Hello. Because I’m a Buddhist monk, I’m going to give you a Buddhist perspective, but it’s not really going to be much different from what you already know. One of the things that the Buddha did, was, he taught very much in depth how mind works. And the talk that we heard this morning was great, a very good talk, and I would only add one thing to that, and that is: when the Hawaiian family was all together, and they finally worked out the problem, the healing factor that happened to the child, was the joy of the release of that attachment. And what I want to talk to you today is, about today is, – how to develop joy all the time.

Now, I’ve been in the healing arts for probably forty years. And twenty years ago, I had to make a decision on which path I wanted to follow for the healing – whether I wanted to be a hands-on healer, or I wanted to do the next level of healing. And I decided that I wanted to do the spiritual healing. So I became a Buddhist monk. And I studied very hard and I practiced a lot of meditation. I hear people that are teaching meditation now, and they said: "Oh, I did one three-month retreat and that was really something, and now I can teach." And I’ve done twelve or fifteen of those. And I did an eight-month retreat in Burma, very intensive – getting up at 3 o’clock in the morning, meditating till 11 o’clock at night. The last three months I was there, I was going to bed at midnight and getting up at two. So, I’ve done a lot of very intensive meditation. What I found out later, after I got out of Burma, I also did a two-year retreat, which was about as intensive. Intensive means I didn’t talk to anybody but the teacher, and all I did was sitting meditation, walking meditation, and I did that for hours and hours on end. I went through what they said was the "final result", and I was not satisfied with that. So, I left Burma and I came back, and I did an eight -month fairly intensive, this was only about twelve hours a day, so a fairly intensive meditation. But I did it with Loving-Kindness meditation, not with the vipassana or the one-pointed kind of concentration that is generally being taught in the world today.

When I got done with that, I was invited to start up a monastery in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. And they asked me to start teaching Loving-Kindness meditation. Now, almost everybody in Malaysia that was practicing meditation, they were practicing a form of meditation called vipassana. When you practice vipassana, mind has a tendency to get a little bit critical, a little bit hard, a little bit judgmental, "I’m right, I don’t care what your experience is, I know what the experience is", things like that. And when they would get done with a vipassana retreat, they would say things and do things that were very harsh to other people. They were hurting other people’s feelings. And they’d come running to me, and they’d say: "I have to do a retreat with you, when’s your next retreat?" And I was giving one-week retreats, with Loving-Kindness.

Now, when you practice Loving-Kindness meditation, it is a smiling meditation, and this is incredibly important. There was a study done in the University of Minnesota, I think, I can’t remember, it’s been long ago - on the corners of your mouth. When the corners of your mouth go down, your mental state goes down. When the corners of your mouth go up, your mental state goes up. So I said: "OK, that’s a key to having joy arise." You’ve got to smile. And these people would come and they’d say: "OK, I’ll do the meditation with you", and they would come after the first day and they’d say: "This is a phoney smile." And I would say: "I don’t care whether it’s phoney or not, keep smiling." The more you smile, the more uplifted your mind becomes. As you start to have more and more uplifted mind, you are naturally starting to develop joy. When you have joy in your mind, your mind is very alert; your mind is very bright. And it’s real easy to see when there’s not any joy in your mind. It’s real easy to see when you have one of the emotional things that arise whenever, something unpleasant happened – sadness, depression, anxiety, stress, whatever the catch of the day happens to be. It’s real easy to see that you’re caught by that, when you notice you don’t have joy. So what did I tell people to do? I told them they had to smile. And the more you smile, the easier it gets, the more uplifted your mind becomes, and the more actual healing there is that takes place. Joy is the real healer.

