During The day, if you practice
walking meditation, each step brings you back to the present moment; each step
enables you to touch what is beautiful, what is true. And in this way, after a
few weeks of practice, joy will become something possible, you will be able to
undo many knots within yourself, and you will be able to transform negative
energies into joy and peace. The Buddha said this: “The object of your practice
should first of all be yourself. Your love for the other, your ability to love
another person, depends on your ability to love yourself.”
If you are not able to accept
yourself, how could you accept another person and how could you love him or
her? So it is necessary to come back to yourself in order to be able to achieve
the transformation.
Each of us is a king who reigns over
a very vast territory that has five rivers. The first river is our body, which
we do not know well enough. The second is the river of sensations is a drop of
water in this river. There are pleasant sensations, others that are unpleasant,
and neutral sensations. To meditate is to sit down on the bank of the river of
sensations and identify each sensation as it arises. The third is the river of
perceptions, which it is necessary to observe. You must look deeply into their
nature in order to understand. The fourth is the river of mental formations, of
which there are fifty one. And finally, the fifth is river of consciousness.
Our territory is really very vast,
but we are not responsible kings or queens. We always try to dodge away and we
do not keep up a real surveillance of our territory. We have the feeling that
there are immense conflicts there, too much suffering, too much pain-that is
the reason we are very hesitant to get back to our territory. Our daily
practice consists in running away. If we have a moment free, we will make use
of it to watch television or read a magazine article so we will not have to go
back to our territory. We are afraid of the suffering that is inside us, afraid
of war and conflicts.
The practice of mindfulness, the
practice of meditation, consists of coming back to ourselves in order to restore
peace and harmony the energy with which we can do this is the energy of
mindfulness. Mindfulness is a kind of energy that carries with it
concentration, understanding, and love. If we come back to ourselves to restore
peace and harmony, then helping another person will be a much easier thing.
Caring for yourself, reestablishing
peace in yourself, is the basic condition for helping someone else. So that the
other can stop being a bomb, a source of pain for ourselves and others, you
really have to help him to defuse the bomb. To be able to provide help,
We have to have a little calm, a
little joy, a little compassion in ourselves. This is what we get from
mindfulness in everyday life, because mindfulness is not something that is only
dome in a meditation hall; it is also dome in the kitchen, in the garden, when
we are on the telephone, when we are driving a car, when we are doing the
dishes.
If you can do it this way, three
weeds are enough to transform the pain inside you, to bring back your joy in living,
to cultivate the energy of compassion with which you can help the person you
love. The practice of being there with what is beautiful and with what is
healing is something we should do every day, and it is possible to do this in
everyday life.
