DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

---o0o---

When practicing spiritual cultivation, have you ever asked yourself:

- What is the purpose of your spiritual practice, and do you need to set goals for the future?

Have any of you heard this saying before?

In truth, if you don't know why you are practicing spiritual cultivation, all the tendencies in life can push your life around, and all of them are tendencies that you believe are right. And if you keep following all the tendencies you think are right, your life will be like a boat sailing aimlessly in a sea of ​​suffering. To help you have a clear purpose in your spiritual practice, listen to the advice of Ken Loughnan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, who was once the leader of the Southeast Asian Youth Ship program, who said:

- You can’t prepare the future for yourself, but you can prepare yourself for the future. This means:

- You cannot prepare for your future, but you must train yourself for a future you desire.

Naturally, once you have learned to cultivate yourself, everyone wants to have a happy and fulfilling life. Although you know that time, once gone, never returns, many people unknowingly waste their lives on meaningless things. You bury your natural aspirations, only to regret it later when you look back, but it's too late. Among them, only a few people awaken in time to their mistakes and reorient their lives. That is why the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, once reminded:

- You only have one life. It is the life you must strive to achieve what you desire, not a life of ease and tranquility.

You won't waste your life once you clearly define your purpose in life and know how to cultivate it, whether that purpose is noble or simple and humble. First, it will give you a sense of meaning in your life. Therefore, the purpose of cultivation is the direction of your life's journey, the compass for all your choices, and the driving force behind your actions. Cultivation is a noble purpose in life that helps you unleash your immense potential and is an essential element leading to success. So, if you value life and want a meaningful and useful life, define a clear purpose for your life with a focus on cultivation based on your passion, aspirations, and abilities, and then build a cultivation program according to that purpose.

Many of you, although you know how to cultivate, think you must do something grand and noble, such as:

- You must have a lot of money to give generously to everyone in the village.

Or:

- You have to do something to become famous.

Meanwhile, you don't realize you're standing in a deep abyss, not knowing when you'll be able to reach the surface. Because you're always living in a dream, dreaming of one day doing something great, you don't realize that greatness comes from the most basic things in life. Actually, the principles of learning in life aren't anything extraordinary; the important thing is whether you know how to manage your time and apply those principles to achieve your goals.

Somewhere in books, in a course on the topic of:

- Life Matters Course in Melbourne, Australia, David Mills gave very impressive advice on the principles of setting goals for the future: the SMART principle.

S: Simple: Goals should be simple, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless, and importantly, you need to understand what they are.

M: Measurable: A measurable goal. You can evaluate and test each step of the way on the long road to realizing your dream.

A: Achievable: An achievable goal. It won't work if you're afraid of blood or contact with patients and set a goal to become a doctor. Or if you do not know politics, hate talking about sensitive issues, and set a goal to become a politician.

R: Realistic: Practical goals. Goals are completely different from dreams, so they are governed by real life and the circumstances around you. Therefore, you must live and act realistically.

T: Time-frame: You need to set goals within a specific timeframe. Setting goals without a specific timeframe will forever remain on paper because you lack the motivation to start working towards them.

But the root of these principles is belief. With belief, you dare to set goals; with belief, you wholeheartedly dedicate yourself to learning and studying from others without feeling envious of their success. More importantly, you have enough courage to stand on your own two feet to face challenges, to begin your journey of learning, and to reach the final destination. Of course, your learning goals don't need to be grand or groundbreaking. Here's a truth: listen to the story of the starfish:

A merchant was strolling along the beach when he saw a young boy slowly picking up starfish from the sand and throwing them into the water. Seeing the boy's wasteful behavior and wanting to teach him a lesson, the merchant approached and said:

- I've seen what you're doing, and I appreciate it, but do you realize how many beaches there are around here, and how many starfish are dying on each one? I'm sure a diligent and kind boy like you could do much greater and more useful things in your time. Do you think what you're doing will change anything?

The boy looked at the merchant, then gently bent down, picked up a starfish from the sand, and threw it back into the sea:

- I've transformed the starfish's dying life into a new, healthy life.

