Stop Settling. Start Impacting.

Being born human is an extraordinary opportunity, yet so much of our existence is spent navigating life on autopilot. While difficulty and circumstance are inevitable, settling for passive suffering is never required. True humanness begins the moment you realise you hold the power to choose differently—to break free from limiting patterns and align your actions with wisdom, clarity, and inner strength. 

While nature gives us our starting point and nurture shapes our initial path, neither defines our ultimate boundary. The real evolution happens when you actively direct your energy toward something greater than yourself. This is your chance to turn innate potential into meaningful action, create a lasting impact, and build a life that is truly worthwhile. Stay tuned for more such insights!  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 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_01 0:44

You must know by now that I'm a big believer in making full use of human potential. I see in front of me human potential. Lots of it. Lots and lots of it. Humanness is an opportunity. Do you see it that way? Do you see that humanness is an opportunity? It is what you have. It is a chance to make a change. It is a chance to make an impact. It is a chance to experience something you haven't before. It is a chance to do something worthwhile, ladies and gentlemen. It is a chance to make some choices and some decisions where you have no regrets at the end. That is what you've been waiting for. To be born human. So you can make use of that opportunity. So you can use that chance. So you can go beyond the thinking that you have always been. So you can make a change. So you don't have to settle with suffering. Oh, but how I wish and pray that people really understood the true value of being human. Very seldom do I see that. Many people are born human. Of course, people are born human. But not many of them do the things that humans need to do. Precious human life is wasted. It's wasted not only on the battlefield, as you might think, on first count, but is also wasted in front of a television. Which one is worse? On the battlefield, you only die one. So you tell me which one's worse then. You might wonder why does Swami Nase feel so passionately about you know wasting time on newspapers? Is it so bad that we get to know a little bit about what's going on out there? Should we not keep abreast with what's going on, the advancements that the world is making? Or should we just isolate ourselves into a little corner somewhere and just be ignorant of all that is going on out there? Well, I asked this question from you folks. How much has you, or how much has your getting to know of all that is going on out there, not just in this planet but in planets outside, really helped you on your quest to free yourself from suffering? Take account of how many newspapers you read by now in your life. You read more newspapers than your weight. Yeah? How much has it really helped you free yourself from suffering? It takes one to know what, so I know exactly where you're coming from. I was a fan of the same habit, but I broke that habit. I broke that habit well before I started listening to the Dhamma. I broke that habit when I got to listen to a mentor who started teaching me about personal effectiveness, about making use of human life, making use of it effectively. Every other newspaper you read is going to leave you deflated. Don't take my word for it. Buy one on your way home. Have a read of it. Have a scorecard alongside. So read the newsfitter, have a scorecard alongside. Every article you come across, make a mark on it. Positive and negative. Remember, you are your environment. You are the product of your environment. We spoke about this last week. If you are a positive person, that's because you associate with positive people. Show me the five people you spend most of your time with and I'll tell you who you are. You don't need to tell come and introduce yourself to me. In fact, you can just send the five people you spend most of your time with to me. I'll speak with them and I'll tell you who you are. This is not magic. It's not some special power that I possess. It is just the way it works, cause and effect. You are the effect of the causes that you are surrounded by. Don't you agree? You are heavily influenced by your environment. So much so that you are nothing more than it. Yes, of course, there is nurture and nature. And often a topic that gets debated a lot. Which one's more powerful? Nurture or nature? Nature is what you are born as. Nurture is the environment that you come in. In fact, in Buddhist philosophy, we talk of this as the environment and the vipaka. The two things that together result in you. The environment and the vipaka. Let me give you a simple example. What do you do when you cross the street? Or just before? You look left, or you look right, left, right again, and you cross the street, right? Do you have to do that before you cross the street? Or cross the road? You don't have to. You can cross the road blindfolded. But what are the chances of you actually getting to the other side in one piece? Especially if you're stood on a highway or a motorway or maybe on a road that has heavy traffic, chances are very slight. So then now we have to figure out are there vipakas? So I use the word vipaka because I think you're all very familiar with the term, vipaka. I can use the word results, but it doesn't have the same ring to it. Karma and Vipaka, you know, these are words that mean something to us.

