As we usher in the new year of 2021, we begin with a reflection on Dhamma.
Living through a pandemic, we all realized how important it is to have the love and support of our loved ones. We felt the need for their presence in our lives more than ever before.
While we appreciate their goodness, Buddha wanted us to look deeply within ourselves for refuge, solace, and salvation. It is through establishing our mind well in Dhamma.
With our experience, we all know how fickle our mind is. Whenever we hear the news, face an unprecedented situation, our mind turns upside down. For a positive experience, the mind is elated and for a negative experience, it is heavily down. This is because of not having a well-established mind, which is why it reacts blindly in gain or loss, fame or defames, blame or praise, and in happiness or pain.
On the other hand, a well-established mind does not react blindly. Instead, it observes experiences with equanimity. When it is so, there opens a possibility to understand the reality of the true nature as it is. In Buddha’s terms, they are Anicca, Dukkha, and Anatta. They are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and insubstantial respectively.
In other words, a well-established mind means establishing oneself in the moral discipline, meditation, and wisdom – the three aspects of the noble path laid down by the Buddha.
To elaborate it further, it means inclining one’s mind towards generosity, morality, meditation, reverence, service, transferring of merits, rejoice in other’s merits, hearing the noble Dhamma, expounding the Dhamma, and straightening one’s right views.
Greater good can be experienced within when we bend our mind to cultivate wholesome actions, to avoid unwholesome actions, and towards the practice that leads to its purification.
Let’s make a firm resolution to establish ourselves in Dhamma!
With metta,
Bhante Seewalie