Through this story, don't think that the purpose of your spiritual practice is just to focus on diligently chanting scriptures and reciting Buddha's name. Don't disregard the small, insignificant things you're doing. No matter what, you must start with small goals and work towards them. Bigger goals will come naturally and easily. Indeed, to become a great Buddha, one must cultivate the virtues of a small Bodhisattva; to become a great Bodhisattva, one must cultivate the virtues of a small, kind person. To have sufficient provisions on this path, you first need to prepare:

1- A correct mindset

If you want things to turn out a certain way, you will always find a way to achieve them. Not achieving the desired results doesn't mean you've failed. Instead, you grow because you've learned what doesn't yield results. Therefore, you need to have an accurate mindset so that your thoughts remain unwavering.

2. Have a clear goal

Set a clear goal for yourself: Who do you want to be in the future? As a sentient being, a Bodhisattva, or a Buddha? Where do you want to be, and what stage are you currently at on your journey to achieving your life's goal: in hell or in the Pure Land?

3. Take action

The main reason preventing people from starting anything is the fear of failure, so you must act to prove your thoughts.

4. Research carefully

If you want to succeed in a particular field, find someone experienced in it to learn from and consult their strategies. For example, what vows are necessary to become a great Bodhisattva?

5. Confront difficulties

Your path to success is not always smooth sailing, so you must prepare yourself mentally for potential difficulties. Your ability to confront difficulties and disappointment will determine your success. When you understand that the purpose of your spiritual practice is not merely to resolve your own inner turmoil and find happiness for yourself, but also to liberate all sentient beings from suffering and its causes, bringing them not only temporary happiness but also ultimate happiness. And to attain ultimate happiness, you need to guide others not only to liberation but also to the ultimate happiness of perfect enlightenment. Your purpose as a practitioner, in every breath each day, each hour, each minute, is as vast as the boundless void, because sentient beings are countless, and the purpose of your life is to bring happiness to every one of them.

With this goal in mind, maintaining uninterrupted focus, all self-worry and instability will cease, and happiness and contentment will come naturally. True happiness in life comes when you know how to dedicate your life to the benefit of other sentient beings. Benefiting others will bring you true peace of mind and contentment. That is the best way to enjoy life.

You experience much disappointment and frustration in life, fundamentally because you have not changed to an attitude of living for others. Shifting your goal from seeking happiness for yourself to bringing happiness to others will immediately reduce the instability in your life. This new attitude will transform all undesirable things in life into happiness. Instead of viewing problems as sources of distress, you can see them as beneficial.

Many of your problems are closely related to everyday desires such as health, money, education, fame, and power very limited goals. For example, when you are sick, your goal is simply to be healthy again. Such a goal is nothing special. This limited desire actually creates problems by causing you anxiety, fear, and disappointment, because if your goal is simply to be healthy, then once you are sick, you will become anxious and fearful. Therefore, being healthy is not the main concern. The main concern is how everything that happens to you will benefit other sentient beings. If you are healthy, you should use that health to benefit others; and if you are sick, you should still use that experience of illness to benefit others.

When you focus your efforts on the true purpose of life, benefiting all sentient beings, health becomes secondary. The results you achieve are truly wonderful when you are passionate and overcome all challenges to pursue your goal. Only with passion and a desire to reach a noble goal can your potential be fully realized. Once you have done this, the purpose of a spiritual practitioner is not simply to be healthy, live long, become wealthy, have a degree, or have many friends. Because none of those purposes is the ultimate goal of life. Whether you are healthy or not, rich or poor, educated or not… your ultimate goal is to benefit other sentient beings. The purpose of a person who practices spirituality in this world is to benefit others, using their body, speech, and mind to bring happiness to others.

You need to realize that all your past, present, and future happiness comes from the kindness of other sentient beings. Selfishness is the root of all your problems, including illness. Therefore, instead of neglecting others to care for yourself, you need to care for others and ignore yourself. Instead of doing something for yourself and for your own benefit, you must live and live only to do something that brings happiness to others. The act of exchanging yourself for others is the fundamental mindset to uproot all your problems. It is also the source of healing.

