DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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Difficulty and Happiness are two different states. One is a state of discomfort, suffering, and sadness, and the other is joy, peace, and comfort. Of course, everyone likes peace and happiness. To have happiness does not come naturally, but each person must have a different concept of life.

Practicing is the time when you learn to practice for yourself a practical routine, and create for yourself a process of transforming your mind, which is how to see all things as positive, not negative, and you have great freedom to do this because everything comes from your mind. Whether you feel happy or suffer is all determined by your mind, by your way of thinking.

By transforming unstable problems into happiness, you use unstable problems to benefit yourself and all sentient beings. In other words, you use difficult problems and obstacles to develop your mind and bring happiness and joy to everyone. Once you transform difficult problems into happiness, especially transforming obstacles to the path to enlightenment, then enduring difficulties and challenges can become happiness in itself. And this is true happiness because it not only ends suffering but also eliminates the causes as well as all other sufferings, that is, the negative karma, the delusions, and the negative seeds in your mind.

The psychological factor of transforming thoughts is extremely important in leading you to a happy life, because it enables you to not only end all suffering but also help you achieve enlightenment.

By always remembering the purpose of your life, which is:

- Taking responsibility to free all sentient beings from suffering and bring them happiness.

You will endure every difficulty that comes your way, whatever it may be, for the benefit of sentient beings. When you encounter a difficulty, you should endure it to take it on behalf of other sentient beings who are experiencing the same difficulties, and also on behalf of those who are experiencing much worse problems. You should dedicate your endurance of your problems to freeing countless sentient beings from all their problems and their causes, and to bringing them to ultimate happiness. Enduring your difficulties to take them on behalf of other sentient beings not only purifies the causes of their problems but also brings you contentment. Transforming your problems into the path of enlightenment purifies countless obstacles and accumulates great merit. In this way, you will be content no matter what problems you are experiencing. Even if you are experiencing despair, with the above attitude, you can still enjoy this state of mind. Despair will disappear once you practice transforming your mind.

You can transform every difficult problem into happiness in this life. You can transform every failure you have, whether it is:

- In business,

- In learning or spiritual practice.

You can transform even criticism and a bad reputation, which you have always tried to avoid since birth. Instead of rejecting it, you should happily accept it and use it as a skillful means to generate realizations of the path to enlightenment and rebirth in the pure land of a fully enlightened being. Many meditators pray all their lives to be born in such a pure land and use death as a means to achieve their goal, because it is a quick way to achieve enlightenment. A pure land, where there is no suffering, is like a completely ideal society.

You can transform any problem into happiness. The point is not to stop suffering from problems, but to stop the conditions you call problems from disturbing your mind. Instead, you use them to support the spiritual path you are practicing. Your main aim is not to let problems become obstacles to the development of your mind on the path to full enlightenment. To achieve this goal, you must first learn to:

1- Do not hate difficulties and obstacles

Like gardeners, they do not abandon anything that stinks from the garbage, but instead they utilize all that stinks to make green fertilizer for ornamental plants... Likewise, hardship and happiness are two extremes, but if you know how to use them, thanks to hardship, you will have favorable times, and thanks to suffering, you will have happiness. Therefore, in the direction of transforming hardships into happiness, when there are obstacles, to transform them into happiness, you must do two things:

- First, you must eliminate the thought of seeing that situation as an unstable problem, and then the thought of liking it arises.

- Second, you must generate the thought of seeing that problem as a positive character and establish the thought of liking it.

When you can see unstable problems as a source of happiness, the thought of liking them will naturally arise by eliminating the thought of seeing a situation as an unstable problem and not liking it. You must realize that if you focus on this thought, the mind will become accustomed to seeing situations as problems, until you see almost everything that happens to you as problems. Once you get used to seeing unwanted conditions as problems and dislike them, even very small things will become big problems for you. In this way, your feelings of anxiety, fear, and suffering will increase, and it will be very difficult for you to feel happiness or peace of mind. Even a trivial matter like finding a dusty, untidy house due to the carelessness of other family members can become a big problem in your mind. You cannot bear it and have to leave the house. If your food is cold or not cooked the way you like it, this small matter becomes a big problem and makes you very angry. In general, very small things can make you angry.

