You're fine.

You're fine as you are.

You don't need to explain or justify why you're a vegan, or a Buddhist, or an atheist or anything else, you only need to take a quiet responsibility for your life.

You don't need to explain why you hold the views you do, or choose the lifestyle you have chosen, you only have to take responsibility for those choices.

Self responsibility it crucial to an adult life, to a Dhamma life, to accept the consequences of the mind states we have empowered.

To be free from ‘self’ we must stop supporting and defending it.

Now try this experiment for a week. Don't defend yourself.

If you do something wrong, apologise and let it go. Don't attempt to justify or explain it. Don't demand that others see your point of view or understand you. Just let it go. Don't feed the ego!

When Ananda, the Buddha's cousin and attendant for twenty five years, was wrongly accused of misconduct, he simply answered his accusers by saying, ‘In my heart I did no wrong, but if you say I did, I apologise’.

No explanation, no justification, no defence. Only an answer coming from the purity of being.

And if you perform an act of kindness, stay quiet. Again, there is no need to explain why you did what you did. It is done, gone, finished. Let it go.

The purpose of spiritual training is to assist the forces of ego and conceit to die out, and to allow the pure mind to manifest. This mind simply is. When this mind is present, where are you? Where is ego?

Pure mind and ego are like light and darkness. They cannot exist in the same place in the same moment. When the pure mind is not present, there you are with all your views, opinions beliefs and conceit. A bundle of delusion, making its way in the world, causing chaos for all concerned.

Every moment we are awake is a moment to be. A moment to let this pure mind manifest by not allowing the influences of ego and self-preservation come to the fore. When the mind pulls in the direction of ego, simply see it for what it is and let it go.

You are not your mind, and you are not your body.

There is nothing that you really are, and no mould that you have to fit. Be yourself. Act from a position of egolessness.

Set yourself free.

I am turning on the light – where does the darkness go?

 

May all beings be happy.