, further releasing any tension from the body.

My

also take your time with this part.

When you get to the bottom, the exhale, you can pause for a moment there as well.

When you're ready, my eyes to gently open

let's get into this conversation.

Great.

So from, just from what you were saying, I guess most people

that journeying through life and to fulfill their own wishes, that's, that's

a default position for most people.

So when Buddha taught, he said, all living beings have one principle aspiration,

which is to make themself happy, not just the happiness of, um, enjoyments,

but, but deep and lasting eternal, uh, happiness without any suffering ever.

And that's a principle aspiration of each and every living being now, um,

we all set out in life to fulfill that wish to fulfill the wish I want to.

I want true and deep and everlasting pure happiness, but the very nature

of that wish is self-focused.

I.

Want to be happy, but, but also taught that focusing on oneself is

the greatest obstacle to being, to fulfilling a wish, to be truly happy.

And so at some point, and you mentioned earlier the inflection point at some

point in our spiritual and emotional development, maybe with the help

of meeting a spiritual guide or a spiritual teacher, at some point, we

realize that to fulfill that wish for ourself to be happy, we have to abandon

the wish for ourself to be happy and instead wish for others to be happy.

And so we start to the journey.

If you like, from one point of view, is this journey from a self-focused.

To an other focus place.

And as I was saying earlier, then perhaps the analogy that you, that

you could use to describe that is if you were trying to start a fire with

two sticks, I've never been able to do this, but apparently this is possible

that you rub two sticks together.

And I was never really a boy scout, but you rubbed the two sticks together

and eventually you'll make a fire.

But what do you do with the sticks?

The sticks are they're thrown into the fire in a similar way.

When we begin to understand that true and lasting happiness is

found in our love of others.

The self-focus motivation that if you like took us to that

realization is consumed by that love.

So we no longer have any self, um, concern.

We ha we only have other concern and it's only then that we

will realize what happiness.

Until then we will always be deceived by a notion of happiness that is, as we

talked about last time, as a notion of happiness, that may arguably be actually

just suffering, disguised as happiness.

Um, and, and how is that?

Well, this notion of this notion of happiness that is suffering

disguises, happiness is the reduction of a previous problem.

So for example, if I'm lonely and I develop attachment to

having a relationship, then it w the, the relationship will look

like happiness, but it's not.

It's a reduction of my previous problem of loneliness.

Many people get into a relationship thinking it will fulfill that wish

used to be happy, and they think, oh my gosh, I wish I was alone.

Or I wish my partner would take up a hobby.

I wish they'd go out because that's not the happiness is a feeling.

Uh, uh, peaceful, feeling a feeling that the rights from a peaceful mind

and ultimately focusing on ourselves always make us feel unpeaceful and

focusing on others, because it opens the mind would always give us peace.

You could divide meditation into, to contemplation, otherwise

known as analytical meditation.

And then the second type is placement meditation, which is a single pointedness

of mind in the Buddhist tradition.

We say that both have to be disciplined.

We won't reach our spiritual destination by just closing our eyes and allowing

the mind to wonder, even though, even though we may be wandering around very

meaningful topics about the nature of reality and the purpose of life and,

uh, how to fulfill our deepest wishes.

The meditative journey of contemplation and meditation

still has to be very disciplined.

And so one must have an idea of the objective and then the analytical

meditation, or the contemplation becomes a purposeful internal investigation, which

is always taking us towards our objective.

So for example, in this discussion so far, we're talking about the

idea that if I love others, I will fulfill my wishes to be happy.

So then we have to then take that a bit deeper by understanding.

Well, okay.

At the moment, there's a lot of emphasis on the thought I want

to be happy, so focused mind.

And so what is that mine?

And why does it need to be abandoned?

What is its nature and what are the faults of the mind and so on.

So then you might sit in contemplation considering what, for as long as I

want myself to be happy, I will start placing value on the things around

me that appear to give me pleasant feelings or appear to make me happy.

