Seeds of Gladness

We live in this world of aging, illness, death, separation. And there’s a lot of pain that goes with that. The Buddha doesn’t have us deny the pain, but at the same time, he doesn’t have us stay there. He says the proper response to the pain of aging, illness, and death, and separation is to get a sense of confidence that there must be a way out, a conviction in the sense that it has to be done through your own actions. You have that within your power to find the way out.

So you develop skillful actions by being generous, by being virtuous—making the sacrifices that have to come with generosity and virtue and gaining a sense of self-worth that comes from that, a sense of your own honorableness. That can provide the sense of well-being. In other words, you look for well-being in the skillfulness of your own actions. You take that as the basis for getting the mind into concentration.

All too often we think, “Well I’m going to get the mind concentrated so that I can have a sense of well-being.” But you have to have some well-being first. Otherwise, your attitude towards well-being and the concentration is going to be very grasping. But if you’re coming from a sense of self-worth—that you are a good person, you have goodness inside you—that can provide a sense that it is a good place to settle down right here, right now. Then, from that, you can use the breath to nurture that sense of well-being and let it grow.

There has to be a seed. We want the plant, but if we don’t have a seed, the plant’s not going to come. So the seed is there in the sense of well-being that comes from the goodness of your actions. Then you nurture that seed, get a sense of even more self-confidence inside, realizing that this is where the real work has to be done, inside the mind.

Otherwise, we’re going to keep on coming back to this world of aging, illness, death, and separation, and having to go through this all over again—again and again,and again. And how many “agains” have we been through? Probably, there must be somebody who can count them some place, but it’d be a hard number to fathom. But we can put a stop to the process. And, as the Buddha said, it’s not nothingness when you put a stop to the process. There’s a great sense of even greater well-being.

So the good news is to be found in your own actions, in your own mind. As for the world, it’s an imperfect place, but we can develop perfections of the mind in that imperfect world if we have the right attitude. It starts by trying to be as skillful as possible in your actions as you can. Everything else that’s good builds on top of that.