We have talked about some of the practices we can do to build the right platform so we can be happier and also as the right base for us to begin to wake up as the Buddha taught.
We have examined the practice of generosity, the morality of keeping Five Precepts, the importance of mindfulness and of training our minds to be purer through the reduction of unwholesome mind states and the promotion of the positive mental energy of wholesome mind states.
When you look through these teachings, although the approach we are describing is unique to Buddhism, the practices themselves appear in one form or another in all the world's major religions. In addition, the practice of loving kindness taught in Buddhism again has strong parallels in the other major religions.
Next we will examine what we mean by the letting go component of our Happiness Map and perhaps this is where you can start to identify the difference between the Buddhist Teachings as compared to other religious systems or methods.
The reason why letting go appears as a practice in Buddhism is because the Buddha identified mental craving as being the ultimate cause of our suffering and difficulties. Even though our reality is coming straight from the kammic causes we produced in our past, our mind cannot accept the reality that appears to us with contentment.
Our unwholesome minds all have some complaint about the reality appearing before our eyes. Our greed is wanting more than the reality is providing to us. Our aversion doesn't want parts of the reality we are experiencing. Our restlessness is not satisfied with reality. Ignorance is as the root of this problem because it does not know how to deal with reality sanely.
None of these unwholesome minds just see reality clearly and leave it at that. They all want something else, they all crave something different. This discontent with reality itself produces a large part of our suffering. We need to learn how to let go and accept the reality we are experiencing is enough.
Peace in Buddhism is knowing the real and not craving anything else whatever. This is wisdom. Wisdom looks at reality without even the slightest neurosis. Combined with compassion, wisdom chooses what to do next from seeing in the present moment what would really be of benefit to oneself and others.
So how to do that? We have to learn to let go. From the beginning of the Buddhist path to the end, it is a process of letting go. When you read your first Buddhist Teaching you have to create some space in your mind to hear something new. If you are full up with your own ideas and opinions you won't be able to hear anything the Buddhist Teachings have to say. You'll spend your valuable time thinking about and talking about what you believe, rather than giving yourself a chance to learn something new. If you have a full glass of water there's no space available to pour anything more into it.
You create space in your mind by listening with a beginner's mind, a mind that knows it doesn't know everything and therefore allows you the space to form a better view. Then you need to let go of some of your old ways of doing things in order to enable change to take place. To allow the possibility to practice a new thing you have to let go your old way of doing it to create enough space so the new can be adopted.
In Buddhism this process of letting go is called renunciation. Again, renunciation is in many other religions, but in most religions, renunciation is based on renouncing "evil" in the world or to reduce our worldly desires, but in Buddhism we are letting go to antidote our habitual craving and mental clutter.
As part of that process we start learning to let go of our unwholesome minds. First, we realise we have used an unwholesome mind ten minutes after the event. Then we say "I shouldn't have reacted like that". Or "I should have stopped myself earlier". Then we recognise a bit closer to the event, maybe a minute after we got angry we say "I am annoyed, I need to stop being so upset", "I need to give up this anger".
We don't have to stay annoyed with someone who did something we didn't like. When you see yourself starting to get stuck in any unwholesome thinking tell yourself to let it go. You actually say that as an instruction for your mind to follow. Tell the unwholesome state to "Stop!" It's not actually you, it's not a self or something precious or important; it's just one possible state that can arise for a period of time. Because it produces unhappiness and clouds your view, give it up.
You choose to be happy with the reality that’s arising right now. If your mind is starting to become discontent or stressed or worried you say to your mind "Stop! ….. It's all OK".
Or you think "Yes, my life is going extremely well!" Or you just get into the present and think "I'm perfectly happy with what I've got now" or I'm perfectly happy with my life now" or I'm perfectly happy with how I am", something like that - you find out what works best for you. Feel that everything is OK, feel that you are safe and secure and not lacking the basics that you need to live a happy life.
It doesn't mean you can't improve or you don't want things to get better, it's just a way you can reduce the suffering coming from your mind complaining and being discontent about the reality of what is happening.
Through training our minds with these methods, we are creating the kamma to reduce our craving. We are training our minds to not grab so tightly, not grab with so much mental energy, to touch things lightly.
The mind will have much more energy, lightness, flexibility, pliancy, and adaptability because it is not holding onto its position so tightly. If you have a lot of any negative, be it fear or annoyance or worry or resentment or jealousy, any negative whatever, if it is strong it means that the mental grabbing is strong. The negative is strong because the grabbing is strong. If the grabbing is strong the suffering is strong. It’s the same for all negative minds, all unwholesome minds.
Then we start to reduce the craving in our meditation. Again, we learn to let go. We look at our breath, and our "monkey mind" grabs at so many things. We see what is happening, then we let go of what we grabbed. Let go of the thoughts, feelings, sounds, let go second by second until we've trained our minds to not grab.
Importantly we train our minds to let go of pleasant feeling as well as unpleasant feeling. We train our minds to let go being attached to wholesome minds. After all the practice we did to develop the wholesome, now we have to let that go too. Otherwise the attachment to pleasant feeling and wholesome minds will be a strong link that causes us to be born in heaven in our next birth. This is what most other religions advise us to do. So, again this is how Buddhist renunciation is different to all other religions renunciation.