And it just so happens in Buddhism, there are things called seven factors of enlightenment. And the first factor is mindfulness, the next one is investigation of your experience, the next one is energy, the next one is joy – that’s right in the middle of the enlightenment factors. After that there is tranquillity, there’s collectedness, and then there’s equanimity. But for our purpose here, we want to focus on joy. Why is joy right in the middle of that mass? Because that is the balancing factor between putting too much energy into trying to control things, and not enough energy into trying to control things. The more you see joy arise in your daily activities, the more magic you can manifest. Why? You are going to worry about something – you have joy in your mind – no room. I was…We have a chat group for meditation basically, and there was a man from Australia that wrote and he said that he’d been practicing meditation for six years very intensively, and he thought he was missing something, so he asked me to help him. And I told him: "OK, what kind of practice were you doing?" And he was doing a breathing meditation. Now, when I teach breathing meditation, that’s a little bit different, because I follow what the Buddha was talking about directly in the suttas.

When you do your breathing meditation, you know when you have a long breath, you know when your have a short breath. You know when your breath is coarse, you know when your breath is fine. You know when your breath is fast, you know when your breath is slow. Then the instructions happen, and the instructions say: "Experience your entire body on the in-breath, experience your entire body on the out-breath." Then the instructions say, and this is the important part, it says: "Tranquillise your bodily formation on the in-breath and tranquillise your bodily formation on the out-breath." What does that mean? When you breathe, there is tension and tightness. Relax. On the in-breath – relax, on the out-breath – relax. Now, when I teach mindfulness of breathing, I also tell him that this is a smiling meditation too, and he didn’t much like that idea, because he liked the idea of being serious: "I’m going to do this practice and I’m going to try real hard." And all that tension that arises… So, he had resistance to smiling. Now, he was doing the same kind of practice basically, except for this one extra step of relaxing. And he was not making any progress at all. He was still caught in the old ways of practice, so I said: "OK, I don’t want you to do that practice anymore; I want you to switch over and do Loving-Kindness meditation."

Loving-Kindness mediation is sending loving and kind thoughts purposefully to your spiritual friend. A spiritual friend is somebody of the same sex. If you send loving and kind thoughts to a person of the opposite sex, your mind will tend to become infatuated and you don’t want that to happen. Now, it doesn’t happen when you’re doing it on the surface level, but when you are doing it deeply this kind of thing can happen, so you pick someone of the same sex. And, you make a wish for their happiness. The wish can be any kind of positive wish you want to make – doesn’t matter. The trick is – you have to feel that wish. You make a wish for somebody so that they are peaceful and calm. You know how it feels like to be peaceful and calm? Of course. Bring that feeling into your heart. Put your friend right in the middle of that feeling and give them a great big heart-hug with the feeling of peace and calm. Radiate that feeling.

Now, the thing, when you start doing this, you are going to notice, when you start doing it in an intensive way, you are going to start noticing that your mind is going to think about other things. It’s OK that your mind thinks about other things. Thoughts are not your enemy. They are not something to fight with, they are not something to control. Let the thoughts go. Relax. Now, the reason that you relax right here is every thought and every feeling that arises, there is tension that arises along with that. One of the places that the tension arises is in your head. Now, everybody here, I guarantee, has tension in their head right now. It’s a tightness around your brain. Relax. Let go of that. And what you’ll feel is a little bit of expansion out, and calmness. Now, what you do when you have a distraction – your mind is thinking about this or that, for the period of the sitting – let go of the thought, relax, bring that mind back to your meditation, the feeling of warmth in your chest, the wish that you make, and putting your friend right in the middle of that wish. When you see your friend in your heart, see them smiling and happy.

Now, when you smile, there are four different places that I want you to smile. You have to smile in your mind; you have to smile with your eyes, even though your eyes are closed when you are sitting in meditation. You need to put a little smile on your lips. Now, you notice a lot of Buddha images, they have this little kind of pixie kind of a smile, with just a little bit of a smile on his face? The artist is saying he is experiencing joy at that time. Put that little smile on your face, and a smile in your heart.

