Potentials Inside

When you can calm the mind down and just stay with the breath, you’re creating good energy for yourself and for the people around you, because a still mind sends off good energy. A frazzled mind, the mind that’s running around, sends off a lot of static. So make the energy wholesome. Make it good. Then think thoughts of goodwill for all the people in the world who are suffering right now—and then all the beings in general. After all, we’re all suffering in one way or another. We wish everybody well. May they understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.

Then wish that same thing for ourselves. Look inside. The potentials for genuine happiness are there. It’s just that we have to develop them. So take some time to settle the mind down, and then you begin to see clearly what’s going on inside. But you want to settle it down with a sense of coming in from having done good. When the mind has been doing good things—being generous, being virtuous, extending thoughts of goodwill to everybody—then it’s a lot easier to watch the mind. If you’ve been doing unskillful things, then you don’t want to watch what you’re doing. But when you’re doing skillful things, it’s good to watch. It lifts the mind, lifts the heart. We realize that we have enough resources inside for goodness that we can share with others.

So cultivate these resources well. What does the world have to offer us? There’s gain and there’s loss. There’s status, loss of status. There’s pleasure; there’s pain. Praise and criticism. Aging, illness, death, birth. Aging, illness, death—around, and around, and around. There are potentials out there for us to do good, but the idea of doing good has to come from within, and the energy to do good has to come from within. The potentials are there, so look for them. They’re your nourishment; they’re your sustenance. These are the things that keep you going. So cultivate these inner resources as best you can. You, yourself, will have a good place to stay, and then you’ll have a lot more to offer to the world around you.

In Buddhism there’s the tradition of dedicating merit. When we’ve done something good, we dedicate the merit to all those who’ve passed away. Anybody of those who rejoices in what we’ve done, or approves of what we’ve done, that merit then becomes theirs as well. And your merit is not depleted. In fact, it’s increased. A common image is of lighting candles. You have a candle that’s lit, you light somebody else’s candle, your candle flame is not depleted. And now you’re brighter. You’ve got two candle flames, three, four, five. The whole place gets brighter and brighter. The more you give your goodness away, the more goodness gets reflected back to you, and the more goodness you have welling up from within.

So look to here for your happiness. Look here for your strength. The potentials are there. Fortunately, we have the Buddha who found this path, discovered these truths, and showed us how to do it. Now it’s up to us to do it ourselves.