Keeping the Mind Strong
December 28, 2011

When we’re meditating, we’re creating the causes for true happiness. All the conditions of the mind, all the qualities of the mind that are needed so you don’t take the pleasures of everyday life and use them to destroy yourself or to destroy other people. You realize that the essence of true happiness lies within the stillness of the mind, the peace of the mind, so you realize that anything that would destroy that peace, especially if you’re destroying it yourself, is not going to help in any kind of genuine happiness at all.

So try to maintain this peace and keep it as your top priority, because it is the most important thing. All the other good things in life come out of the mind that’s well-trained. So make sure your mind is in good shape all the time. Don’t let it go after its worries or concerns, because they just eat away at it like a disease. Then you don’t have the strength to do the good things you know that you should be doing because you’ve been eating away at yourself. It’s like a wasting disease where the body feeds off of its own tissue. You don’t want that. You want to be able to strengthen yourself at all times, so that when the time comes where you have to do something good but it’s difficult, you’ve got the strength to do it. This comes from keeping the mind well-trained.