It doesn’t matter how many times your mind wanders away. Every time you see your mind is thinking about something else, let go of that, relax, come back, do the meditation some more. If you have a sitting for a half an hour, and during that half an hour your mind wonders away a hundred times – and a hundred times you notice it, and you let that go, and you relax and you come back – that is a good meditation. It’s an active meditation, it’s a meditation where you have to kind of roll up your sleeves and work a little bit, but that is a good meditation. It’s kind of funny, because I teach a lot of retreats, and people will come in and I’ll say: "How is your meditation going today?" And they’d say: "Ah, it’s terrible, my mind is jumping all over the place, I’m thinking about this and thinking about that, I just can’t stand it." And I have some questions then: "Are you able to see it?" – "Well, yeah I could see it fairly quickly, and then I could let it go and relax and come back." – "Do you do that all the time?" – "Yeah." – "Good meditation, isn’t it?"

What most people consider good meditation, and what I consider a good meditation are not always the same. Your mind will calm down by itself, but it does take some effort in letting go of these distracting thoughts and relaxing and coming back. Now, that’s the sitting meditation, that’s only say for a half an hour a day, 45 minutes, when your sitting is good, sit longer, it’s up to you. Then there is the meditation that’s all the time. And I mean – all the time. When you are walking from here to your car, what are you thinking about? Ho-hum. Some of this, some of that, nothing in particular. Well that’s the time you should be smiling, that’s the time you should look around and look at how wonderful everything is. Don’t worry about the way it might be in a moment, look at how it is right now.

We were just at a restaurant, and I went outside, waiting for them to come out, and everybody that walked out of the door, they said: "Oh, it’s really hot." And I was sitting there enjoying the heat, thinking: "That’s not a bad thing." But everybody has this tight mind, because they were in a cool place, they went to a place where there was a change, and their mind went tight, and they didn’t really notice it. And that tight mind is the thing that dictated what kind of thoughts they were going to have. Now, when the Buddha is talking about mind, I mean he was really, really deep, and really, really precise. He said: "Your mind works in the same way." Everybody’s mind does, it doesn’t matter whether you are an Asian, or a Westerner, it doesn’t matter where you come from, your mind works the same. In order to see, now this is going to be going kind of deep, and I’ll explain it in a different way in a little while – in order to see, there have to be certain conditions that have to be met. You have to have an eye in good working order, there has to be colour and form, and when the eye hits the colour and form, that is called – eye consciousness arises. As soon as eye consciousness arises, that is called contact. With contact as condition, feeling arises. Now, every time somebody hears "feeling", they think of emotion, and this is not that kind of feeling. Feeling according to the Buddha is either pleasant, or painful, or neither painful nor pleasant. So, you have your eye hitting that, that’s the contact. As soon as contact arises, feeling arises. As soon as feeling arises, right then, that is when that tightness happens. And that tightness is called craving. Craving always manifests as tension or tightness in your mind and in your body. It always manifests that way. And right after the craving there is clinging. And clinging are all of your thoughts, all of your opinions, all of your concepts, all of your ideas. And this is where you start taking everything personally – these are my thoughts, these are my feelings.

Now, when you are walking down the street, and your mind starts thinking about something, there was the feeling, there was the craving, there was the clinging. And this is why we have the roller coaster ride of "I like it, I don’t like it, I like it, I don’t like it," and all of the emotions that go along with that. As you become more aware of how mind works, instead of having the high highs and the low lows, it starts to be more like little waves. There’s times that are easier than others, welcome to the real world. But the thing you want to remember is – if you want to have balance in your life, you need to practice joy. Smiling.

And one of the things that the Buddha taught was, the first part of meditation that the Buddha thought was – you have to practice your generosity. A lot of people think: "O-o, the monk is talking about generosity – he wants you to give him something." The kind of generosity the Buddha was talking about was the kind of generosity that makes other people smile, makes other people happy. Now, there are three ways you can give your generosity: you can give your generosity with your speech; you can give your generosity with your actions; you can give with your thoughts. Now, he said also there are three other things that you need to know. When you’re giving your gift, prepare your gift with a happy mind. While you are giving your gift, give your gift with a happy mind. After you have given the gift, reflect on: "That was a really good thing" with a happy mind. So, the more you can say things that make people smile, the more you can do things that make people smile, the more you reflect on doing that, the more uplifted your mind becomes. The happier you become, the more joy you have in your life. It’s all interconnected.

