DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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The Buddha taught a simple sentence:

- He who can transform the Dharma is enlightened; he who the Dharma transforms is ignorant.

An ignorant person only feels sad and miserable when they lose possessions, money, encounter misfortune, or are slandered or insulted by others. Conversely, they rejoice when they hear praise, flattery, or adoration… This means you are not in control of yourself, but allow external things to control you. Therefore, when you have self-control, you know how to grasp your own happiness firmly, so you don't wait for others to make you happy, nor are you made sad by others. Everyone has self-control within them, but you don't know how to hold onto it and instead hand it over to others. For example, a young woman often complains:

- I live a very miserable life because the nail salon owner has a stern look.

That statement shows that she has placed the key to her happiness in the hands of the nail salon owner.

One man said:

- My wife always argues back, never listens to me, and makes me angry all the time!

In this way, he handed the key to his happiness to his wife.

A middle-aged man from a company sighed and said:

- The company won't promote me, it's making my spirits so low...!

He, in turn, handed the key to his life's happiness to his boss.

An old woman lamented:

- My daughter-in-law is so unfilial, my life is so miserable!

A young man coming out of a bookstore exclaimed:

- That boss's attitude is so hateful..."

These people all share the same difficulty: allowing others to control their emotions. When you allow others to manipulate and control your spirit, you feel like you are the victim. In the current situation, there is no other way than to complain and resent. This becomes your only choice.

You start blaming others and condemning them:

- My suffering is because of that person, and they are responsible for this suffering.

At that time, you entrust a great responsibility to those around you and ask them to make you happy. Unintentionally, you seem to admit that you are incapable of self-control and can only rely on someone else to arrange and control you. If you encounter such people, you shouldn't associate with them. The simple reason is that when you interact with them, you seem to only see blame and resentment. But when you have self-control, you don't wait for others to make you sad to be sad, nor do you need to wait for others to make you happy to be happy; you are always capable of bringing joy to others. Your mind is stable, you know how to take responsibility for yourself without blaming others, you know how to control your emotions, and how to create and maintain joy for yourself. In this way, in your daily life and work, you will always be relaxed, happy, and free from pressure from others.

When discussing the self-control of each person, that is, the emotions of joy and sorrow, happiness and suffering in adversity, the venerable monks emphasize that you need to consider two types of suffering:

- Physical suffering and mental suffering.

Of these two, the mind has the greatest influence on most of you. Unless you are seriously ill or deprived of basic needs, your material conditions play a secondary role in life. If your body is healthy, you hardly pay attention to it. However, the mind registers all events, even the smallest ones. Therefore, you need to make the necessary efforts to bring peace to your soul. Today, thanks to remarkable advances in science and technology, physical suffering has decreased significantly in life, but conversely, mental suffering persists. It is this type of suffering that is the root of human unhappiness.

The level of mental suffering or stress stems from the competitive environment of life and is particularly prominent in large cities. Conversely, in rural areas, physical suffering is much more prevalent, but mental suffering is less common.

As a Buddhist disciple, you should seek happiness and compassion from within, as the 8th-century Buddhist scholar Shantideva said:

- You cannot cover all the thorns in the world with skin, but you can only cover your two feet with skin.

In the same vein, by controlling your anger and dissatisfaction, you can master yourself and subdue all your enemies.

As you all know, the purpose of life is to be happy. From birth, everyone wants happiness and does not want suffering. It is not social conditions, education, or ideology that influence this. At the core of human nature, you simply desire fulfillment. Therefore, each of you living on this earth must possess independent sovereignty, meaning you must face the task of achieving a happy life for yourself. Thus, it is crucial to discover what will bring you the greatest level of happiness.

From the experience of venerable masters, you learn that a self-reliant person always experiences inner peace stemming from the development of love and compassion. The more you care for the happiness of others, the greater the meaning of your purpose becomes. This means that by sowing a sense of closeness and warmth in your heart towards others, your mind naturally becomes at ease. This helps you eliminate any fears and anxieties you may have and provides you with the strength to cope with any obstacles you encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life. As you live in this world, you are bound to encounter many problems. If you lack self-control each time, you will lose hope and become discouraged, diminishing your ability to cope with difficulties. Therefore, you need to understand that these difficulties and challenges are not unique to you; everyone in this world suffers. This realistic perspective will increase your determination and ability to overcome adversity. Indeed, with the attitude of a self-controlled person, each obstacle can be seen as a precious opportunity to improve your soul! Therefore, you can gradually strive to become more compassionate, developing genuine empathy for the suffering of others and helping them alleviate their own suffering. As a result, your inner peace and strength will grow. That is why the Buddha often taught:

- Love and compassion bring the greatest happiness, simply because your nature is to love all.