I will lower the value of things that appear indifferent to me.

And I may even start to reject the things that look like.

They might interfere with my happiness and cause me a problem.

And this has many, we would contemplate this in meditation

for as long as I'm focusing on my focusing on myself, I'm going to want

to draw towards me certain things.

I'm going to have a cold indifference towards many things, and I'm

going to want to push away other things now to start a fire.

It's not a stretch of the imagination to then think, well, if I, if I develop

these thoughts, I will naturally begin to crave certain things.

I will naturally begin to the anger or hatred towards other things.

And the result of this is that my mind is going to start doing this because

it'll be like life on the ocean waves.

I'm going to start bopping about on uncontrolled, emotional feelings that have

been determined by the way, I'm projecting my reality through craving and hatred.

And so on.

Many people think that the world around them, uh, exists inherently.

You know, I see a nice thing.

I feel good, but what's happening is because of the self-focus mind,

our S our pleasant feelings with respect to something, make it look.

Rather than it being inherently good.

That's why some people fall in love with certain people who others detest.

It's not the reality is not, it's not entirely objective.

It's subjective.

So if we were meditating on this, we'd think deep but deeply, we think,

well, um, what, what's the real worst excesses of a cell focused mind.

And then we start realizing, um, things like addiction, you know,

things like selfish behavior arguments and this harmony in the world.

And then we look at the global effect of everybody's selfishness and we can

see what, what happens in the world.

And we start thinking, this is point isn't it deeper, deeper, deeper.

This is a poisonous mind.

Um, then you might argue in your own contemplation and

you might object what I want.

Confidence, self esteem.

And so I need to focus on myself.

I need to focus on my good qualities, but then we can say, well, it's not out of

self-confidence or self-esteem that we get driven to the depths of alcoholism.

We, we give up our responsibilities or we, what was pain to someone because

we've developed anger, none of this leads to self-confidence herself,

steam, and then we can then much more naturally reach a conclusion I'm going

to love other, because we've had analyze very deeply what it is we're trying

to abandon and why we're trying to do it, Tane what we want to attain.

And if we do that in a very strict way, following these,

this controlled right word.

Yeah.

Controlled contemplation, purposeful investigation.

In our mind, we will then reach a single pointedness, almost a sense of liberation.

I would love for others.

I'm now free from selfish concern and it feels good.

And then we can use our imagination.

If we then imagine our mind space to be filled of all living beings.

And we transform our whole heart into the wish, may they all be happy?

And personally, I like to then imagine that my wish has some power and the,

in my imagination, I see them begin to smile and that feeds back into the

meditation because it makes it, it gives my meditation more confidence.

And then as we meditate on this, we can call it wishing love, wishing

up our mind become single pointed.

And then we get into the idea of what mindfulness is.

Once the mind is single pointed in this case on love, the ability to hold that.

Without any wondering now the conservation is finished, so no more wondering no more.

Um, considering other things we need to hold the experience of love

moment to moment to moment to moment.

And that holding is, is done by what we call in Buddhism.

Mindfulness.

Now mindfulness is really popular word.

Everybody's talking about mindfulness.

It's like the poster word for perhaps a multi-billion dollar spiritual

movement, but nobody really knows what it is like if we were to, if someone's

practicing mindfulness and we say, say to them, um, okay, well give me

a explanation of what mindfulness is.

People have many ideas, some people say, oh, it's just watching a thoughts

or being aware of your feelings.

Maybe letting your mind go blank.

But mindfulness is a, is it a term.

To describe a part of the mind, which we call mental factor or mental function.

It's the part of the mind that functions to remember what's a hold.

So if you're somebody who, who constantly loses their keys or leave

things in the pocket of an airplane, you know, if we're a person who forgets

things, then, then we, we are someone whose mindfulness is not very strong.

Someone who has a good, sharp memory, they have good mindfulness.

Mindfulness is like a muscle in the mind that can be trained like any muscle,

you know, like if you go to the gym and you, you keep lifting weights,

you will strengthen your muscles.