unknown 6:04

Good.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

So karma is the deeds and vipaka are the results. Because people often ask this question Is Buddhism deterministic? Is there nothing we can do? Do we just wait to see what happens to us? A question that might have crossed your mind from time to time as well. If all is karma and vipaka, if the karmas have been done in the past, then do we just sit on our backsides waiting for something to happen? Can we not have any influence or any impact or any choice about what's going to happen next? Because last week I talked to you about free will, and I said, get that heck, get that thing out of your mind. So the thinkers among you would have inevitably come up with this question. Well, if there's no such thing as free will, Saminanza, then are we just, you know, to sit here like a potato waiting for something to happen to us, and you know, with nothing we can do about it. These two things we must learn, understand, because these two things are what will decide the future of your lives, ladies and gentlemen. Vipaka and the environment. They both contribute. So it's not just vipaka. When you cross the road, you check either side. You look either side because you want to create the environment which attracts the right kind of vipaka. Believe you me, there are two types of vipaka. One that will help you cross the road unscathed, but there's another that will get you run lower. They are both waiting to happen. There are plenty of times where you've helped an old lady cross the road, and those vipakas are all there as well. As the times where you'd have run over someone, perhaps even deliberately. And those karmas who have also generated vipakas, they're also waiting to happen. But which one comes forward now? It's not predetermined, it's not. Cause and effect. Create the right causes, you'll get the effect. That is why our humanness is such a powerful thing. See, we can take on views, we can take on zushti, we can take on new knowledge. Our minds are capable of taking on views about this world, about karma, about vipaka, about the Dhamma, about good and bad, about associating the right kind of people, the wrong kind of people, about habits, about behaviors, about positive things and negative things. Our minds can learn, we can assimilate knowledge. Therefore, we can determine what sort of vipakas we attract. That is why I speak to you. Because you are all capable of determining which vipakas you attract towards yourself. If you are hungry, there are two things you can do right now. What are those two things? You can either eat or you can starve. If you choose to starve, the sensation of hunger will continue. But if you eat, then that hunger will be Satan. You can choose to eat, you can choose not to eat. If you are thirsty, you can choose to drink, take a drink of water, a sip of water, or you can choose not to. If you're standing up and your legs begin to hurt, you can choose two things. You can either sit down or choose to keep on standing. Then you'll ask the question again, so we can choose. So we have free will. It's a fine line. I'm gonna try and explain to you the difference between these two things. Otherwise, people get into this thinking that it's all predetermined. So, what's the point of us coming here at all, anyway? If we can't decide what's gonna happen next, if we can't decide our fate, if we are going to go to hell, then we are going to go to hell, so almost how can we change it? What's the point of us even trying? If I'm going to be attaining nibbana in a in three million births time, then why do I even bother now? Questions that you can have. The Buddha's philosophy is not one of determinism. The Buddha's philosophy is or cause and effect. Create the right causes and the and the effect will manifest. We as human beings, ladies and gentlemen, we have intelligence. We can think about the causes that we want to line up. You know, that is how we advance as human beings, and that is why animals are always animals. You know, they don't they don't create things, they don't innovate things, do they? They're just creatures of habit. They don't create things because they can't take on new views about the world. They can't explore, they don't, they can't study, they can't learn things. But that is a state we were once in. Today, thankfully, to our merits, we have been born human in the Sugati world. This word Sugati, you'll have heard this, Sugati and Dugati. They're two single east terms, but they are borrowed from the Pali, and it refers to the blissful plane and the Wafel Plane. So you know that the Wafel Plain entails the four great hills, and the blissful plane begins with the human world and goes up all the way to the formless sphere. If you've done any reading or listening to any talks that talks about the 31 worlds of existence, you may have come across this. But my point is not about how many worlds there are and you know, for us to go and explore them and study them. My point that I wish to make here is we are all in the Sugati. It's important to ask ourselves the question: why do we call it the Sugati? That's why I don't like the English translation blissful playing. The word Sugati means you're able to cleanse your temperament, you're able to cleanse yourself, you're able to cleanse your defilements, you're able to take on views