Indeed, the necessity for a self-reliant person to possess love and forgiveness lies at the foundation of human existence. It is the result of a profound understanding that you all share with others. It is the ability and skill of an individual to make others no longer feel alone. This is very beneficial when you know how to extend this emotional sharing to people in life, especially when they are sick, young, or old, and depend on the support of others. Of course, internal dependence is a fundamental law of nature. Not only for humans but also for many small insects, especially social creatures. They have no religion, laws, or education, yet they exist by cooperating based on an innate awareness of their interconnectedness. Even the most subtle levels of material phenomena are governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet you live on to the oceans, clouds, forests, and flowers surrounding you, arise in dependence on mutual interaction and interdependent relationships for survival. Without proper interaction, they would disintegrate and perish.

Your existence is due to the help of others, and your need for love lies at the foundation of your existence. Therefore, as a self-reliant person, you not only do not depend on others, but you also need to possess a strong sense of sovereignty, that is, a genuine feeling of responsibility and sincere concern for the well-being of others. Thus, you should not place all your hopes for independently developed happiness externally. Instead, you should consider the origin and nature of things to discover what your partners need and what you should do accordingly.

Regardless of what your partners need, and regardless of what you do, the expression of love for all beings is crucial in life. Generally, when you encounter a self-reliant person, someone capable of cultivating love, you naturally feel close to them, and they also feel genuine love for you. Therefore, the application of self-reliance in daily life is not expecting others to bring you joy, but rather bringing joy to others.

To act as a self-reliant person, you can contemplate the image of a baby in its mother's arms. If a child is not held, hugged, nurtured, or loved by its mother, its development will be affected, and its brain will struggle to mature. A child cannot survive without the care of others, because love is the most important nourishment. Childhood happiness, if present, minimizes fear in children, and the healthy development of self-confidence depends directly on love. Today, many children grow up in unhappy families. If they do not receive the emotional influence of their parents later in life, they will find it difficult to love their parents and may find it difficult to love others. This is very sad.

When children reach school age, their need for support must be met by their teachers. Teachers not only impart knowledge but also have the responsibility to prepare students for life. This fosters trust and respect in what they have been taught, and teachers leave an indelible impression on their minds. On the other hand, subjects taught by a teacher who does not show genuine concern for their students are considered temporary and do not leave a lasting memory.

Similarly, if a patient is being treated in a hospital by a doctor who shows human warmth, the patient feels comfortable, and the doctor's desire is to provide the best possible care for the patient's treatment, regardless of the patient's skill level. On the other hand, if a doctor lacks human empathy and displays an unfriendly, impatient, or contemptuous demeanor, the patient will feel anxious, even if the doctor is highly qualified and the illness has been accurately diagnosed, and medication has been prescribed correctly. Certainly, the patient's feelings make a difference in their mental and physical well-being and completely influence their recovery.

Even in ordinary conversations in daily life, if someone speaks with a friendly, human tone, you enjoy listening, and the conversation becomes more interesting, even if the topic isn't particularly important. Indeed, there's a guy online who, in terms of talent, speaks one sentence and the audience laughs, and everyone joins in. Suddenly, after the performance and during the judging, one of the three judges harshly criticized:

- I think what you've been saying so far is completely nonsensical. After the audience left, I was confident that they wouldn't remember anything you said.

At that moment, the polite contestant replied:

- I don't need to know what the audience remembers after they leave, but I only know one thing: I'm doing: performing comedy. That means my responsibility is to bring joy to people. I only know that my words are met with hearty laughter, and that's enough for me.

This statement was convincing enough, and he won first prize. On the other hand, if someone speaks with a cold and harsh attitude, you feel uncomfortable and want to end the conversation quickly. At least except for very important events, compassion and respect for others are very important for your happiness. A group of scientists in the US said that the rate of mental illness in the US is quite high, about twelve percent of the population. The main cause of mental illness is not a lack of material conditions but a lack of affection from others. So, when you can look at it from a general perspective:

Regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, from the day you are born, the need for human affection is in your blood. Even if the affection comes from an animal or someone you would normally consider an enemy, both children and adults are naturally drawn to it.

