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20041114GRCLALS1

Sunday Talk I at Unity Greater Cleveland Nov 14, 2004

Attaining Lasting Satisfaction

Please join me in this meditation:

The blessings of the Allmighty in the form of light are received by us: Light that clears the darkness, light that clears the ignorance, light that clears the hatred, light that clears the obsession, light that clears the unwanted difficulties that we, our families, our circles, our church members. All those difficulties disappear, thus we receive the blessings. They fill up our body with joy, happiness and we wish all our colleagues, friends, members in this room. Light goes even out of the room, reaches to all people in the city, county, state, the whole United States. It reaches to all of South and North America, and beyond that, to all of Europe, beyond that to the middle eastern countries, particularly where there are a lot of suffering. Just by the touch of the light all pains and sufferings are dissolved and disappear completely. All people are happy and satisfied and healthy. The light goes beyond that, reaches to all Asian countries, to the African continent and everywhere. The whole existing world is filled up with the great, shining light and the blessings of the Allmighty are everywhere. This light is the messenger and the blessing. Just by its touch alone all difficulties, unwanted incidents, illnesses and all sufferings, are cleared, from all all beings on this earth. They become happy, joyful and wonderful. We share this light with all our multi-galaxy-universes. The joy and happiness coming from this world fulfills every existence, wherever, whatever. All remain joyful, happy, kind, caring, loving for each other. All the people, wherever they are, are happy, joyful and grateful. The light that went from here completes its service and collects back. The blessings remain, the light returns to the country, the state, the county, the city, and remains here in the church.

Thank you.

Good morning everybody. What a wonderful day! It is fantastic, actually. Thank you for the wonderful introduction, for having me here, offering the facility that enables me to share a little bit of the spiritual service that we render to the people. Thank you so much also for the people who are organizing this. Today, I am presenting the spiritual path from the Buddhist point of view. What can you expect to get from it and how do you do it? I present this from the Buddhist point of view, because I know nothing else. If I had to talk anything else, I would be handicapped, so I can only talk from that angle.

Everybody, wherever, have to do something that has a purpose. It has to have a base on which to stand, something that you do and why you do it. You have to know what you hope to get. When I learnt in Tibet, that was the first lesson I learnt. For example you are meditating. Why do you meditate? What for? On what basis? What do you hope to get out of it? These are the fundamental things I was taught as a kid and it has continued throughout my life.

I was told that we have to meditate in order to build focus. If we don't focus, we are unfocused and whatever we do will be half-hearted. That will not achieve much. There is a good old Tibetan example. If you have a needle with two prongs or ends and try to pull a thread through with that, it will never go through. One will go here, the other there. So meditation brings focus. It gets you in touch with your deep thoughts.

What do you focus on? Every tradition will have its own explanation. Meditation is a basic tool that everyone can use. It helps to focus. Business people nowadays use it to be more successful in their business. CEOs also use meditation to relieve tensions that they are going through. Meditation is also used in hospitals to relieve pain. It is such a wonderful tool and is now being discovered in this country. But here we are as spiritual persons getting together in a holy place. It is a holy occasion, a beautiful day. We have a spiritual purpose. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about what spirituality is. But there a television commercial about computers. The founder of Apple Computers says in there, "My mother asked me, "Why do people need computers?" Here we have the same question: why do we need a spiritual path? You can live without it. There are lots of people who do. There are all these yuppies and atheists and they have no interest for whatsoever in spirituality. If you tell them that you are going to church or synagogue on some nights they probably think you are crazy. So these people, they also manage in their lives, perhaps better than us. They probably make more money. They may be well focused on that. So, what do we need a spiritual path for? The answer is: to eliminate our pains and sufferings.

A lot of people may deny that and say, "I have no suffering." But we do. We not only have physical pains and sufferings but also tremendous emotional pains and sufferings. Each and every one of us, myself included, cannot claim that we don't have emotional pains. Can anyone of you? I see no hands going up. It is true reality, we are going through this every day. When we get up in the morning we can see it ourselves. We are again a little older than yesterday. Maybe there are some extra wrinkles here and there. Maybe there is an extra little beard. That goes on and increases day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. We call that human nature. Whatever you can it, that is human suffering. We also have physical illnesses. We encounter them, our family and friends do. The members of our church, the clergy, everybody does. This is our pain, our suffering.

And it doesn't end there. We will all go, one after another, one day or another. That is our pain.

Can we overcome that or do we have to live with it because we were born with it? From whatever little I know, the answer that Buddha gave is: Yes, you can overcome it. Buddha said, "I learnt how to overcome this." These sufferings are not permanent. They are impermanent and they change. Therefore suffering is changeable. Red states and blue states are changeable. We have seen it in Ohio. Somehow the whole state went from blue to red. I am from Michigan. That is a blue state. And I did notice that a lot of people had a lot of pain right after the election. Some of them couldn't even get over it.

It is true. In one way it is a big deal. Four more years of whatever is going on. But if you look from the Republican point of view it is four more years of good things. From the Democrats-point of view it is four more years of suffering. That itself shows how impermanent it is. I have saying to myself, "We haven't lost anything, just the election. Big deal." Yes, we can be sad and disheartened. But we can never walk away. Happiness and joy are our responsibility. We have this responsibility for our own future generation. We must continue to contribute to our society. Wherever you look, any spiritual path will tell you to help and serve people, to relieve our own pains and sufferings.

In Buddhism there is a term called Bodhisattvas. These are dedicated people. They serve people. You help yourself, then your family, your children, and help everyone. That is spiritual work. There is no other spiritual path other than helping others. If you want to be a spiritually narrow, selfish person, then you can say, "I must meditate, I must be liberated, I don't care about others, whatever they do", but that is not spiritual. Any ego-maniac can do that. There is nothing great about it. Think about it: even animals can do that! They have that "me" feeling. That is not even a human quality. Human beings know better than animals. Don't you agree?

You have to help yourself. There are so many sufferings today. Look what is happening in Iraq. A lot of people think it is great. Great or not, that is not my decision. But what I see is tremendous suffering and pain and loss of life. It is not only the Iraqis that lose their lives but also our own children, our young people. That is pain, isn't it? If that is not suffering, I don't know what else you want to call suffering. Losing your own children, if that is not pain, then what is? So we must help, we must serve. It is our responsibility.

On that Tuesdays, a few weeks ago, we only lost the election. We didn't lose our purpose. The purpose of peace, of spirituality, the responsibility of that remains with us. John Kerry might have lost. That doesn't mean that we all lose. That is spiritual.

What did Buddha say about being spiritual? He said, "The purpose of spirituality is to eliminate all suffering." According to Buddha you first help yourself, then your family, your society, all the people, and beyond that, all living beings. It is almost like "Mission Impossible". However, it can be achieved. You go one by one. You bite what you can chew. That is the individual responsibility. Whatever I do, I am responsible for all my actions, good or bad. Whatever you do, you are responsible for all your actions, good or bad. Buddhists call that karma.. Karma is nothing but responsibility. When you reduce harming and hurting other people, you build good karma. It will give you everlasting happiness and joy. If you increase negative actions, you build bad karma and that will give you bad results. That remains true. It is what Buddha has discovered and all the great spiritual leaders agree with this. No one disagrees. To be a good, spiritual person means to be a kind person, compassionate, loving - to yourself, your family and all others.

There is the good old American saying, "Charity begins at home". So love your own family and then expand that to friends, then fellow country men, then wherever you can expand. To be of service means to develop compassion and love to all beings. That's what I learnt in Buddhism. It looks that all spiritual paths agree on that.

I would like to say Thank you so much.