Things of Real Value
December 25, 2011

When you’re meditating, you’re looking after your inner treasures.

We all have treasures outside: our wealth, our body. But these are things that can leave us at any time.

Look at the body: It’s something that’s just made to decay. When we first got it, we thought this was great. It was getting bigger and stronger all the time. We could do things we couldn’t do before. But then it reached its limit and then turned around and started leaving us bit by bit by bit.

It’s like having a big cube of ice in your house. If you try to keep it from melting, you put all sorts of things around it to protect it but sometimes that actually makes it melt faster. What you’ve got to do is figure out: What are the things that have real value that have to be kept cool? You keep those cool. And then when the ice is melted, that’s okay because you still have the other things that you need.

In other words, you use the body in order to give rise to happiness, a genuine kind of happiness in the mind. You use it to make the mind generous, you use it to observe the precepts, you use it to meditate. That’s getting good use out of it while you’ve got it. Then when it’s finally melted away, that’s the end of that. But you’ve gotten good use out of it.

Because the qualities of the mind are your real treasure. They don’t have to disintegrate the same way the body does. They don’t have to decay the same way the body does.

You have to look after them, though. If you just let them be, they begin to melt away as well.

So you have to keep looking after them every day, every day, every day until finally you dig down inside and find something that’s really of value inside the mind: something that doesn’t change, doesn’t disintegrate. Once you’ve got that, then you’re safe for life, forever.

But in the meantime, you’ve got to look after all the good things you’ve got in the mind so that you can find that thing of extra high value inside. So make sure that that’s your top priority.

We look after the body, we look after our material things because they do have their uses.

But you remember it’s like the spoon in a curry. You put the spoon in your mouth not because you’re going to eat the spoon. It’s because you want to bring the curry into the mouth.

It’s the same way with your body. You can’t take the body with you, but you can use it to develop good qualities in the mind. So make sure that the good qualities in your mind are your main concern.

The time will come when you have to put the spoon down. But you’ve got the nourishment from the curry and that’s what you want.

So always keep this point in mind as to where your real priorities are, what’s really of value in your life and what’s of temporary value. That way, you can get the most out of both the things that are temporary and the things that are lasting.