I believe that no one is born without a need for the love of their fellow human beings. And this proves that although some modern schools of thought attempt to explain it, human beings cannot be defined solely in terms of science and technology, but must also address the issue of emotions. No material object, however beautiful or valuable, if it exists, can make you feel love, because your empathy and appropriate character lie deeper within the subjective nature of the mind. Therefore, merely thinking about compassion, reason, and patience as good things is not enough to develop them. You need to wait for difficulties to arise and then try to practice them. Often, those who create such opportunities are, of course, not your friends, but your enemies. They are the ones who bring you the most difficulties, so if you truly want to learn, you should consider your enemies as your best teachers!

For a sovereign person who wants to cultivate compassion and love, practicing tolerance is essential, and therefore, an enemy is indispensable. Therefore, you should be grateful to your enemies, for they are the best people who can help you develop a peaceful mind! Likewise, it is often seen in personal and public life that, with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.

Therefore, anger and hatred are always harmful, and unless you cultivate your mind and practice to reduce their negative forces, they will continue to bother you and disrupt your efforts toward peaceful inner development. Resentment is your true enemy. This is the force you need to confront and defeat, and it is not just a temporary enemy that constantly appears throughout your life.

Of course, it is the right and nature of all of you to want friends. As a sovereign person, you must be very selfless! To fully practice bringing joy to others, you must take good care of others, care about their well-being, help them, serve them, make them have more friends, and give them more smiles. When you yourself need help, you will have many people to help you! If, on the other hand, you forget the happiness of others, in the long run, you will be the loser. And friendship is forged through disputes and anger, jealousy and fierce competition. Only affection brings you true, close friends.

In today's materialistic society, if you have money and power, you have many friends. But they are not your friends; they are friends of money and power. Therefore, when you lose your wealth and influence, you will realize how difficult it is to find them.

Another thing to note is that when everything in the world is going well for you, you become confident that you can manage on your own and feel that you don't need friends, but when your situation deteriorates with declining health, you quickly realize your mistake. That is the moment when you know who is truly helpful and who is completely useless. Therefore, to prepare for that time, making genuine friends will help you when needed, and you yourself must cultivate altruism!

Naturally, everyone always wants more friends. Everyone likes to be loved and to have smiles. But you must understand how to make more friends and how to get more smiles, especially genuine smiles. Because there are many types of smiles, such as:

- Sarcastic smiles,

- Fake or diplomatic smiles.

Many manufactured smiles lack genuine satisfaction, and sometimes they can even evoke suspicion or fear. But a genuine smile gives you a feeling of freshness, and if these are the smiles you desire, then you yourself must create the reasons for their appearance.

You need to understand how personal happiness can contribute to a profound and effective direction for overall improvement for your entire human community. Because you all share the same need for love, this shows that anyone you meet, in any circumstance, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the faces may be, or how different their clothing and behavior may be, there is no significant division between you and others. It is foolish to focus on external differences, because your fundamental nature is the same.

Ultimately, humanity is one, and this small planet is your only home. If you are to protect your home, each of you needs to experience a living sense of compassion. Only this feeling can eliminate the self-serving motives that cause people to deceive and abuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel confident and worthy, and there is no need to intimidate others. At every level of society, family, tribe, nation, and internationally, the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. You don't need to be a religious believer; you don't need to believe in an ideology. It is all necessary for each of you to develop your own good character. You must practice treating everyone you meet as an old friend. This gives you a genuine sense of happiness. It is the cultivation of compassion that is also the absolute protection of your own sovereignty.

In short, in life, you have to work very hard, and you have to struggle for survival. You have to face many aspects, so you must know how to maintain your sovereignty. Without sovereignty, you will not be able to maintain peace of mind. If your mind is not at peace and your spirit is not calm, how can you expect to help anyone? Therefore, even a small fluctuation can never hurt anyone. As you know, in life, there are many imperfections and imperfect people. You are not the best either; sometimes you forget many things, forget memories, just like anyone else. But what you must learn is to accept each other's mistakes and rejoice in each other's unique qualities. You can expand any relationship; in fact, understanding is the fundamental basis for all relationships, including friendship, marriage, and parent-child relationships. You must maintain sovereignty and cultivate love for yourself and for others. That's how you find happiness. Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket; keep it for yourself.

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