Shift Perception, Find Joy

Every experience you have is just a series of fleeting mind moments, arising and passing away like waves on the shore. Suffering only takes root when we try to grasp these passing waves, forgetting that attachment is an optional anchor we choose to drop. The mind is simply a finely tuned instrument—designed to receive, recognise, register, respond, and perceive the world, not to trap it. True freedom arrives when you realise that the beauty you chase isn't locked inside the object itself, but is a masterpiece carved by your own perception.  

By deeply understanding this eternal wisdom, the heavy burden of holding on gently dissolves. You won't ever need to force yourself to let go; instead, you will find letting go is natural and revel in the truest sense of happiness. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Art of Being Happy, Buddha's Guide to Modern Living from Jaitavanarama Buddhist Monastery, Sri Lanka. This intriguing talk series brings timeless Buddhist wisdom to help you navigate life's challenges through simple practical insights. Each episode offers gentle guidance for finding peace and joy in everyday moments. Join us on this journey toward lasting happiness and inner peace. Brought to you by Sanatani, the voice eternal.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

When you're young and your parents bring you toys, okay? What sort of toys are given to boys and what sort of toys are given to girls? Are they the same things? What do typically, little girls, what do they get as a toy? Dolls. Boys? Cars. Have you ever heard a girl ask for a toy or a doll? They've never asked for one. It is what their parents gave them. Right at the beginning. That was the first toy. And if you walk into a girl's room, what color is it painted? Walk into a boy's room, what color is it painted? So do you think that this young girl, this infant of a girl, right, when she goes, Gugga, go, go, what she actually means is paint my room pink? Is it do you think that's what she's saying? No. The kid doesn't understand. They don't know what color room they want. They don't understand pinks and blues. They just see color, that's all. When they see color, they see color. But here's what happens: here's why you grew up liking pink as women or girls, and here's why you grew up liking blue as men or boys. It's because that was your doctrination, your indoctrination. That was the drushti that was given to you right from your formative ages. You were programmed that way. See, like feeding a computer, right? From scratch. You came into this world and you were a formatted hard drive. And what your parents did, your teachers did, the people around you did, your friends did. The internet did, the magazines did, the TV did, was indoctrinating your mind. One drushti at a time. So as a young girl, you'd have grown up, looking around in your room, most things were what color? Pink. As a boy, most things were blue. I mean, you do this to your children, your parents did this to you. So it continues. From generation to generation, this continues. But then when the researchers, the scientists, they do a survey and they ask, you know, girls, what color do you like? And they say pink or a shade of it. And they think, and all girls must like pink. It must be something girlish. Perhaps it's in their DNA. It's not in their DNA. It's in the indoctrination. I remember the day I had to pick my favorite color. I remember that day very vividly. And I'll tell you the story. It was at my when I was in school. I was very young, I think in grade two. Oh no, actually, much before that. I was in uh upper kindergarten. Yes. I had this bad habit of having my mouth open all the time. You know, some children are like that. So even if in my lectures in the classroom, I would always be like this. I just had a habit of keeping my mouth open. So one day we were in this um assembly, and the principal, it was a small school, it wasn't a big school, so the principal knew everyone in the school. And what the principal did was uh while we I was in the audience in the assembly, she asked one of the teachers to give her a piece of paper. So she they tore off a sheet of paper from a book and then passed it to the principal. She crushed that piece of paper and then she passed it down. I could see the paper being passed down from one to the other to the other. It was coming in my direction. So of course I was preparing myself to pass it back as soon as he came to me. But the moment it came in my hand, she said, Stop. What do you think she had in mind for me? Yes. He was very embarrassing, but she taught me a lesson. I mean, she loved me. She doted on her. She was a wonderful teacher, but that was just her way of teaching me a lesson that I was never going to forget. You can know that from that day I never had my mouth open. But so you're wondering, how did I pick my favorite color? So what happened is I went to see the teacher and my principal after that, and she said, Bring your parents, ask your parents to come and meet me. For something else. But it wasn't for that, but it was something else. And then I went to see my parents. My parents went into school. Now my parents had a problem with