Loving and caring for other sentient beings will heal your mental illness immediately, because it helps eliminate selfishness, the main factor creating our problems. Loving and caring for others also heals your own ailments by transforming your attachment to this life, along with delusion, anger, envy, pride, and other unhealthy thoughts, which are the root cause of not only illness but also all your problems. These unhealthy thoughts make your mind restless. As soon as you cultivate Bodhicitta, the healthiest mind, you will find contentment and peace of mind. Then, you transform your mind from a creator of suffering into a creator of happiness. Thus, whether healthy or sick, rich or poor, living or dying, your primary goal is to benefit other sentient beings. This is the essential source of happiness in life. With this attitude, you will enjoy everything that happens in life. With this attitude, you will make your life meaningful throughout all twenty-four hours of each day.

Western culture emphasizes material success as the source of happiness, so Western-style happiness is believed to come from wealth, living in luxurious houses, owning many possessions, etc. However, such wealth alone cannot bring happiness and contentment. Even if you become a millionaire with enough money to live fifty lifetimes, that wealth cannot bring you peace of mind. And no matter how many friends you have, they cannot bring you peace of mind. Success and fame in your academic pursuits are also not sources of happiness. In fact, they can bring you perpetual dissatisfaction, resentment, arrogance, etc. Not only do they fail to bring you contentment and peace of mind, but money, friends, and education can actually become sources of instability for you.

If you practice spiritual cultivation and consider only health, money, education, fame, or power as your goals, then you will be completely attached to the happiness and comfortable pleasures of this life. Even if they achieve these goals, you will never be satisfied, because their attitude is one of attachment to this life. You have pursued this attachment from time immemorial until today and have never found contentment. No matter how long they pursue your desires, you will never find satisfaction and will never truly end your suffering. Pursuing desires is not the way to end dissatisfaction.

However, if the purpose of your spiritual practice is to benefit others, then wealth becomes valuable because you can use that wealth to help others. With that same positive attitude, the more power and fame you have, the more benefit you will bring to others. With such a purpose in life, everything you do will benefit others, and when you benefit others, you clearly benefit yourself as well.

Whether you are healthy or not is the same to you if you use everything you experience to benefit other sentient beings. When you encounter problems, you use those problems to benefit others. This gives meaning to your life. Even when you don't experience any problems, you still make your life useful to others. Therefore, unhealthy thoughts, such as selfishness and greed, are the root of all problems. You need to change them, transform them into healthy thoughts, such as the desire to bring happiness to others.

Transformation, or healing the mind, is the universal solution to all the troubles in life. With this attitude, no trouble can trouble you, and you can use any trouble to benefit others. Clearly defining your life's ultimate goal is crucial. If you consider curing a disease as the ultimate goal, you've misunderstood the issue, because even if you're cured, nothing will change. You'll maintain the same attitude and behavior. You'll continue to create the causes of trouble because your actions will create negative karma. In other words, you'll continue to create the causes of illness. Therefore, changing your attitude is far more important than curing the disease. If your ultimate goal is to benefit others, this positive attitude will prevent the creation of further negative karma, which is the cause of illness, and enable you to create positive karma, the cause of happiness.

When you aspire to use your life to bring happiness to other sentient beings, it is natural that you will certainly not harm others. When the happiness of others is your ultimate goal, you will achieve unimaginable success, because this attitude brings all happiness, including the unparalleled happiness of enlightenment and the cessation of all suffering. The truest definition of success in life is the ability to benefit others.

The true miracle is when you can end the causes of suffering and create the causes of happiness by recognizing that the mind is the source of both. The true miracle is transforming your mind, for this transformation will protect you for many lifetimes. A positive attitude will help you stop creating problems, thereby ensuring happiness not only in this life but also in hundreds, even thousands, of future lifetimes, until you attain enlightenment. This is the greatest success. That is why you need enlightenment.

To complete the great work of bringing happiness to all sentient beings, especially the unparalleled happiness of perfect enlightenment, you need to be enlightened. To guide others perfectly, you need to develop inner qualities, especially all-encompassing wisdom, compassion for all sentient beings, and the perfect capacity to devise appropriate methods to help others. These qualities are essential in healing oneself and all sentient beings. Because enlightenment means ending ignorance, hatred, greed, and all other impure thoughts, as well as eradicating subtle habits and achieving complete realization. Enlightenment is achieved through spiritual development. You need to develop both compassion and wisdom. You must not only develop the wisdom to recognize relative reality, especially the causes of happiness and suffering, but also the wisdom to recognize ultimate reality, for only with this wisdom can you eliminate ignorance, which is the root of all suffering and its causes, and achieve liberation.

