Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

ordain, how many people looked at you like you were crazy,
or even abandoned you completely? How many people have
you heard say: “monks are useless,” “meditators are wasting
their time,” “living a peaceful life is a selfish thing to do,”
and so on? Many people have the opportunity, but would
never think of even attending a meditation course, let alone
becoming a monk or dedicating their lives to meditation
practice.
That’s certainly something worthy of rejoicing; rejoicing
about how lucky we are just having this mind. It’s not really
up to “us”, is it? It’s not like we chose to have this mind, and
yet suddenly our mind says: “I want to become a monk” or “I
want to go meditate.” It’s kind of funny really because it’s
not like we chose to have such a mind. It’s not like other
people chose to have the mind that didn’t want to do such
things. We cultivated this. Somehow we managed to,
almost accidentally, get something right. We should feel
happy about that and rejoice in it. How wonderful it is to
have this wonderful mind that wants to meditate, that wants
me to devote my life to the Buddha’s teachings.
Of course, we don’t want to feel proud or gloat about it, but
we can at least feel happy about it, encouraged by it. We
can feel confidence and encouragement. When you need
encouragement you should think like this – “I’m not a
horrible person, I’m not a useless person, I may not be the
best meditator but at least I want to meditate. At least I do
meditate.” This is the third blessing that we have, that we
should be happy about and rejoice over.
The fourth blessing to rejoice over is that we have actually
taken the opportunity when it presented itself. As the
Buddha said:
appakā te sattā ye saṃvejaniyesu ṭhānesu saṃvijjanti;
atha kho eteva sattā bahutarā ye saṃvejaniyesu ṭhānesu
na saṃvijjanti.
“Few are those beings who are disturbed by what is truly
disturbing; those beings who are undisturbed by what is
truly disturbing are far more.”
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