me. Now they have lots of problems with me, but one of the problems they had with me was at a young age I was very untidy. I was very untidy. I'd take off my clothes and just put them everywhere, and I wouldn't clean up after me. I'm not like that anymore, I promise you. So here's what happened. So my mother, she wasn't fond of the fact that I'd come home and put all my clothes everywhere because then she'd had to come and pick everything and put on the on the hangers and the in the cupboard and all sorts. So she complained about this to the principal. And then the principal said, Right, we need to sort this out, young man. From today onwards, I need you to be tidy, I need you to be neat, and I want I want you to hang your clothes in the right in its rightful place after you head back from school. So she asked me a question. She says, she spoke to my mother and she said, Get this boy a hanger on which he can hang his clothes when he gets back home. And then she asked me a question, What is your favorite color? Because she wanted me to inform my mother in which color I wanted my hanger in. I remember to this day, I didn't have an answer to that question. I honestly didn't have an answer to that question because I didn't have a favorite color. So when asked this question, what is your favorite color? I was gobsmacked. I didn't know what to say. I looked around the room and there was something that was red. And then I said, My favorite color is red. So soon enough I ended up with a hanger that was red. And then now my parents realized that my favorite color was red because that is what I told them, and then they painted the whole room red. So my cupboard went red, my desk went red, and soon enough, I began to realize that my favorite color was red. So it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I had to learn that my favorite color was red. If you've had a favorite color, or if you still have a favorite color, I have to ask you the question, why? If yours is also red, why is red so special to you? Now you'll all have a different favorite color. You know, for some might say pink, others might say yellow, green, right, purple, violet, brown, whatever, black, white. Now you'll all have your own favorite colors. But if I ask you the question, why, do you have a valid answer to give me? An answer that will stand in a court of law. An answer which is truly valid. Is red so virtuous? What is so bad about yellow? Why do we not like yellow? Why is yellow not your favorite color? And the biggest question of all, the most important question of all is if you think red is such a pretty color, why doesn't everyone think so? So here's where we need to try and understand why it is that the mind picks up this drushti. And then from there on, it learns that these are the things in life that brings it happiness. So that is what we're gonna try and find out now. How does beauty work? Why is it that then I grew up to learn and like red? I always thought, you know, red was my favorite color. I it was something I taught myself. Would you agree that beauty has nothing to do with your body? When you perceive beauty, it has nothing to do with your body? Would you agree? Will you accept that? Okay. So although we say it's it lies in the eye of the beholder, you know that it's not literally the eye of the beholder, right? It's in the mind of the beholder. Because if you swap this eye with another eye, nothing would have changed. You'd still like the same things. Okay? So then we are talking about the mind. This is a visual representation of a chitta. A chitta by its very nature, as anything, so a chitta manifests would be a better way of putting it. A chitta manifests. When the causes are present, those causes will result in a chitta coming into being. And so, what is a chitta again? You can think of it as a as a as a mind moment. If you feel that your mind is forever there, what I want to try and get across to you right now is it's not something that's forever there. These are individual mind moments, one after the other after the other, right? But they rise and fall in very quick succession that you are unable to discern one mind moment from the next because they flow so rapidly. It's like when you watch a stream of water. If you didn't know that water was molecular, right, you'd think that this is just one thing, like flow flowing right from the mountains to the oceans, because it's all connected. So you'd think that this is like a you know a piece of cloth, just very long. So the Mahavali is not one thing, it's just lots of drops of water. In the same way, although you sense that your mind is one thing and it's always been there from your birth and it's going to be there till your last moments, right? What it really is are individual thought moments that arise and pass away. Like the rain, for instance, right now. Although we say it's raining, these are actually individual drops of water, aren't they? That fall from the sky. But if you look outside, you'll see you know just a continuous stream of water. But actually, what it is are are individual drops of water. Now the same applies to the chittas. Right, so now how does beauty happen then? In the chitta, there's a function called