This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Ajahn Kovilo - Joy as Path. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Introduction – The Wellbeing Cascade; Meditation I – Embodied Pāmojja; The Joy of Appreciating Saddhā (Faith) & Cāga (Generosity); Meditation II – Guided; The Joy of Appreciating Sīla (Virtue) & Suta (Learning); Meditation III; The Joy of Appreciating Pāññā (Wisdom) - Ajahn Kovilo

The following talk was given by Ajahn Kovilo at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on June 02, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction – The Wellbeing Cascade

Our theme for this morning will be well-being and something which might not be so familiar to everyone. I just learned this morning that Gil actually teaches a version or a different formulation of what I'll be speaking about. He calls it the pentad or basically the five elements, and it's something which I refer to as the Wellbeing Cascade.

Many people, when you come to Buddhism, you first learn about Paṭiccasamuppāda¹ or dependent origination, which is the conditioned genesis or the arising of Dukkha²—how the various ways that we misapply the mind lead us to Dukkha or to some level of suffering and dissatisfaction in our lives. But not everyone is familiar with the opposite conditionality, the conditionality of well-being. The pentad, the five elements, are starting from Pāmojja³, going to Pīti⁴. Pāmojja is well-being, Pīti is joy. From joy, when one has a joyful mind, that leads to bodily tranquility. And when you have a level of bodily tranquility, that leads to Sukha⁵, or happiness. And then this is a crucial point: one who has a level of Sukha, a level of happiness or even pleasure, mental pleasure, that leads to Samādhi⁶.

Many people think, and this is kind of a quote from my teacher, Ajahn Pasanno, "Once I get my Samādhi together, once I'm able to concentrate, if I just put in enough hours on the cushion, then I'll be happy." That might work for some people, but there's this other conditionality of actually inducing and leaning into different things which cause happiness, which start this whole well-being cascade in motion. And we'll be talking about all those this morning.

This little book here, which was on the table, is a book that we put together of every instance in the Pali Canon⁷. The Pali Canon is the foundation of Theravāda⁸ Buddhism, which is what I practice and I think largely what is taught here at IMC. But this series of conditions pops up in different suttas, in different discourses throughout the Pali Canon, and the Buddha gives different starting points for this well-being cascade. In this book, I have kind of clumped them together into five different general categories for what leads to well-being, or what leads to Pāmojja.

Those are Faith or Saddhā⁹, and we'll be able to talk more about what Saddhā is, what is faith in a Buddhist context, and how that can lead to a deeper sense of well-being. We'll talk about generosity or Cāga¹⁰, and all the different levels of that, and how that can lead to a sense of inner goodness and inner well-being that's less prone to being shaken about. Virtue, how integrity, a sense of being principled and having specific precepts that one keeps to and can rely on oneself to keep, how that can lead to a sense of well-being and inner confidence. And learning and different wisdom practices. So these are just umbrella categories which are elaborated upon in this book and which we'll be talking about today.

This well-being cascade is also referred to in some places as Transcendent Dependent Origination. So rather than being how from ignorance and craving we cause suffering for ourselves, this is how from planting wholesome seeds in our daily life and in our meditation, that can lead to well-being both in meditation and in daily life. This is really important. There's a concept in Buddhism called the Sukha-vipassaka path. This is literally the dry insight path, and that's one of just watching sensations in the body, whether things are pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. You just watch them with equanimity, and you don't try to incline towards the pleasant ones, and you don't push away the unpleasant ones, but you just watch whatever arises. That is a legitimate path, but what we'll be speaking about today is really paying attention to and learning about these qualities which the Buddha talked about as being reliable sources for a deeper and more sustainable level of happiness.

So that's Transcendent Dependent Origination. This is a term you find in the earliest commentaries, or the spiral path is another name for this. It's spiraling because it's not just the case that you practice generosity or you keep precepts in daily life and then you have some level of Pāmojja or well-being, and that leads to Pīti and tranquility and happiness, and then you'll be concentrated and that's the end and then you'll be enlightened. But it just keeps on spiraling. You practice these in daily life, you practice these in meditation, and the levels of well-being just get more and more refined. Or you can talk about it even going, the spiral going downwards, so you're getting more and more in touch with deeper and deeper and more subtle and refined levels of well-being.

I'll just read one particular instance of the well-being cascade. "Just like when a rain cloud showers down full droplets of water on top of a mountain, that water flowing down along the slope fills up the mountain streamlets, fissures, and gullies. And when those are full, they fill up the pools, and those pools fill up the ponds. Those ponds fill up the streams, and those streams fill up the rivers. And when those are full, they fill up the great ocean. And truly in the same way..." this particular sutta starts with faith or Saddhā. With Saddhā as a supporting condition, there is a sense of well-being. A sense of well-being is a supporting condition for Joy or Pīti. I will be using some of these Pali words because some of them are just fun and they're much more precise than some of the English terms.