Being born in heaven in Buddhism is not regarded as anything particularly special. It is just another birth, not that much different to being born human in the sense that the heavenly beings aren't automatically wiser or further along the path to enlightenment than human beings.
Most heaven worlds are regarded in Buddhism as being so pleasant or peaceful that the beings there usually do not recognise the need to find and practice a path to become free from suffering. The heavenly beings, or devas as they are known in Buddhism, can all get whatever they want with ease, so there is no real need for them to help the other beings in their heaven. Their minds do not experience gross defilements in those heavens as we do in human birth, so those beings generally do not recognise the underlying content of their minds as being greed, hate and ignorance.
Also, like most human beings, most heavenly beings are not aware of their past lives and that the reason why they are now enjoying the fruits of a heavenly birth are the accumulated good actions done in the past. Beings living in heaven worlds are generally not aware and not able to undertake practices such as generosity to increase their merit or virtue for their future. Their next birth may be lower than their present birth because they have consumed much of their merit reserves.
What is better from Buddhist point of view than heaven is wisdom. You can use your merit to have a heaven birth in your next life, or you can use your merit to develop wisdom. A heaven birth will come to an end one day. Wisdom minds track seeing reality for what it is, which means they track the goal of the Buddhist Path, which is enlightenment and complete freedom from all forms of suffering.
Gradually as the grabbing reduces our mind becomes calmer, and clearer. Our one pointedness of concentration grows stronger, our attention more focused and stable. This is the right direction. Our mind is going towards peace and true sustainable happiness.
This mind we use most of the time develops its own wellbeing and positive mental energy and joy every moment. This mind wants to be virtuous, it wants to keep its morality pure, it wants to be generous, it wants to be wholesome, it doesn't want to be unwholesome. We don't have to use much effort to be like this because the mind values and likes the good qualities it has developed. This is called a well-trained mind.
Then when we meditate we can begin the final part of the letting go practice. We do meditations which help our mind give up its deep attachment to our own feelings, our own ideas and opinion, our own bodies. We start to get a glimpse of the real nature of these things, how our mind really is.
It is called insight wisdom. It is when our mind lets go of its ignorant view of ourselves for a flash of a second. In that moment we see clearly, for perhaps the first time in our life we see something about ourselves we have never known before. The Buddha described how we really are from this viewpoint. It is possible to do this as a result of learning to let go and not grab at both the outside world we live, and our inner phenomena of our inside world. This is the Buddhist Path. It goes much further than worldly happiness can ever go. It goes to perfect inner peace and fulfilment.
So now, how do you start the Buddhist practice? What are the first practical steps you can do to really make a difference in improving your happiness and wellbeing?
The first step is to start a daily Dhamma practice of your own. This should include the basic fundamental daily practices such as formal chanting and meditation and a weekly plan to make merit specifically for the purpose of improving your mind.
This relates to implementing the components of the Happiness Map in a planned way rather than leaving it up to the whims of how you are feeling on any particular day. We all lead busy lives. Unless something is planned in this way there will always be a myriad of other things to do before we sit down and do something for our inner development. Therefore, you need to decide that doing something every day for your own wellbeing and happiness is an important priority worth making space for in your life.
This is renunciation, this is letting go. We make a choice to let go of a few things of lesser value to us to make space to bring something of greater meaning and benefit into our life.
Make time every day to read some Buddha Teachings, do Buddhist chanting and some meditation. If you usually get up at 6.30 am, get up at 6.15 am and use the extra fifteen minutes per day for your practice. It's that important. Make some time in your life to do this. Gradually this makes the kamma to get a bit more time, and so on.
Below we have provided a planning sheet for you to write your daily practice. You start by deciding how many minutes each day you will set aside for your inner work.
Please remember there's no point in doing any of these practices unmindfully or without volition, like you are on automatic pilot.
The planning sheet lists a few practices you can do anytime during the day or night, while you are driving your car for example, or just when you have a moment to spare.
......minutes per day
Next you have your Weekly Dhamma Plan to make sure every week you make some good causes or merit toward your minds improvement.
We have discussed how important it is to make new powerful good causes or merit to fuel your own development. This is the factor that provides clean mental energy and new nutrients for your mind. How can you do this on a regular basis?
We always recommend practitioners include helping out at a Buddhist temple or Buddhist centre because this is exactly what temples are designed for.
If you are sincere about learning and practicing Buddhism well supporting your learning by attending a Buddhist centre is as indispensable as attending university is to studying medicine or law, for example. There are so many ways mixing with other people who also practice Buddhism benefits students, particularly for the first few years until they really get proficient in their own practice. Apart from any formal classes that are given, many conversations you'll hear are to do with understanding yourself better and learning more skillful ways to improve your personal development. It usually takes a couple of years for most students to get their Buddhist practice well established just as it would take a couple of years to develop the basics skills of playing a new musical instrument.
We have listed below some examples of the type of activities you can help out with at a Buddhist temple and some of them you can do at home. These activities can all be interesting and fun to do. Use your existing skills to make merit and we will train you in any new skills you need to be involved any of these projects or activities.
….. hours per week.
All these suggestions are working at building your happiness from the absolute reality point of view, by using the Law of Kamma to create the causes for your improvement. It changes your life for the better, but more essentially, it changes you for the better.
You become the new causes you have made. Making the biggest improvement of yourself depends on how much you can increase your store of the right types of good kamma and how well you put your new learning into practice.