Conditions, conditions.

One time on retreat a woman came to my room about an hour before we were due to begin and spoke to me. She had just seen the programme and was alarmed by the fact that we rise at five o’clock in the morning.

‘But Michael,’ she said, ‘I can’t get up at five o’clock in the morning.’

I was surprised to hear such a thing before we had even begun the retreat and so I asked her why she felt that.

’Why?’ she replied throwing her arms in the air, ‘because I will go mad!’

Dhamma is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, but in order to receive this gift we have to make an effort. We have to surrender into life.

Our usual way of being is to apply conditions to everything we do, and when we don’t get what we want, we suffer in one way or another.

On retreat the most important thing is to arrive without conditions and demands as to how the retreat should be, but simply surrender into the programme. In this way the programme will lift you and support your practice.

How will we ever see the nature of the mind if we continue to blindly follow it wherever it goes?

It is exactly the same situation with life. As much as we may want to control everyone and everything in every moment, we are always going to be unable to do it!

The cause of our happiness and unhappiness is not the outside world but only ourselves and our relationship with this mind. The teaching and practice of Dhamma therefore is to see, know and accept this mind as it manifests moment after moment, but never be a victim to it.

We have to wake up to the reality of life and not just make our sleep as comfortable as possible.

As pleasant as that can be on many occasions, it can never completely satisfy us as the mind itself never rests in it’s endless quest for perfection in a self-created universe that, in the end, can never be perfect.

The way out of this tangle is wisdom. Not blind faith or belief, but wisdom. To cultivate the quality of mind that can see, know and accept the reality of each moment and be at peace with it. The mind that can accept and respond to even the things that are difficult without complaint or suffering. The mind that can be generous and loving without fear.

The mind that makes no conditions about the world it experiences, but responds lovingly and fearlessly in every moment.

This, then is the liberation.

May all beings be happy.