We all want to be happy, and we do not want to suffer. Yet as sentient beings it seems like we create so much cause for our suffering. Why is this? It is very much rooted in our self-centred thought that just thinks about me, what I want, what makes me feel good, what makes me feel bad, what I like, what I do not like, how people treat me, and how I treat them. The self-centred thought appears to be our friend looking out for our happiness, but in actual fact, it is the source of our misery.

It is the source of our misery in a couple of ways. First of all, this incredible focus on ourselves makes us really sensitive to other people so we are easily offended, easily angered, and easily insulted. Also, the self-centred thought makes us easily distracted because we are on the lookout for what gives us pleasure. We cannot really pay attention to what is happening right now. The self-centred thought causes us misery in the long term as well because, through it, we generate the motivations that lead us to get involved in creating negative karma. If we look at every single negative action we have ever created, that self-centred thought is always behind it.

We have got to see that the self-centred thought is not us, it is not who we are. We do not need to feel guilty and blame ourselves for having it because that is just another self-centred thought. What we have got to do is to see it as the thing that prevents our happiness, and because we want to be happy, then we have got to be on the lookout for that self-centred thought and counteract it whenever we can. We counteract it by thinking of its faults and by thinking of the benefits of caring for others. In that way, our hearts open and from that bodhicitta comes. This is something to be practised in all our activities every day, not just in the meditation hall. As we relate to everybody, let us help one another to do this.

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