When you get used to living like this, you will easily be disturbed by almost everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Most of the things you encounter become problems and make you think negatively, and then act negatively. You see everything that appears before you as your enemy. So it will be very difficult for you to find happiness in life.

You must realize that all problems in life originate from your mind. There are two ways to look at any situation:

- A situation can be a problem

- But it can also be a non-problem.

With one way of perceiving it, you see it as a problem, but with another way of perceiving it, you do not see it as a problem. When you dislike a situation, you see it as a problem, label it as a problem, and then you see it as a problem. Once you label it, the problem is there. But if you don't label it, you don't see it as a problem.

When you are aware of external factors, you often experience emotions like satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or indifference, but you need to know that even external factors that influence emotions come from the mind. When you encounter a desirable situation, you see it as satisfactory; then it appears in front of you, and you develop a thought of liking the situation, and you enjoy the satisfaction, the happiness. But when you have to separate from the desired situation or object, your emotions change, from satisfaction to dissatisfaction. You regard separation from that object as bad, and you develop a dislike for it. You also experience unpleasant feelings when you encounter unpleasant objects. What makes the experience unpleasant is that you regard the situation as bad, label it bad, and then develop a dislike for it. For example, a person you regard as an enemy. You will develop a grudge against that person, and you think:

- That person is bad, because he does not like me and he is trying to harm me.

It is clear that it is not you, but your perception of that person, that is causing you discomfort. You create a concept, and then that concept causes you discomfort. When you meet someone you consider an enemy, you do not think of the good qualities of that person, nor do you think of the benefits you can get from that person. You could have learned a lot about the nature of your mind because that person did not favor you, going against the wishes of your greedy and selfish mind. That person you consider an enemy can help you develop patience, loving-kindness, compassion, wisdom, and many other precious qualities of your mind. They can help you develop the path to enlightenment. Just like using poison as medicine, you can reap countless benefits from your enemy if you use them as an object of practice in this positive way. If you use the negative way, seeing the enemy as an enemy, you will only get negative results. On the other hand, when you use the person you see as an enemy positively, you will only get positive results. It depends on you; it depends entirely on how you see the enemy and how you use him.

You must realize that your problems are all about your perception of situations; otherwise, you will always blame other people, or the weather, or some other external factor, as the cause of any problem you have. Your delusions about the cause of the problems will flare up like a fire, exacerbating the issues in your life. And then your negative thoughts and actions will fan the flames even higher.

Consider the case of paranoid people, who hear and see strange things that normal people do not hear. For example, they hear someone in the next room talking badly about them, when in fact, there is no one there. They create their reality and then torture themselves with their belief in that reality. The fear and anxiety they are experiencing can cause them many problems, even leading them to murder or suicide. Instead of blindly believing their perceptions, they should immediately check whether those perceptions are true or not. If they get up and go to the next room to check and see that there is no one there, it will make them realize that the perception that has just arisen in their mind is not true, and so it will be easier for them to disbelieve their perceptions at other times. In the future, they will learn to question what they are experiencing. This initial experience will help them realize that what they think is happening is just an illusion. They will understand the real situation only when they disbelieve their perceptions completely. So, their complete trust in their perception has blinded them, preventing them from having the opportunity to see what is going on.

Your mind is like a child, and you are like a parent who has to protect the child from danger. The main problem with paranoid people is that they are not responsible for their minds; they do not watch over their minds, do not analyze their thoughts, and they just blindly trust their minds and do whatever their minds tell them to do. You cannot blindly follow the impulsive urges of your mind like a paranoid person. You have to treat your mind like a child and constantly check what it is doing. You listen and follow when your mind wants to do something beneficial, but you do not listen when it wants to do something harmful or unreasonable. It is very dangerous to follow whatever your mind tells you to do. Before you act on your thoughts, you have to analyze them carefully. Your analysis must result in: you reject the thoughts that give rise to problems, and you act on thoughts that bring benefit to yourself and others.

