I had the good kamma of staying with the nuns at the Dhammasara Nuns Monastery in Perth during my visit to Australia. The 3 days I spent with the nuns was a humbling but a profound experience. Part of the daily schedule of those at the monastery is to do some light work for about an hour or so in the morning soon after b'fast. Since I was staying the monastery I too had to do some work. My duties were to rake the leaves from the drive ways and cut eucalyptus bushes from the garden.
On the first day at the evening drinks, Ven. Seri explained to me why I was doing what I was doing and its importance. As you may know, Australia has lots of bush fires. Sometimes they not only cause harm to wild life but also to human lives. So, people prepare well in advance to protect themselves of bush fires. Ven. Seri explained that raking and removing eucalyptus bushes which contain the Eucalyptus oil, helps to minimize the spread of fires and to keep the monastery safe. Though I initially felt bad about cutting the bushes, once she explained, it made sense why they do what they do.
Why am I talking about raking and cutting bushes? What has an Aussie bush fire to do with the mind? Well, I find that our minds have bush fires as well. What are the fires that our minds burn with? Anger, ill-will, resentment, jealousy, envy, passion, desire for what we want and don't want, restleness and worry are some of the bush fires that sweep us over from time to time. But what is most interesting is that we hardly prepare ourselves for such fires. Most of the time we are not aware until a bush fire in the mind has swept over us and we are almost burned to death. Most of the time we are left with the ashes. For example, anger sweeps over us without us even knowing and all that is left is broken friendships, relationships, hurt and resentment. And we wonder why and how? Most times we blame the other person or get depressed.
How do we prepare for bush fires in the mind? First and foremost its important to keep the five precepts (to refrain from taking lives, to refrain from taking what is not given, to refrain from sexual misconduct, to refrain from lying and to refrain from taking intoxicating drugs and alchohol). They can act as a buffer, a wall when we are swept over by anger, envy, restlesness etc. For example, it could be jealousy and desire that makes us want to steal. It is hatred that makes us want to destroy another life. It is ignorance and desire that makes us want to take drugs and alcohol. But when we have made a determination to keep the five precepts, to some extent, we are keeping the fires of anger, ignorance, envy, desire from burning in the mind.
Another way of tackling bush fires in the mind is to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity and generosity. These wholesome qualities in the mind help remove or at least keep at bay ill-will, selfishness, jealousy, ignorance and the endless movement of the mind. Removing unwholesome qualities is like raking the leaves and cutting the bushes. By doing that you don't add more fuel to the fire. Cultivating wholesome qualities is like putting a fire emergency plan into place. So that we your mind is burning with anger, you can immediately bring out loving-kindness to put out the fire before it gets out of control.
Development of mindfulness is a key point in overcoming bush fires in the mind. Being mindful is being on the watch out for things that can cause bush fires. So when you are mindful you can stop a bush fire even before a single spark has started or in the least can put out a spark before it becomes an unstoppable fire. You will notice that your mind too acts in the same way. Once unwholsome qualities take over, unless you have developed enough mindfulness and wholesome qualities, they can become unstopabble. For example, it's resentment that ultimately turns into anger. It's anger that eventually turns into hatred. By this time it's gathered it's own momentum and you cannot stop it. Everything has a start and that starting point is not noticeble unless you have developed mindfulness and wisdom. Like a bush fires our mind fires need to run it's own course before its exhausted, unless properly intervened. In the process so much damage is done. Our unwholsome qualities have the same fate.
Unfortunately, we are not trained to tackle our mind fires like we are trained to tackle bush fires. In fact, most of us go through life without even noticing bush fires in the mind. But yet we keep burning and burning. Everytime we burn we run away from it, only to find that the fires have caught up with us again. Some people think, this is something to be done in the old age. Because when we are young we need to enjoy life and live life to the fullest. Somehow I am not convinced.
It's like not removing the rust from metal when it is just forming. If you don't remove the rust, you would find that after a while it cannot be removed. In fact, the metal might be corroded after a while. This is the same with our unwholesome qualities. After a while we will realise that it's difficult to get rid of our unwholesome qualities. They are sticking to us like glue and it hurts. So we give up.
I also find that some people say "Oh, I know how to handle myself when the time comes". I think it's stupidity. It's like some of those people who stayed in their homes when bush fires were burning in Victoria. What happened to them? They all burned to death. It's stupid to think that we can control these qualities in the mind. It's like putting breaks on a car that is travelling at 100km/h. Would is stop immediately? No. Why? Because it has enormous momentum behind it. The car will come to a stop once that momentum has been exhausted. Our mind is just like that.
So please don't wait for the time to arrive because when the time arrives you will find out that you have no more time left. Somewhere I read or heard that our past and our future rests on this moment called 'NOW'!
With metta
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