So by training in single pointedness, our mindfulness is becoming strong.

So mindfulness is not a practice as such.

Mindfulness is just the part of the mind that has the ability to hold

single pointedly and to remember.

So if in this case, we're meditating on this love, nice feeling, warm,

warm, heart arises, feeling of being close to all living beings.

Um, ho ho whole mind is pervaded by the wish may they be happy?

And then that whole experience is being held.

Single-pointed the moment to moment to moment to moment for one of them

or less for one of them more Buddhist expression, it's like killing two birds.

Of course we don't kill anything in Buddhism, but the, the ability to hold

that feeling is not only improving our happiness, the happiness of love, but

it's also strengthening our mindful.

So that we become sharper, clearer, more focused, more ability to remember

more ability to make spiritual progress, their ability to control

our emotions, overcoming emotional problems, or coming from a strong mind

or coming from exercising mindfulness.

So we can do this moment to moment to moment holding in meditation.

This feeling of love.

Please jump in at any point, if I'm talking too much, Michael,

but we, we meditate like this.

And then we go through a complete internal transformation of the

person we are, because our ability to hold that experience is changing

who we are because we begin as a person who's focused on themselves.

But through this chat, this holding these experiences in

meditation for a discipline, very controlled, very structured.

What is what comes out.

The other end of the meditation is a brand new person, because what is

a person just in that label, but the thought, I, you say the thought, um,

the thought me is the label given to the collection of my body, which is a machine.

And my mind should my mind be pervaded by love, then the thought I isn't, I who

is happy, an I that cherishes others.

We wake up in the mornings.

I am happy because that I is a label given principally to a mind that's

pervaded by good feelings coming from LA.

And that's only the beginning really, because eventually is there's

limitless possibility as to who we can become, which is ultimately

Buddhahood complete, fully enlightened.

Yeah, the potentiality

is quite interesting in itself, but

I'm drawn to the, I guess the significance of the initial ambition,

this idea of, um, be motivated by

selfishness, some, some clarity and

some contemplation on what the ambition is.

And they're all almost seems to be a sense of,

um,

you know, see this time and time again with this

idea of a feeling and you know, that word's also quite loaded, but feeling,

um, a sense of love and then within your practice and then taking that

feeling and holding it, um, and maybe applying it in different ways with

like, um, as a mental exercise and then.

You know, how does that fit into, how does that within your

practice fit into your life?

And like you mentioned, they kind of feed into one another and there's this

kind of spiraling process that goes on.

But I think the initial ambition and exploring that, um, seems

like a significant thing to do.

Seems like, and, and then even like revisiting what our ambition is and,

and checking in with that, cause that seems to develop and change.

I feel, um, maybe, maybe not the exact ambition, sometimes it would be, but

it's also, uh, the words or the language we use to describe what that is.

When you say ambition, do you mean, do you mean,

what is it we want from life or.

What is it where we're going or what do we wish for, or what, when or

why do we become a spiritual person?

Or why do we enter the spiritual?

Michael Barticel (Host):

I think all of that.

Michael Barticel (Host):

And, um, and yeah, like what is the motivation behind what we're doing?

Michael Barticel (Host):

Um, what's the,

you know,

Michael Barticel (Host):

what are we doing here?

Michael Barticel (Host):

And, and, and why are we doing any of this?

Um, that's a big question.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean just the, just the motivation of, of most people and I guess I'm

generalizing, but there are, there are many altruistic people in this world who

are striving to find a way of bringing great benefit to others and to this world.

Um, but at risk of generalizing, most people's ambition is

just, I want to be happy.

I think I want to be happy.

And it's, it is.

Depending on what appears in one's life and what various conditions arise.

It is finally that ambition, which is arguably selfish.

You know, I just want to be happy, but it is that motivation that finally will

lead people to realize to the, to the realization, if I'm going to be able to

do this, then I need to completely change.

Um, I need to completely change in a very profound way as part of your question.