attachment. You'll know this as tanha. Now we're all very familiar with this word attachment or tanha because we understand that this is the this is the problem that we are all suffering from. Right? In every scripture you read, in every teaching that you hear, and every talk that is given, and every, you know, you know that the Buddha's purpose in this world was to free ourselves and himself from tanha. We've heard the the very popular saying, uh, Dhammapada stanza, tanhai jaiati soko, tanhai jaiati bhaya, yeah, tanhai vipamuttasa, nati soko kutobaya. So if tanha is the cause of suffering, of fear, and tanna is the cause of grief, right? Then where tanha has been exterminated, then where is grief and where is sorrow? Or where is fear? So you know that tanha is a problem here, or attachment. For those who are still trying to get your heads around what attachment is, I want you to think of it as a function of the mind. See, this pen has a function. It can write. This fan has a function. There are multiple functions of this fan. One, it can be used as a to cover myself up with. That's why when I drink some water, I can cover myself with this. For modesty. Then you can use it to cool yourself with. These are all functions. The microphone has a function. A chitta, when attachment exists in a chitta, the function of a chitta becomes attachment. So when a chitta attaches, I need you to understand of it as a function of a chitta. So a chitta need not always attach. It is optional. It doesn't have to attach. But when it does, it does. When a chitta arises, ladies and gentlemen, it always takes an object. A chitta can never arise without an object. Now, if you recall from a few talks ago, we talked about the various objects that a chitta can take. This is why we have our senses. Right? We have the eye, which gives the chitta an object. These are sight objects. Okay? So then of course we have the ear that gives the chitta sound objects. We have the nose, which gives the ear, smell objects. We have the tongue, which gives the chitta taste objects. And we have the sense of touch, and ultimately we have the mind itself. The mind takes the form of the object that it takes. It's a bit like that. It's like the air in this room. What shape does it take? It takes the shape of the room, doesn't it? In a similar fashion, the mind takes the shape of the object which it has received. So anyhow, that this takes uh thought objects. So sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and thoughts. These are the objects which a chitta takes, and without an object, there is no chitta. We can't talk about a chitta. And there's a reason for that. A chitta in itself is an instrument. Do you remember the Pali term? The verse that we used to describe this purpose of a chitta? The same manner I could say, the purpose of a pen is to write. How might I say the purpose of a chitta? Paramana, vijanna, lakanang chitta. That is the Pali in English. It would mean the purpose of a chitta is to receive, recognize. Remember? Register, right? So to receive, to register, to recognize, to respond, and to perceive. This is Rupa Vedana, Sanya, Sankara and Vijnana. So once again, to register, sorry, to receive, to register, to recognize, to respond, and to perceive. The chitta's purpose is to carry out these functions so that an object can be perceived. The reason that you know that I have a pen in my hand is because there's a chitta that's working inside these bodies that you have brought here. And these chittas, they are constantly working very rapidly. There is no gap between two chittas. There are no gaps. Just like in a stream of water, there are no gaps between two drops of water. But if you take rain, for instance, you know, there will be gaps. But in a stream of water, fla a fast flowing stream of steady stream of water, there are no gaps between these drops. One after the other, they flow. And the mind is the same. And each of these thoughts, they arise with an object because the whole purpose of a chitta is to do those five things about an object. So if there were no objects, why would there be chittas? Does that make sense to you? If there are no objects, why would there be chittas? It's like it's like reception. The reception desk at a hotel, in an office, if there are no visitors, why would you have a reception desk? Makes sense, right? So in the same way, if there are no objects, then there would not be a chitta. Right. So let's take a sight object then. So I was talking about the flower. Why is it that this flower is beautiful? Let's take a sight object. So here's the eye. It's seeing the flower. Okay. And now we talked about this some time ago that the brain is involved in all this. So I'm not going to go into the detail of that for today. Somehow, with the help of the brain, these impulses that have arrived through the through the eye are converted to a language that the mind can interpret. And we call them rupa. See, when we talk about an object, ladies and gentlemen, what that object is depends on which circumstance we are talking about. These things are also objects. See, this is an object. The leaf in my hand is an object. These are material objects. They have a weight. They have mass. They