It’s really, really important to realize that any time your mind is being serious about something, that there is this craving and clinging that’s there. That doesn’t mean that you don’t point your mind towards an end-goal, you do, but you don’t do it with a tight mind, you do it with a relaxed mind. As you learn to do this with a relaxed mind, you manifest things much more quickly, much easier, and everything starts to be fun. Somewhere along the line, somebody told us as we were growing up, that life was supposed to be serious. That’s funk (laughing). Have fun, smile, laugh. How does you face radiate when you look at the mirror and see yourself smiling. Isn’t that nice? Do you want to affect the world around you in a positive way? Then be the example – smile. You want to make a mother’s day? Go up and give that mother’s child some kind of compliment. That mother would start smiling like you can’t believe, and really appreciate it. That is the generosity. See, one of the things that the Buddha said was: "What you think and ponder on, that is the inclination of your mind." The more you practice giving kind thoughts, helpful speech, kind actions, the more your mind will tend toward doing that. And then you start watching how fast everything manifests. The more joy you have, the easier life becomes.

Now, I was giving a retreat up in the mountains and there were some people that were really practicing hard, and they were practicing so hard that they were starting to get stale. So, I came in one morning and I said: "OK, I don’t want you to meditate today." And there was a look of relief. (laughing) And I said: "I want you guys to go out and play, and I want you to have fun. The only thing I want you to do is – I want you to notice if your mind gets serious about something, you have to let it go and laugh and have more fun." They thought I was crazy, but they wanted to do it: "Yeah, let’s go play." I said: "I don’t care what you do, just go do it." So, about six o’clock, I got ready and I came in, and they are sitting there waiting for me to give a talk. And I said: "How did your meditation go today?" And they said: "Oh, we didn’t meditate, we played, we had great fun." I mean their faces were radiant, they were really alive. I said: "Well, did you let go of any serious mind when you saw it?" – "Oh yeah, it was such a great day, the best day I had in a long time." I said: "Good meditation, wasn’t it?" (laughing)

This is immediately effective. It really works. Smile. I don’t care whether you feel like it. One of the things that I used to do, was I used to…somebody bought me some mirrors, and we painted "smile" on the mirror – little hand mirror. And I said: "I want you guys to carry it around with you, I don’t care what you’re doing, look at it and see what your face is doing. If you see your face isn’t smiling, then you got to smile. I don’t care whether you feel like smiling or not, you got to smile." When you are on the telephone – smile. That goes right through your voice into the other person and helps them to be happy. And the thing is, the more you practice being happy, it becomes contagious, and you start affecting the world around you in a very positive way.

Now, I’ve been reading a lot about the effects of television on your psyche and on your body. And television is really nasty. It changes your being aware from one side of the brain, and goes to the other side, where you become a kind of an automaton. Even if you’re not listening to the television, you’re still hearing the commercials and they are affecting you. There was a man in California called Swami-Beyond-Ananda. And he said: "I believe everybody should practice with their television – turn off the set and tell a vision." (laughing) And I really have to agree with that. Television is physically addictive; it’s as addictive as heroin they are finding out. This is nasty stuff. Turn off the television, and start really communicating with other people around you. Make up games where you can play, and laugh, and have fun. That’s one of the things that’s happening in this country right now – everybody is getting serious. And the more you can smile, and the more you can laugh, the more uplifted your mind becomes, the faster your progress is in your spiritual path, and in life.

