If our mind is not functioning correctly, this will affect everything we do. If our mind feels spacious, we will function better. If we feel tight, negative, critical, we will not be the best person we can be. Buddhism is all about trying to get our mind to function in the healthiest way, you don’t need to be young and physically healthy for this: it comes from mental training.
This modern world has many challenges. It’s very fast-moving and we have very high expectations. There’s a lot of confusion and anxiety, even in young children. From an external point of view, these are the best times human beings have ever lived in; but it still hasn’t addressed the one wish human beings have always had. They just want to be happy. We’re prepared to put up with difficulties as long as it’s moving towards that happiness. We’re all working towards it in different ways: but how successful are we? We have moments, but it’s not enough for the amount of effort we put in. we don’t know anyone who’s happy all the time. Happiness seems illusory and transitory.
Our wishes are always changing, but the one constant is the wish to only experience pleasant feelings. We haven’t fulfilled it, and we’re not sure why not. Buddha taught that happiness is a state of mind that has to be achieved through developing the mind. A happy mind is one that is trained, healthy, and focused. This does not depend upon our external world. Our internal feelings do not always correspond with what’s happening externally. We can be on holiday and anyone looking at us would think how lucky we were, but because negative feelings are ripening we can’t enjoy what’s appearing to us. We judge each other by externals, so we never really know what’s going on. When you get to know people, you realise they have a lot of worries. We are all a bit weird like that? Why? Because we can’t control our feelings from one moment to the next. We can have a diary of externals, but not a diary that tells us when we will feel peaceful. If we could plan our internal world, we would never choose to be miserable.
Buddhism is about being honest with ourselves that we cannot control our mind. We need to make our mind more predictable. Our mistake is trying to control our external world and ignoring our internal world. If everybody controlled their minds, then our external world would function a lot more smoothly. There would be no conflict. That is possible. We grasp at wanting a perfect world and get frustrated when things go wrong, but internally we’re in chaos. So the conclusion we have to come to is that we’re tired of being confused and unhappy. I have spent my life trying to change externals, and it hasn’t worked; now I need to change my mind.
Your internal world changes your perspective: if you have a positive mind, then even if someone is annoying you can feel pleasant towards them. By training to be happy we can take our mind to its highest level. It’s time to take responsibility for our own happiness.
Meditation takes our mind to its highest level. We all have a great capacity, but we have not developed the capacity of our mind because we’ve been too focused on our external world. This is scientific technology to advance our mind. The method to achieve this is to receive teachings and read books, then we contemplate deeply and relate it to our lives. If we agree with it, we try to apply it to our lives. We also spend time in quiet meditation where we cut ourselves off from our external world and develop our internal world. Slowly, this changes our perspectives and intentions. Then we begin to produce pleasant feelings that are not dependent at all on externals. This gives us confidence in what we’re doing. It’s a journey inwards where we learn about our mind, and feed it with positive views. Our mind becomes very calm, and in that there is great power. We start to understand ourselves and our world on a deeper level.