A Framework for the Day

We start out the morning with a chanting, and so we’ve created the right frame for the day. We have the chants on the brahmavihāras, chants on paying respect to the Triple Gem.

What does the Triple Gem mean to us? Well, the fact of the Buddha’s life, the fact of his awakening, means that we live in a world where the way to the end of suffering has been found and has been taught. That event should reorient our lives. Otherwise, we’re oriented in line with whatever the politics are of the day may be, whatever the mood of the day, whatever the media has to tell us about what’s going on in the world. That creates the wrong frame, because they’re telling us that the most important things in the world are what other people are doing someplace else.

The Buddha says No. It’s what you’re doing right now that really makes a difference.

We have this opportunity to practice. We have his teachings. So you want to make the most of them during the day. Reflect on what the Buddha had to say about where our suffering comes from. It doesn’t come from other people. It doesn’t come from the society outside. The Buddha himself lived in an imperfect society, but even then he said that the problem comes from inside. So things haven’t changed today.

Sometimes we hear people saying that they want to improve on Buddhism and locate the sources of suffering outside. But that’s putting the problem outside of your control. When you start trying to straighten out the world outside, you’re going to have to come into conflict with others because they have their ideas about what the world should be like. Whereas if you want to straighten out your own mind, there’s no conflict with anyone outside. The only conflict is within your own mind, with your own defilements. And that, the Buddha says, is a battle that can be won.

So he left his Dhamma behind. And he trained the Sangha, the monastic Sangha as a way of keeping the Dhamma alive, keeping it alive in line with the basic principles of the Dhamma. We try to live in harmony. We try to live with goodwill for one another, sharing right view, sharing the same precepts, being generous with one another. It’s within that atmosphere that the Dhamma thrives. When it gets turned into a product out in the marketplace—which is what the world tries to do—then it just becomes another commodity. But here it’s more of a quality of the heart.

So think about that every time you chant the chants in the morning. Get the mind in the right frame.

We conclude with the chants on the brahmavihāras, reminding ourselves that in searching for our own happiness, we’re not doing it in a way that’s neglecting other people. We’re being responsible in the way we look for happiness, in that we want to make sure that nobody else gets harmed. You might say, “Keep your eye on your breath, and nobody gets harmed.” Like one of those threats they make in the cop movies.

Keep your eye on the breath. Realize that if you’re going to find happiness, it’s going to be within. It’s one of the reasons we have the eight precepts here, so that instead of looking for pleasure outside in pleasures of the senses, we direct our attention inside.

So try to keep your mind in the right framework as you go through the day, so that the meditation is not just one more thing you add to your daily schedule. Let it inform the values that you have as you go through the day.

For the next couple days, we’re going to have a lot of work here. So look at that as an opportunity to be generous. And remember to observe the precepts. Observe the principles of right speech as we interact with one another. In that way, the work is not going to become an interference with the practice. It becomes a way that we can learn how to take the practice and apply it in all sorts of situations. So keep the right framework in mind and it’ll see you through.