I mean, it's the, why are we here?

Thing?

I mean, it's, it is related to a huge question.

Why are we here?

What is the meaning of life now?

If, if in terms of the meaning of life, if I'm principle, aspiration

is everlasting happiness and we find, or our subsequent wishes.

Are in line with that principle aspiration.

And since our main wish in our life is to be happy.

And we find a life that fulfills that wish then arguably, and we can go, we'll

go deeper into this in a moment, but on a, just on a surface level, if my wish

is to find everlasting happiness, and I find the means to fulfill that wish,

then I found the meaning of my life.

Well, we have to understand what is the lasting happiness.

And we need to probably go a bit deeper on that because I once gave that said

this in a teaching and later somebody who attended the teaching began to

fail that surfing was a virtue because for him surfing in his mind was the

source of everlasting happiness.

So in his mind, he said, I found the meaning of life because I go so.

But if surfing was really a true source of the hub of happiness, then the

more you sir, the happy you'd become.

But in reality, after about four hours, your body will start to

tell you that's enough, maybe six hours, maybe eight hours.

Maybe it's eventually, it's going to start to hurt.

Moreover, if, if surfing was where happiness came from, what would you do

if you lost the ability to it became sick and you lost the ability to surf?

Well, you became too old.

You'd be crushed.

If you felt that was a true source of happiness, you spiral into depression.

Therefore that's an incorrect statement.

So then we could say, okay, well, you would expect me to say, because

I'm a Buddhist monk in a piece is the true source of happiness,

therefore meditation choose.

Or that you'd expect me to say that.

But if, if you, um, new, even in your efforts to find happy, maybe

you found some peace, but if you knew that at some point in the future, you

still have the potential to suffer.

And you knew that even while you're enjoying your inner

peace, so-called inner peace.

And anyway, whether it's the softwaring of aging or this unknown sickness that

you may develop may develop terminal cancer, terminal illness, or just the

death process, even though you may be enjoying a peaceful mind and at a very

low level in your heart, we know as human beings that these things are coming and

so deep down there will be a low level anxiety that interferes with that peace.

And therefore we need an even greater.

If we are to find a meaning of life, we need an even greater spiritual

ambition to find permanent liberation.

Now what that is and how to do that.

So is it maybe discussion?

We have a bit later, but in terms of, so say you find that say you

actually developed such profound peace for realizing whatever.

Like last time we discussed the nature of cell, say we discover such a profound

piece that Def will no longer cause us a problem, but you then realize in

your heart and the depth of your ex, your ex, your meditation, the people

you love are still suffering, or they're still going to suffer again.

You can't say you found lasting happiness because it's very difficult

to be able to say, I am truly happy in the knowledge that people you

love still have potential for sex.

And eventually, of course, if we get the first meditation,

right, that'd be everybody.

So even, even the strength of mind that stops us, fearing death is not enough.

It's not real everlasting eternal happiness, because otherwise

it'd be like being imprisoned.

It'd be like, we were in prisons with our mother.

We found a way out, but we left our mother.

You know, we we'd never be able to live with ourselves.

If we got out of this situation where we were in prison or I'm free.

I found my liberation you'd know in the back of your

mind, you left your mum there.

So in a similar way, if we are to find the highest levels of happiness, finally,

we need to dedicate our own being in this world to the liberation of everyone.

It doesn't mean we necessarily achieve.

In our life, although how wonderful, if we do, we achieve a state of

mind that can draw everybody to the same state, how wonderful.

But if we are using that as our trajectory through life, I'm working for the

benefit of each and every living being, then I think you could find the true

meaning of life and true happiness.

And I think that's where it lies in that hugely altruistic,

deeply compassionate space.

How'd you do it?

That's a big question.

How did you, yeah.

Yeah, it's

almost, it seems as though in some sense that it

may be like an impossible task, but it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be striped

for precisely know.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

Because it's not about, it's not about your actions.

It's about who you feel you are in terms of perfect mental stability and

inner peace and emotional strength.