and therefore rechart your path from here on. All human beings are born with disability, especially those who can think. Of course, there are from time to time human beings who are born that you know, for various karmas that they've done in the past, they don't have the intellectual ability. They can't think for themselves. From time to time, we see this in society. They're born with various syndromes. I don't need to spell it out to you, I think you know this. So they will forever have to live needing support from someone else who will be there to guide them, to hold their hand. Even at the age of 80, they will still need someone to help them, walk then, guide them, feed them, wash them, and so on. So although they have taken human form, physically, their minds are just short of full human capacity. But we are different. You're all different. You all have the full capacity to think. See, you have chosen to be here today, this morning. As you're here today, you get to hear these words. These are all vipakas. If you are at home today, you would still have heard something, but maybe not these words. You may have watched the news, or Shatelli Drama, or go into the park, learn something, but not this vipaka. Because your mind can take on drushti, your mind is able to attract, you know, like attracts like. You are able to create a magnet within yourself, a magnet that attracts particular types of vipaka towards you. Now, what does becoming a sauttapana entail? You all know this fact that once you become a sotapana, you're no longer you can no longer be born in the four great hills, you are free from them once and for all, right? So you got to think, why so? How is that possible? It is not the body that becomes a sotapana, it's the mind that becomes a sautapanna. So once you have become a sautapana or a stream mentorer, how is it that from there on there is no potency for one to be born in the four great hills? That is because by using your human capacity to change your dusti, the mind is now purified, the mind is now cleansed from a certain number of defilements which would otherwise have attracted towards it the vipakas that would have brought you rebirth in the four great hills. But you have now been able to free yourself from that once you become a sotapanna. See, if you take a walk down memory lane, just think about the way you live your life, straight and gentlemen, you know, you know this as a fact. You decided to come along here today. You decided to dress the way you are today. These are all based on drushti. Yesterday's, or not yesterday's last week's talk was to try and explain to you that these drushi that you take on are the driving force behind your actions. It's not that you are you act just out of no reason. It's not like you act uh without rhyme or reason. In fact, there is no such thing called random. We don't make random choices. All our choices are based in some logic. So you can consider them, say, pseudo-random. It's not really random. Although things you do seem random, like you know, once you just wake up one morning and you think today I want to go and see my folks, I want to go see my grandmother. And then the rest of the day goes out, plans out in that way, and you wonder, why did I think about that? You may not know exactly why the thought came into your mind, but there was a reason for that. Perhaps last night you saw her in your dreams, or perhaps last night someone mentioned something about mother or grandmother, or maybe someone just mentioned the word grand. Can you? You may not always know what those causes are, and you don't always need to. The understanding of anikshar entails your understanding of the fact that all things are driven by cause and effect. You don't necessarily need to know all those causes. To live a comfortable life, we use science, and what science does is it goes on to find out what those causes are. For instance, when you want a fire, we use science to find out what the causes are that bring up a fire and what extinguishes the fire. We know the causes thanks to science, how this microphone works. We know how breathing works, we know how digestion works, we know how growing up works, we know how the lights work, we know how the stars work. We know how air, the wind works. Because science has given us answers to these questions. But science is yet to give you an answer to why you suffer. What is the science that deals with the with suffering? No, of course, you know, science that deals with living things is called what? Biology. Science that deals with the earth is called geography. Science that deals with the with society is called sociology. What is the science that deals with suffering? You know the science that deals with the mind is called psychology, but what is the science that deals with suffering? And freedom from suffering and happiness. What is that science? You have no answer because it is not a science that they teach you at school or at university, because they are yet to discover them. Scientists have figured out how human behavior works, what they haven't figured out is how the human mind works. What is it in the mind that makes you human? These are the questions that science have not yet discovered. But that science was discovered two and a half thousand years ago. You're so blessed. Don't undermine yourselves at any point. You're so fortunate to