The difficulties in life, in your life, that everyone encounters, are caused by:

- A strong delusion, such as ignorance,

- Anger or greed that triggers the performance of an unwholesome action,

Then, from there, it causes harm to other sentient beings or divine beings. Then you fear the consequences of what they have done; you fear because you feel like you are in danger of being blamed or of being physically hurt.

Remember that when you commit an unwholesome action, you open the door for other beings, human or non-human, to harm you. You who have done unwholesome actions become the target for other beings to harm you. Obstacles are created when the internal cause of unwholesome actions and delusions act as a bridge with beings who are external conditions. External beings can only harm you after you have committed unwholesome actions motivated by delusions. Without these delusions, you would not be harmed by other beings. This is shown in the story of the Buddha's enlightenment at Bodh Gaya.

On the morning of the Buddha's enlightenment, ten million non-humans attacked him with thunderbolts and all kinds of weapons in an attempt to prevent his enlightenment. However, when they approached him, the weapons turned into flowers and rained down around his holy body. When your mind is pure, there is no reason for others to harm you. Therefore, transforming your thoughts and practicing purification are the best solutions, because they can help you cleanse yourself of negative thoughts and actions. The main point to understand here is:

- Everything you see and hear comes from your mind.

If you realize this, then whatever strange things you see or hear cannot harm or upset you.

2- Accept problems

When you encounter an unpleasant situation, you must remind yourself that there is no benefit in seeing it as a problem and then creating fear or anxiety for yourself. In the book Entering the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, Bodhisattva Shantideva advises:

- If a problem can be solved, there is no need to worry or get upset.

If there is a solution to the problem, then simply apply that solution. There is no need to be upset and worried when you have a solution, so if there is a solution, do it. There is only one thing:

- Do it!

Shantideva also taught that if a problem cannot be solved, then there is no use in worrying about it. Since you have tried to solve it but failed, there is no need to be unhappy or upset about it. For example, if you cannot turn a house into gold or turn the sky into earth, then getting upset and upset will not help. There are some problems that you cannot avoid, such as the other person who keeps on cursing you, even though you have done nothing to them. Or a relationship that cannot be reversed. In the case of having to endure an unavoidable problem like that, being upset will not help. You should accept it rather than deny it.

The advice of the venerable ones is very wise. Because the venerable ones have carefully examined many other methods of solving problems and found them unsatisfactory. Whereas, if you accept the difficult state, you will immediately reduce the fearful emotions that are connected with that sad state, and thus you will be at peace. The venerable ones' advice to accept the difficulties rather than reject them is very controversial, because it goes completely against your usual way of thinking. Your egoistic mind usually wants to escape from obstacles, not accept them. But the truth is still the truth; the venerable ones' advice has shown a core change in the concept of life, very practical, and very consistent with the Dharma of transforming the mind according to the perspective of practicing the path of liberation.

In short, the venerable ones' advice is the necessary energy to help you solve the sad and difficult state in the long term, especially when you cannot avoid the collisions in real life every day. Once you learn to accept today's difficulties that you can have moments of peace and happiness in the present and the future. There will be many benefits when you know how to transform unstable situations, and if you get used to this way of thinking, you will see that small, unpleasant events as well as big problems are all factors for you to transform into happy luck. Therefore, you must pay attention to these factors and you must have a determination that:

- When something unpleasant happens to you, you should not see it as a problem. Instead, you happily welcome it as a pleasant thing without reluctance.

You must be courageous and strongly determined to do so from the very beginning of each day. When you stop misinterpreting unpleasant situations as problems, and instead see them as pleasant, even terrible disasters become trivial and insignificant, and you feel as light as cotton.

The next step is to consider how to see problems as pleasant, because once you do that, the idea of liking will naturally arise. To see problems as pleasant and to like them, you must meditate on the benefits of problems.

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