It's it's to know what I up, I abide in this world for the sake of all beings.

I mean, that's a tremendous source of self-confidence.

Um, it's a self confidence that comes from not having a self, you know, no ego.

It's just, Hmm.

I'm just striving to become a force of good.

Of course.

If you could misunderstand that you could become hugely ego mystical.

Couldn't it.

I am a force for good and as well, it's, it's a much, it's a selfless state whereby

the mind has just become a servant.

It's much more lowest of all than highest of all.

There's traps, peppered within everywhere.

Um, you know, is a good expression.

They're all indeed.

Everywhere.

Yeah.

Um,

so what's coming to me at the moment is this idea

of we've spoken a lot about happiness.

The, the words being used a lot of times, um, and suffering seems to be

different types of suffering and different ways to navigate within suffering.

And what's come clear to me what seems to be the case, um, over the

last year or so, is this idea of, uh, sinking into suffering to, to enable

us to, uh,

find compassion for others by recognizing the similarities

and to overcome,

or kind of move into and through,

um, instead of.

Away from, and, you know, distract ourselves, but it

seems like a very difficult thing to do.

It seems like the most difficult thing to do.

And the thing that, you know, from a primal sense, we don't, we kind of

trying to stay away from, or there's like this innate fear or this kind of,

uh, tension, you know, it's almost like

going

into our suffering or scuff, the

suffering more skillfully

suffering skillfully.

It's it's a great term.

Yeah.

It's a difficult thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It could do a course how to suffer skill for me.

Yeah.

I don't know how popular many people would take that.

I can.

I think it's about it's about clarity and discipline in order to

be able to determine exactly what is.

Suffering to be able to really hone in on what is suffering.

Because again, a lot of people feel that suffering is the theater that's sort of,

um, that the sufferings of response to.

So it, when, when Buddha taught, he said the very essence of any problem

is pain, painful feeling in the mind, painful feeling and that everything

that we believe to be suffering is really just the circumstances that

are triggering the painful feelings.

And so, but as human beings, we often say, well, my suffering

is, is the circumstances.

And so we devote a lot of time and energy to trying to navigate the circumstances,

but we never devote any time and energy to being able to control the feelings.

And so, as a result, we never free ourselves from suffering, which

is find ourselves going from.

So-called source of suffering to another.

And that also in terms of, I think what you were getting at was using our

suffering to have compassion for others.

It also becomes more difficult to do that because we haven't clarified what

is suffering very clearly for ourself.

Um, just to take a lighthearted example, once I was teaching in, um, in new south

Wales and Newcastle lake Macquarie, and that day I'd met a lady who was

renovating her investment property.

So she had a home and then she had this other property and, uh,

she couldn't decide what floor to put in the investment property.

And it caused her huge emotional distress to the point where she was, um, in tears.

Now that night, when I was giving the talk.

Um, I used her as an example, and somebody hack or like someone

shouted out in the group and said, well, she deserves to suffer.

So suggesting that, you know, this is someone who's wealthy, got everything

and she's become some miserable over a floor or she deserved to suffer.

And I thought it was very interesting because maybe for that person changing

a floor is makes no difference.

It's, uh, it's menial.

It's, uh, it's, it's stupid.

But what you can't do is say that that woman's suffering was not real, but

that person was really suffering just because the person in the crowd wouldn't

have found those circumstances enough to trigger emotional pain, they cannot deny.

But this other person is in pain and therefore that person couldn't

have compassion for that lady because this person is not really

understanding what is suffering.

How do we get

Michael Barticel (Host):

from that point of, okay.

Michael Barticel (Host):

Even if this person was to realize that, you know, this

Michael Barticel (Host):

lady was suffering from her own

delusions,

how do we move past the realization to the

felt, experience and match things up so we can kind of sync up and feel

into, uh, the suffering of the other person, even though it's not ours.

And even though we wouldn't suffer in the same circumstance because

you know, it's

just flooring.

