Dhamma talkNirodha Insight Meditation in Finland Retreat15 Jun 2019
Week 3 day 8 — Taking Care of the Mind in Daily Life
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 51 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−51:45
Uses compressed audio.
AI-written summary
The teacher emphasizes sustaining continuous practice in daily life, treating the care of the mind as a worthy investment. Recognizing subtle tensions and cultivating wholesome mental states prevent exhaustion. Questions address the role of formal sitting and the mind's natural tiredness from intense conceptual work.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Nirodha Insight Meditation in Finland Retreat · 33 talks
- 241 hr 31 minWeek 3 day 2 group F — Purifying the Watching Mind and Meeting Experiences with Equanimity9 Jun 2019
- 251 hr 27 minWeek 3 day 2 group G — Building Momentum and Understanding the Mind9 Jun 2019
- 261 hr 56 minWeek 3 day 3 group A — Nature of Concentration, Delusion and Awareness10 Jun 2019
- 271 hr 45 minWeek 3 day 4 group F — Dealing with Anxiety, Strong Emotions, and Discursive Thinking11 Jun 2019
- 281 hr 23 minWeek 3 day 4 group G — Attitude Towards Defilements and Working with Restlessness11 Jun 2019
- 291 hr 45 minWeek 3 day 5 group A — Doubt, Maintaining Balance, and Skillful Effort12 Jun 2019
- 301 hr 28 minWeek 3 day 6 group F — Seven Factors of Enlightenment and Effort in Practice13 Jun 2019
- 3143 minWeek 3 day 6 group G — Acceptance and Right Action13 Jun 2019
- 321 hr 32 minWeek 3 day 7 group A — Being Aware of Seeing and the Sphere of Perception14 Jun 2019
- Viewing3352 minWeek 3 day 8 — Taking Care of the Mind in Daily Life15 Jun 2019
Transcript
English
But he didn't even join us, I guess. Did he pay that comment? See, I don't see the "si." Sorry.
English
Remain yoga.
English
Every time a retreat ends, Seyado said he gives everyone this reminder and he's going to tell us the same thing again.
English
，，， people saza ya ya， kuni, pelek dulu. Manager they all, staff they all, yogi they all, all over. You tell yourself, can I pass that to the all over? 。 First of all, he wants to thank everyone who made this retreat possible, and that includes not only the managers but all of you yogis, because if you—if these two worlds didn't come together, there wouldn't be a retreat.
English
And coming together to practice the Dhamma, Seyado said, is a beneficial work. It's work that is beneficial not only for ourselves but for others. 860 2 Whenever Seyado went to the monastery to see his teacher and practice with his teacher, when he was going to go home, Seyado said his teacher always told him the same thing, and he's going to tell you the same thing: please don't stop
English
practicing. Please continue practicing when you go home, while you're going home. And although his teacher reminded him every time, he didn't go home and practice.
English
And it was only when he got into deep shit that he began to practice.
English
Then he really began to practice. 3 And yet, Seyado said, even when he was in deep trouble, he didn't—he didn't try to practice meditation because he thought it would help, or because he thought, you know, it was a wholesome thing to do, or that, you know, it was precious, or that it was helpful.
English
Nothing. Seyado said he did it because he could not do anything else. It was a last resort. He tried everything else. He tried to have fun. He tried to take drugs again. He tried everything, and nothing worked. They just felt worse now. ，，，。，。 He said he realized— ，。 He realized in the end that with this mind he could go to the moon and he would not be free of what he felt.
English
So then he turned back to meditation. And he turned to meditation because he did know one thing: that when he tried to be aware of something, it made him feel a little less horrible.
English
Because he felt horrible all the time at that time. Just a little bit. It was just a little bit less horrible. Seyado says, not knowing is a very hard place to be.
English
It's a—it's a tough mind to live with, not knowing why the mind suffers. Not knowing why the mind is happy. Not knowing how to make the mind happy. Not knowing how to make the mind suffering. Stop. He says, we have all
English
been in situations like this. Seyado says, it's a hard place to be. He says, you don't even know what to do with yourself. It's so hard. He says, you all know, right? When we're young, especially, we don't know what to do with ourselves.
English
We just—we just do what we can, but we're not really—
English
And as he practiced and watched and was mindful, he says one question kept coming up in his mind. That was, why is the mind suffering?
English
And he practiced for years because of that question. Because the mind was still suffering.
English
And he practiced for years, trying every day to increase the continuity of his mindfulness, to
English
stay on top of everything in his life and be aware. And
English
he said it was years later, like three, four, five years later, that he began to realize that practicing the Dhamma is something that you can never stop doing.
English
You can't.
English
Because every time he practiced the Dhamma, the mind would calm down. It would feel better.
English
And then—then he would relax and stop practicing, and the agitation would start again. And he went through this cycle over and over. And he said he got sick of it. He was like, he wasn't having this anymore. And he began to just keep trying to work at the mind. And he stopped trying to relax from meditation because he realized that that's the nature of the mind.
English
And he realized you always have to do practice. You always have to practice. He acknowledges that it is not easy to practice in real life. Because the place that—the places that we usually practice or learn to practice are retreats.
English
And so when we're trying to practice in real life, Seyado says, it's like the environment is different and the people around us are different.
English
He says, for many of us, it can be that, you know, retreat practice is fine, and then practicing at home is more difficult. Why is that? He asked himself. Yeah.
English
When he went to North America to teach,
English
there was a joke that yogis said that, you know, it's like you get on retreat and you're a hero and you go home you feel like zero.
English[Not yet transcribed]
English
It's like you'd have insights and everything on retreat, and you can't apply anything when you go home. And it's not because the insights are not real, Seyado says.
English
The insights are real, but they're not significant enough. The insights are not
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Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913–2002). After a career in business and life as a householder, he has become a permanent monk since 1996.…