Dhamma invite.

Our regular Dhamma programme in Budh Gaya for many years was to teach a free introductory course of Vipassana and loving Kindness meditation at the Lotus Tank inside the main stupa, before encouraging the students who felt ready, to be part of our annual series of six ten-day retreats at the International Meditation Centre.

This was always a pleasure for Henry, my retreat manager, and myself and was always well received.

At the end of one of these introductory sessions a very lovely English woman approached me to offer a donation, say thank you and to ask her most important question,

"Michael," she began, "how can I get you to come and teach in my town in England?"

"Actually," I replied, "you just have to invite me and we see where we go from there."

Sharing the Pure Dhamma has become the most important movement of my life and I put my hands together in Anjali every day to the Buddha and my own teachers for taking the time to support me as I trained in this exceptional and beautiful way of life.

Because we feel that we ourselves have received something precious, the loving, compassionate heart responds naturally by wanting to share that with others, after all this was the movement of the Buddha himself. To share the beauty of this now open and loving heart.

However, there is a condition. That sharing has to be invited.

This is not religion or politics; it is a way of being that demands more than just agreement or acceptance. The true Dhamma disciple must test the words of the teacher by applying them to life as it presents itself moment after moment. By being determined and resolute and going past the places in their own life where they usually stop. To put down what they carry and taste the true liberation.

Anyone can recite the scriptures and the words of the Masters, but how many can truly say, ‘I know, I have tested the teachings and understood them intuitively?’

To arrive in this place, we must invite the Dhamma into our life. It cannot be forced and we must see the need for it ourselves.

We cannot practice for another and we cannot realise liberation simply by thinking or talking about it. Reading about awareness is not being aware. Talking about love is not being loving. Thinking about practice is not the same thing as actually making the practice.

So, in the end we have to make our own effort and use the examples of those great beings who have gone before as our inspiration.

For myself, inspired by the conduct of all the Masters and true disciples of Dhamma, I have committed my life to the pursuit of self-realised truth, beyond religion and other group psychology, and complete liberation from the causes of suffering and unhappiness for more than forty years.

My life, of course is precarious depending as it does on the generosity of others, but it seems to me that when fear is finished, the universe provides.

From this place of love, compassion and joy of life, everything that the Buddha and my teachers proposed is possible and just waits to be realised.

Our Dhamma life is a personal life and it may begin when we invite the teacher to our town, but can only continue when we invite Dhamma into our hearts.

May all beings be happy.