Well, you know, um, we don't have to wait

very long until we experienced that.

Suffering.

I mean, suffering does tend to befall us fairly effortlessly.

I mean, how happiness eludes us suffering comes with our choice.

So what we have to do is if we're going to learn this empathy, we have to

start to, and this is where I think you were going with suffering skillfully.

I think we have to start to use our own suffering more.

For example, if something goes wrong in our life and we ourselves start to

experience some emotional problem, the compassionate practitioner will use the

suffering that we're experiencing as an example of the suffering of others.

Like for example, um, some pain comes up in some difficulty in our life and

we express with some painful feeling.

If we sit down, not do not be afraid of the feeling, just allow the feeling

to be in our mind, but then recognize.

But there are millions of people who have the same problem and the same pain,

but probably a lot worse than we have.

Now.

What happens the mechanics of this process are that it's not that we suddenly

become this altruistic, compassionate person, great being I am, because I'm

now thinking of other now what's actually happening is that we're developing a

certain perspective of our problem.

It becomes reduced in the light of the fact that there are millions and

millions of people who are drowning in the same problem, but a lot

worse except we know what they're going through because we have it.

So if we start to understand as this, as we, as the mind opens, and as our

perspective begins to change that new perspective causes this pain

to reduce just through perspective.

Now as this develops, it can then become a wish or may actually

let me just think about this.

May, may they be free because they're millions and I'm one.

And th the, a few moments of bad feeling in the mind of one living being is not

a catastrophe in the light of the same emotional feelings in the minds of

millions and millions of living beings.

Suddenly we feel like a grain of sand on a beach and everything reduces the

pain, reduces the self focus, mind reduces the other focus, mind opens up

the perspective changes, and this process alone starts to give rise to inner peace.

Then the wish for them to be free, then feelings of compassion,

then huge happiness coming.

As a result of this experience, I've almost had

the opposite experience happened.

Yeah.

The pain goes up and the happiness

goes down in a

sense, I think this is common.

This is common, but there is sometimes a huge mistake that we make where

we mix compassion with rejection.

So instead of completely opening our heart to the thought this suffering

is happening, may it sees, we started in, it's hard to recognize

we subtly develop the thought.

I don't want this to be happening, which is an aspect of anger

because it's a rejection.

And for as long as we have, even just an aspect of anger, we will

crush ourselves emotionally.

I think

that may have happened, but it felt more like

an acceptance of the fee.

And it was like

almost too intense to hold the pain and the suffering

of others, but there's must be a there's must be a

contradiction between an acceptance and a feeling of, of it being too much.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Yes.

I mean, I, this, he used to teach in Glebe in Sydney

and, uh, and there was a lady that is to assist the class, used to help me.

And the one day we were talking about compassion and she said,

um, she said, though, every month I do my compassionate things.

You said, I subscribe to the RSPC magazine.

She said that this is my it's different to your situation because

I can see that you're a deep thinker.

And I think she was a little bit more on the surface.

Anyway, she sent them, she said, this is my compassionate action.

This is what I do each, each year.

Mum.

And she said, but I will never open the magazine.

And I said, well, why would you not open it?

We buy this magazine.

Why do you not open it?

She said, because the suffering is too much for me.

I don't want to see it.

Of course, I wouldn't say this to her, but when I contemplated and

reflected on that situation, I realized that that wasn't compassion.

It was a rejection of the suffering and then a kind of a kind of, um,

transaction to pay her own conscience off.

So I don't want to see the suffering, but here's some money you see,

rather than I have to accept.

There is an awful lot of suffering in this world.

It is tremendous amount of suffering, but I need to know this because

my ambition, as we talked about earlier is to be a force for healing.

So it almost becomes motivation as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

That kind of ties back in quite nicely.

Yeah.

It's a good question.

It's a good point.

Yeah.

So there is a meditation, there is a book actually, which a lot

of these topics you can read about which you can download for free.

Um, it's called how to transform your life is the name of the book.