Your goal in your practice is to help the body and mind of every sentient being escape all suffering and its causes, and to lead all beings to the ultimate and eternal happiness of perfect enlightenment. Developing the inherent qualities of wisdom and compassion is the method of healing your body and mind, and through this, you will be able to heal others. Make each day meaningful. Therefore:

- Every morning, the first thing you do upon waking is remember your life's purpose, which is to liberate all sentient beings from suffering and bring them happiness. You must see that the happiness of all sentient beings is the responsibility of a practitioner. To be able to help others, you must be healthy and live long, and it is for this reason that you perform personal hygiene, eat, and do other daily tasks. Every time you eat during the day, always remember your life's purpose.

- And the same goes when you go to sleep. To fulfill your great and universal responsibility, you need good health and a long life, and it is for this reason that you wholeheartedly maintain your health. In this way, you have used all your daily activities to serve all sentient beings.

- Before going to work, you should once again remember the purpose of life, which is the responsibility to bring happiness to all sentient beings. It's simply a matter of changing your attitude; previously, you went to work to seek happiness for yourself, now you go to work to seek happiness for others. Even if you can't talk about the happiness of all sentient beings, at least you should consider the happiness of the employers who hire you, those who need others to do their work. Through your work, you practically serve your employers, bringing them the profit and happiness they expect. At least remember that, through your efforts, your employers are fulfilled. You are giving your employers all the benefits, comforts, and happiness they receive because of your work.

- While working, you should remember your life's purpose in relation to everyone around you, even animals. You are there to serve everyone, including strangers; your existence is for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Remembering your life's purpose will instantly bring you happiness. As soon as you change your attitude, you will find peace and contentment. And suddenly you will find yourself enjoying both life and work.

Once you only think of yourself, you become stressed, and prolonged stress only intensifies. You become frustrated and depressed with your problems, and this thought constantly lingers in your mind:

- I have this problem. I have that problem… When will I ever be happy?

The physical manifestation of selfishness is a constantly tense and distressed face. However, your stress will lessen as soon as you stop thinking only of yourself and begin to care about others. Think to yourself repeatedly, like chanting a mantra:

- I am here to serve others. I am here to serve others…

Or:

- I am here to bring happiness to others. I am here to bring happiness to others…

These powerful mantras will make you happy and help you see the meaning in your life. Sit somewhere and recite these phrases for about ten minutes, or even an hour. This meditation practice will instantly relieve stress in your heart and bring happiness to your life.

You are imprisoning yourself in the prison of selfishness, but caring for others will be the key to your liberation. You can instantly feel freedom. Your heart will no longer be sharp and easily hurt like a thorn, or rough and hard like stone, but will be soft and sweet like ice cream. Your heart will be open and expansive, and you will instantly experience peace and happiness. This is the result of caring for others.

With this attitude, everything you do throughout the workday will become good, positive, and a source of happiness, because your motivation for working will not be tainted by selfishness. With this positive attitude, all your daily actions, working, walking, sitting, eating, sleeping, etc., will become causes of success and happiness, and none of your actions will create suffering. Your actions will also become factors leading to the ultimate happiness of perfect enlightenment.

Thus, from the moment you wake up in the morning until you go to sleep, you should do everything for others. With a purpose for others, you become happy, and this joyful happiness is not a fleeting exhilaration but a profound peace of mind. The best way to enjoy life is to willingly dedicate your life to others, not because you are forced, but because compassion and wisdom have granted you this voluntary freedom. Happiness and meaning in life are unexpectedly attained. Life is truly worth living. You have extraordinary freedom in using your mind to end unsettling problems and achieve happiness. Whatever happens to you, you can make it meaningful, and you don't waste this precious human body. Otherwise, even if you are healthy and live for thousands of years, it would still be a meaningless, empty life.

In short, when you realize that the purpose of your spiritual practice is to bring happiness to others, it will create a great change, because then whether you are sick or healthy, successful or unsuccessful, will no longer matter to you. This makes a huge difference psychologically and brings you much happiness. Thus, sacrificing yourself to give something to others, instead of always taking something from others and using them for your own happiness, will bring great meaning to your life. This new way of thinking will transform your life, leading to greater fulfillment.

---o0o---