Sunday Morning Meditation 26th January 2025

Hello. Hello, good morning. Wonderful to see you all. I hope you're all safe and well wherever you are. It's a little bit wet and windy out there, isn't it? So welcome, glad you could join me this morning for our usual weekly Sunday meditation and discussion. So for anybody who might be joining for the first time, we're going to follow the same format we usually do, which is we go straight into practice. We practice for about 20 minutes or so, and then there's a short talk, and then we go into our group discussion.

Teachings

So for this morning's topic, I thought that perhaps I could speak to this idea of reigniting or reclaiming our practice, or our principles, our values.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that your principles can't be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them. He said that it's continually in your power to reignite your principles, your values.

And so what we're getting at, you know sometimes we meet some difficulties. Right now life gets in the way. Obstacles arise. Sometimes it's one after the other, it's a bit continuous. And that completely destabilises our practice. Something that either just occupies us, occupies our time, when we drift away from our values and our practice, or we find that we lose our temper, right? We become depressed about something, we lose our temper, or we just stop checking in with ourselves altogether.

And so the reminder here really is that no matter what happens, no matter how much time has passed, no matter how disappointing our behaviour may have been yesterday, last week, whatever it is; those principles, those values

that you hold dear, whatever they are - they could be the principles of the dharma- It could be whatever, they remain unchanged. You can return at any moment. Whatever happened last week, whatever happened yesterday, whatever happened five minutes ago is the past, right?

And so Samsara, as we know, is created in each moment; it’s not something that happened to you long ago. It's something that is created in this moment. It is happening right now. And so the power we have is now, and we can reignite and we can restart whenever we like.

And so why not do it right now this morning? You know, let this group meditation we've just done be the beginning of the restart if you feel you need one.

And then how to keep that going. Well, after this call, we can reflect on one thing we could do; we could say, ‘What for me is the most important thing about the kind of person I'd like to be, about the kind of life that I'd like to live?’ So getting clear on our priorities.

And then we could ask, ‘Well, what lately has steered me away from this?’

And a wonderful journal prompt, I think, is to ask, ‘What change could I implement today that will make me more in line with my values?’

And it's not, ‘What can I do today to make me perfect?’ It's 'What could I do

that will bring me a bit more in line with my values?’

And each day we can ask ourselves the same thing; remind ourselves of our values. Check in with the last 24 hours, what has steered me away? And what can I do differently today to help keep me on track? And then check our minds. Check our minds at different times of the day, see how it's going.

What are we noticing? What's coming up? Because the worst thing you can do is just give up altogether. Just because today didn't go well or because you got angry once, then you decide to just throw the whole thing and you stop watching your mind. You say, ‘Well, it's all going badly anyway, so who cares?’

But as Sharon Salzberg said, related to meditation, ‘There's nowhere you can travel in your mind that is so far, there is no amount of time that can pass that is too much, that you cannot just in a moment, simply begin again, come back’.

And that applies in meditation. Of course, we get distracted and it doesn't matter how many times or how long, we can just begin again. You just come straight back. Just come straight back. There is no failing. It's just coming back.

And the same likewise can be for our practice or whatever else, whatever our values, our principles are.

And so it's little by little each day with that diligence, with enthusiasm for what is good. It's that, little by little, that transformation takes place.

As the Buddha said in the Dhammapada, ‘Drop by drop, the water pot is filled. Likewise, the wise one, gathering it little by little, fills themselves with good.

But it requires the consistency day by day, drop by drop. What it doesn't require is perfection. So that, you know, the fact that you faulted yesterday

or last week or got carried away, is not a problem. What matters is that you are continuing.

In that quote from the Buddha it doesn't say:

Drop by drop, the water pot is filled.

Likewise, the one who is perfect at everything fills themselves with good.

It doesn't say that .

And this is possible for all of us, right? It's the tortoise who continues bit by bit, despite any upheavals and distractions. You know, it's the one putting foot in front of the other who reaches the end. The hare who is all enthusiastic one day, throwing it away and wasting it another day, doesn't make it.

And so we're all here this morning.This is a part of it. So whatever has happened, if we may feel like we've not been perfect or it's not been quite right, or we've, you know, faulted here or there, that doesn't matter. We're here. We are starting again. We're beginning again.

And let it be that way. Let it let us always have this beginner's mind.

And so that's my encouragement this morning. That came out of some conversations I've had recently. where we all hold ourselves to high standards and we think, ‘I should be like this’. ‘I should be like that’. And it's just this encouragement that, you know, what is perfection?

Anyway, we can always begin again. Just do our little bit.