And it's written by my teacher, my spiritual guide.

Yep.

and, but it's available for everybody for free and there's a

website called how to tyl.com and all these things we've discussed.

You can.

In the book on how to meditate on them, but in there's a really simple, really

beautiful meditation about where he explained that all of our daily problems

and all of our unhappiness and lack of happiness and the greatest obstacle

to our happiness arises from wishing ourselves to be happy all the time.

And he said, if we practice stopping this wish, so it's a practice, the

practice of stopping the wish for myself to be happy all the time.

And instead wish for others to be happy all the time.

We will have no experience of suffering or problems.

And he says at all, it's a big call.

Yeah.

No experience of suffering.

At all.

And he said, we can see from this, that the real source of all of our

problems is the uncontrolled desire.

Wishing ourselves to be happy all the time.

So I thought it'd be nice.

We can meditate on that.

We do it in two stages.

We'll imagine we've stopped the wish for ourselves to be happy all the time.

And then we'll start almost like this cloud is lifted off our shoulders.

Like we're off the hook.

The SA the servitude has come to an end.

We're no longer a slave to our desire.

Just be in the quietude of that experience.

We can then gently turn our mind to others and see if we can hold a

feeling of love moments, a moment, practice mindfulness as well.

Should we try it?

Let's do it.

All right.

So comfortable posture straight back, hands in your lap.

No, your eyelids

drop, drop your shoulders.

Breathe gently through your nose.

And just to bring yourself into the present, just focus on the sensation

of the breath for a minute or so,

the cooler as you inhale and the warmer, softer sensation as you exhale.

If we practice stopping

wishing for ourselves to be happy all the time.

And instead

wish for others to be happy all the time.

We will have no experience of suffering, um, problems at all.

So firstly, imagine

that your wish to be happy all the time.

Let's see.

Yeah.

The mind becomes completely still and present no longer craving searching

and enjoy this mental peace for a couple of minutes.

I imagine.

In the vast space of your mind, you see all living beings

and consider how deeply they long to be happy

and saying how wonderful if they could be at peace.

How wonderful if they could experience everlasting happiness,

transform your whole heart.

Into this wish.

May they be happy?

Imagine your wish has real power.

Then you'd begin to see them smile peacefully.

Hold this wish and a warm heart feeling of being close to.

Moment to moment to moment,

enjoy and transform your whole mind.

In your, in your own time.

Begin to

relax your meditation,

come back to your breath.

Well, the mind is, should be relaxed, peaceful, and just focusing on the breath.

Cool.

Does your inhale the warmer, softer sensation as you actually.

And without losing any feelings of love, any feelings of peace can rise

from the meditation when you feel.

So I think the important thing is, is as you incorporate this kind of

meditation into your life externally, we don't need to change too much.

In the beginning, we just take this peaceful feeling

and then we take it into life.

So we can still go for a coffee with our friends, but for us, the

happiness is not coming from the core.

But I love for a friend or experience we're having from within.

And we just understand that there is a conventional basis for interaction.

So externally remain natural in so externally, ordinary,

and internally, extra ordinary.

And then in that way we can bring it together like a union of our spiritual

development without causing any problems or worry in other people, uh, and

just fits in quite nicely into the modern world, even though the bottom

world is getting crazier by the month.

Hmm.

You mentioned the

picturing that by holding that feeling sense that

spreading the happiness across the, I

was picturing stars as people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, you know, the effect that that's actually having.

I think that it

does.

Absolutely.

Yeah, because we're going to discuss last time.

Reality is, and we touched on it earlier.

Reality is not as objective as we have always believed.

We know that even on a basic level from the fact that when our mind changes,

things look different, you know, people look more attractive to a beautiful

mind than they do to an unpleasant mind.

And so you simply cannot deny that when one meditates on the wish all beings

to be happy, that that is not bringing goodness into this world, it would

be an extreme to deny that I think.

Mm Hmm.

Thank you for tuning into this episode

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