have length, they have width, they have breadth. Here's a question for you. What about color? Does it have color? Does this leaf have color? Yes? No? Maybe not diagonally? Just to be on the safe side. So it has mass, right? And in in gravity it has weight. It has length, it has breadth, it has width, right? But it doesn't have color. It has pigments, but it doesn't have color. This leaf appears green to you not because the leaf is green. It's called chlorophyll, which is a pigment. And what that pigment does is it takes in light, light energy, absorbs some of it, and reflects the rest of it. The rest of the light that gets reflected falls on your eye, it's not green yet, by the way, it's just light energy of a certain frequency. It then goes up your optic nerve, at which point it's an electrical current. You can't talk about the color of an electrical current, can you? If this leaf had color, the point at which the sight becomes a signal on an optic nerve, you're gonna have to stop talking about color, wouldn't you? You can't talk about color at that point. Even if you could say that color is in the leaf, right? And then even if you could say that the color meets the eye, it falls on the retina, and then you say, yes, but some minus we have the cone cells and the rod cells, right? The color falls on the cone cells, and then you have the fovea on which the eye focuses. So surely that's where color happens. All right, but what about the optic nerve then? Have you seen nerves carry colors? Well, then do nerves carry smells? So much so that if you were to slice the optic nerve and look at it, would you see green? If I held an eye, a human eye, to this leaf right just up here, and I took the optic nerve that belonged to the eye, and then cut it, severed it so that it no longer goes to the brain, when I looked at the eye, at the optic nerve, the fibers that go to the optic nerve through to the brain, would it show me green? What do you think? Would it? No. But if I held it to a voltmeter, am I not gonna get a reading? Yes. So what's in it? Is it color or is it current? It's an electrical current. What color is electrical current then? If electrical current were green, then none of these lights would be the colors they are. They would all be green. Then tell me, is green in this? Is green in the leaf? No, green's not in the leaf. But you look at the flower and go, oh, pink flower's so pretty. I'm sharing these things with you so that you don't have to let go. When you understand the Dhamma, you will no longer need to let go. That letting go will have happened. Letting go has to be natural, not forceful. Once you understand that all these things that you attributed to the physical and material things, right? You looked at, say, two pictures, one was red, the other was green, your favorite color was red, so therefore you bought the red picture. Perhaps you paid a million dollars for it. Think about art for a second. Right? I mean, if I drew this, you wouldn't pay anything for that. But if Picasso drew that, if Michelangelo drew that, you'd exchange that for your house. So there's a professor from uh Yale University. He's a professor in um psychology. Uh now I don't think he's discovered Buddhist philosophy yet. Certainly not the philosophy that we are talking about today, but he's beginning to make some headway in terms of trying to figure that, you know, this beauty that we uh assume is in the objects is not in the objects. And one of the uh sermons in the and at the monastery, I talked about this, and for the life of me, I can't remember his name now. But he's a he's a very renowned professor uh from Yale University, and he asks the question a bit of bubble gum, how much would you pay for a bit of gum? If you went to the shop today and you bought some gum, right? Bubble gum, how much would you pay for that? 500 rupees? No. Fifty? No. 10 bucks? Hmm, okay. Maybe. So the professor in his talk, he speaks of a bubblegum that is worth more than $300. Do you know why? Britney Spears chewed on it. I'm not making this stuff up. The same gum. She chewed on it. And then she spat it out. $300. How much would you pay for a jumper? You know, a jacket. So again he asked this question. I had one jumper in a store, $25. Rooney wore it. And then $25,000. How much would my Michael Jackson's shoes cost you? Oh, his iconic hat. So, what about the object has changed? Nothing about the object has changed. It's only our perception. You know, your perception does so much damage to your lives. And this is why I'm trying to explain this to you so that you can come out of this misery, come out of this slavery. The way you perceive, your misperceptions have completely ruined your lives. So, this is an opportunity to come out of that.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Thank you for joining us on The Art of Being Happy from Chaitavanarama Buddhist Monastery. May today's wisdom bring you peace and joy in your daily life. We'd love to hear how these talks have touched your life. Share your experiences with us on plus nine one six three six one eight zero three three seven one. Until next time, may you find happiness in each present moment. Brought to you by Sanatanavani, the Voice Eternal.