It’s real amazing that when you keep your mind uplifted…Like I walked from one place to another, I was in Miami of all places, and I’m walking for exercise and I’m practicing sending loving and kind thoughts to everybody around me, I was just having a great time. A man stops, he says: "Can I give you a ride? I said: "No thanks, I’m just walking for exercise." –"You sure?" – "Yeah, yeah, no problem." And it happened two or three times. And I got back to the temple and I started telling the people running the temple: "I just went out for a walk, and there were two or three people that wanted to give me a ride, but I was walking." And they stopped and they said: "You mean here in Miami?" (laughing) – "Yeah, I’ve just walked in you know?!" – "Well, nobody ever does that."

You want to manifest things more quickly? Be happy. Practice it. That’s the thing. Everybody… A 100% of the people in this country will say: "Yes, I want to be happy." And then when you say: "Well, it’s simple, all you have to do is smile, and laugh, and have fun." – "Not that simple!" – "Well, actually it is." This guy that I was telling you about, that I was writing to with email, he started doing the Loving-Kindness meditation, and he was really having problems: "How do you have this warm feeling in your chest, how do you focus…" and all of this. Finally I got to a place I said: "Listen, I don’t want you to meditate anymore, for one week. Only one week, you can do that. But everything you do during this week, if you see that you are being serious, I want you to laugh, and any time you see that you are not smiling, I want you to smile." So, he didn’t write for a week, and I’m thinking "Oh, I’ve lost that one." (laughing) And he writes back and he said: "I want to tell you some of the things that happened this week." He said: "I used to walk from one place to another, always with my head down, and I was having these thoughts of dislike and dissatisfaction and depression and all of these things. And now, I walk with my head up and I’m smiling." And he said; "Even when I didn’t feel like smiling, I smiled and there was still benefit from that. And people are starting to come towards me, before they always stayed away." Well, if you have a sour face of course they are going to stay away. When you smile, they like you. You want to affect the world around you – smile. And smile at everybody you see. The trick is – can’t make it a false smile, can’t make it a painted-on smile. You got to smile with the eyes, got to smile with the heart, go to smile with your mind. It does take practice, that’s why I teach the meditation.

You do this for about a half an hour a day, you get to see how your mind works, you get to see how you get caught in all of these roller coasters "I like this, I don’t like that…" And you start letting them go – that’s putting more balance into your life. As you do that with your sitting meditation and carry that with you into your life, and you start smiling and being happy with everybody around you, all of the troubles of the world start to get solved by themselves. You don’t have to worry what’s happening in Iraq, that’ll take care of itself. You smile right here, right now. You don’t have to worry about anything, there’s nothing to worry about. What’s there to worry about right here right now? There’s nothing. So, be happy.

Now, one of the things that I came up with was that sheet that KK gave out, it’s called "The 6 R’s", and this is the way of doing the meditation. This is the reminder. You Recognize when your mind is distracted and you are not happy. You have to recognise when your mind has gone to something that’s pulling you down, making you worry, making you dissatisfied. You Release that. Let go of it, if you are in a mid-sentence in a dialogue that you’re having in your mind, let go of that. Now, Relax the tension and tightness caused by that distraction. Right then you’ll feel release, but we didn’t put that in there. Then you Re-smile. This is an important part of the meditation. It’s not something: "Oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah…" You re-smile. Then you Return back to wishing somebody well. And you continue wishing somebody well until you get distracted again. That’s what the 6 R’s are. It’s just a method. And you can apply this at any time. If you don’t see that you’re smiling, if you don’t feel a smile, you can’t criticize yourself; you can’t come down on yourself. This is a process of "play it again". Do it over again. It’s OK. The more uplifted your mind becomes, the easier everything else becomes, the less resistance you have to what’s happing in the present moment. Letting go of this tension and tightness is a major thing. And the more you can remember to do that, the easier life becomes and the more fun you have.

Now, there’s one more thing that you really have to do and that is: when you see that you are being serious about, quote, "some problem" and you see your mind really getting involved with it, the fastest way to let go of these negative mental upsets is to laugh at how crazy your mind gets. It’s too simple, when you laugh, you can go from "I’m mad and I don’t like this." to "Oh, it’s only this anger, so what?! It’s nothing." It changes your perspective.