With the fire eyes of samādhi,

I feel my body on every part.

With the warm glow of anicca,

I melt the darkness from my heart.

There are two days in my life that have left a bigger impact on me than any other days: the day I learned Vipassana and the day my son was born.

When asked when one should first sit a course, Goenka answered in the mother’s womb, before birth. My son was fortunate to experience this. The course was quite late in the pregnancy, and he was already a little wild. Placing my hand on his mother’s belly, I would often feel him moving about, kicking his little legs. But during the course he calmed down completely, and it continued like that until he was born. Even after he was born, he seemed calmly aware of his surroundings, always looking around with curiosity.

Perfectly present,
In sync with a metronome—
it’s time to let go.

Cause and effect rules:
All actions are subject to
concentric circles.

A spawn of nature
thrusted into existence,
hence the momentum.

Right understanding has to illuminate every single part of the practice of Vipassana.

The Buddha called it sammā-diṭṭhi. In Pāli, diṭṭhi literally meant a view, or a philosophy. Then as now, there were many different kinds of philosophies in currency. But sammā-diṭṭhi, right understanding, has nothing to do any philosophy or intellectual position. Even with great devotion, an absolute and total conviction in every single word of the Buddha, will not liberate anybody. It merely becomes a belief-system like any other, and so it becomes a trap. The Buddha carefully used the word sammā meaning “right”, and sammā-diṭṭhi only becomes sammā when it is practiced. This is the critical difference, and this is what purifies the individual: the practice.

During a recent committee meeting at my local Dhamma center, we discussed alternative ways to encourage service because our meditation center, like many other Dhamma centers, is working through server shortages. This essay is my attempt to dive deeper into mettā and service and how they are essential for a complete practice.

This mind 

waits to enlight,

to befriend.

Simply remains still

holding close,

for a moment of awareness from within.

Elaborating on the assertion that all beings seek happiness, the Buddha declared it impossible for anyone to be truly happy if he or she does not refrain from whatever harms the peace and harmony of others.

Since his teaching entered my life, I have recognized in my quest for personal happiness a social responsibility: my duty to be happy for the welfare of others. After all, no-one is interested in the hurtful things that I sometimes say about them, in enduring my blame and annoyance, in witnessing my worries and anxiety attacks, or in my insistence that things go my way.