at least call yourselves nominally as Buddhists. Remember, Buddhism is not a religion, although people might claim it to be. We are here to talk about Buddhist philosophy. This is the science of the mind, the science of how suffering works, the four noble truths. This is the real science that we need to free ourselves from suffering once and for all. So the reason I'm against things like reading newspapers, watching the news, wasting your time in front of a television set is because you're wasting human, precious human life, that is the only problem I have with it. Nothing more. Should they not make their money? Of course they must. Newspaper publishers, they must make their money. But at whose expense? Is what I ask you. If you're okay with that, I'm okay with that. Remember, whenever something's free, you are the product being sold. The Metro is a free newspaper. It took me a while to figure that out. I thought, how kind of that? Mainstream TV is free. You know, there are subscription, they can buy subscription TV, but mainstream TV, you know, how many channels do you have these days on TV? How many? 300? What started off as one TV channel many years ago, perhaps when you were in your youthful years, is now? You know, many dozens, right? You're spoiled for choice. By now there aren't enough buttons on the remote control to program all your TV channels. Am I right? Of course. How many radio channels are there? Those days you had to tune the old uh radio. I remember my grandfather. Like he used to tune the old thing and he used to spend several minutes or at least not good 10-15 minutes trying to catch a radio station. These days, you can you know do it blindfolded. Just switch the damn thing on and just give it a twist. It'll end on some FM. So much choice. But the thing is, it's all free. Oh, isn't that good, eh? It's all free. But little do we stop to think, if something's free, then how do they make their money? Once again, I have nothing against those who wish to make money. Because money needs to be made. Of course, that's what money is for. It has to be made and it has to be spent. It is what keeps the economy going. If we had no capitalists, right, then the world wouldn't exist. If we had no socialists, the world wouldn't exist. If we had no liberal democrats, the world wouldn't exist. If we had no left wing and right wing, the world wouldn't exist. You always need representation from all parts of society for a world to exist. That's the way the world works. You need the lead demons and you need the conservatives. It's the way the world works. You need good and bad in this world, otherwise the world wouldn't exist. The reason that today you can give someone an award and say you are a good man is because there are bad people in this world. So in contrast, you stand out. If everyone was good, if everyone was Mahatma, do you think today you would be talking about Mahatma Gandhi? Of course not. The reason the good shine is because there are bad. There are the bad out there. So for this world to exist, you need both, good and bad. You mean the left and right. Well, I'm talking to you, ladies and gentlemen, but a part of philosophy that does not entail existence in this world. It is not a temporal science. I'm talking about something that goes beyond, it transcends what we understand as this living world that we are in. It goes beyond sight and sound and smell and taste and touch. It goes beyond what we understand as this sensual world. That is what I'm talking to you about. I'm talking to you about an understanding that elevates you. While you are physically in this world, you're able to free yourself from the turmoil and the suffering that all people in this world have to endure. And all that is required is for you to come to that realization. So, as harsh as my comments might have been to begin with, I now wonder whether I was too harsh or too critical. I've got nothing against newspapers, but what I have is I have something against you spending precious human life with a newspaper in your hand. I've got nothing against newspapers. I've got a problem with you spending your precious human life in front of a TV set. How many hours of TV have you watched by now? Tell me what impact has it had on your life? Excuse me. Has it made you happier? How many dramas have you been to and watched? How many films have you watched? Far too many to remember, far too many to count. Are you happier? Do you feel your life is fulfilled? Do you feel your life is satisfied now? Have you stopped getting angry then? Because you've watched all these films? Have you stopped getting disappointed and frustrated? Do you not get annoyed anymore? Do you not feel disappointed anymore? Because you have watched all these films. That's what I'm saying, you know. Be among them, don't be one of them. I don't have to be among them either. That is because I've made a choice, this choice. But for you all, you're gonna have to be among them. Be among the zombies. Pretend to be one, but don't go after blood. But when you see see a zombie, pretend to be one. Because if you don't pretend to be one, then they will soon soon enough make you one.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Thank you for joining us on the Art of Being Happy from Caitavanarama 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 Sanat Navani, the Voice Eternal.