Joy is a supporting condition for ease or tranquility, Passaddhi. Relaxation, ease is a supporting condition for happiness or Sukha. Happiness is a supporting condition for concentration. And those five, that's what Gil Fronsdal refers to as the pentad. But in this sutta as elsewhere, the Buddha continues: Concentration is a supporting condition for knowing and seeing accurately. Knowing and seeing accurately is a supporting condition for disenchantment or Nibbida¹¹. Disenchantment is a supporting condition for dispassion. Dispassion is a supporting condition for liberation. And liberation or Vimutti is a supporting condition for knowledge of the destruction of the outflows. This is basically getting rid of greed, anger, and delusion, which is the goal of a Buddhist practice, whether it's in the Theravāda or the Mahayana—just cleansing the mind, purifying the mind of greed, anger, and delusion.

So I mentioned those five different fountains of well-being. We can think of these as different clouds that rain down upon the mountain of faith, generosity, virtue, learning, and wisdom. And I'll just introduce one other concept. This term Kataññū is a really useful term as well. It's often translated as gratitude, but it literally means knowing what has been done. You can think about this as appreciation. So having gratitude in appreciating how this causality works, how when we sow seeds of appreciating faith, generosity, virtue, learning, and wisdom, just knowing that, appreciating that can support the process.

The Buddha talks about how this well-being cascade is a natural process. "For one possessing virtue, one embodying virtue, no intention need be made, 'May non-remorse arise in me.' It's natural, it's just the way things are, that non-remorse will arise for one possessing virtue, one embodying virtue. For one without remorse, no intention need be made, 'May a sense of well-being, Pāmojja, arise for me.' It's natural that a sense of well-being will arise for one without remorse. For one with a sense of well-being, there comes joy." And so all the way down this well-being cascade, it's a natural process. But as I was saying before, you can water those seeds or seed the clouds. You can support this process by actively appreciating that this is the way things are. This is how the Buddha clearly saw the psychology of well-being, the momentum of different wholesome mind states.

As a general outline for the morning, it's a little bit of an experimental schedule for the day, but we'll have 15-minute sessions of slight reflections from me, followed by either a question and answer period, followed by 15 minutes of meditation on the different themes that we're talking about. And then we'll just repeat that up until 11:30. And then at 11:30, some people I think have brought food to offer, specifically for me, but I'm sure there'll be enough for everybody we can share. So anyone that wants to stay after, you can stick around and experience some of the Kalyāṇa-mittatā¹², the noble friendship, the spiritual friendship, literally the beautiful friendship of having people with shared aspirations. All of us have shared aspirations just by coming here this morning.

Meditation I – Embodied Pāmojja

So all sitting together here and paying attention to three flavors or shades of the well-being and the joy that we're practicing today, this morning. So that is levity, light, and letting go.

Bringing some levity to your posture, you can imagine if there was a string attached to the top of your head and just gently being pulled up. Maybe a string of pearls, and it's like each of your vertebrae are a different pearl. And then with this very light pull at the top of the head, just elongating the spine, bringing levity to the body, some lightness to the body, and then letting all the musculature just let go around this central column, this string of pearls.

And with the body light and letting go, coming to our meditation object. And for this period and it can work for all of our meditations, I'll be speaking in terms of the breath, but feel free to experiment with whatever you're most familiar with. Just knowing every in-breath and every out-breath. The full extent of every in-breath, and the full extent—beginning, middle, and end—of every out-breath. Maybe this lifting, this levity with the in-breath, and then the relaxation or letting go on the out-breath.

If you're able to stay with the breath consistently, you can even begin experimenting with suggestion. As the Buddha says in the mindfulness of breathing sutta, you can train, "I will breathe in and I will breathe out, gladdening the mind." And just sweetening ever so slightly, experiencing the richness of every in-breath and every out-breath.

Just in the last couple minutes of a meditation period, it can be just nice to practice a little bit of mettā or loving-kindness meditation. So with any moment of concentration or awareness that you've built up, any warmth or tranquility that you might feel right now, just allow that warmth to expand. Allow your awareness to expand and just sit with this wonderful blessing of, "May I be happy, and may all beings be happy."

The Joy of Appreciating Saddhā (Faith) & Cāga (Generosity)

I have to say, I'm not sure if everybody heard it, but there was perhaps the most pleasant cell phone interruption that I've ever experienced in my life. There it said, "Happy Birthday, something something something, I love you." [Laughter] So we can take our joy where it comes from.

So in this next little period, I would like to speak more specifically about two of the clouds, these fountains for well-being: of Faith or Saddhā, and of Cāga or, one translation is generosity.

So faith in a Buddhist context is quite different from what we may have experienced in other spiritual or religious traditions. The word is Saddhā. And the basis of faith in Buddhism is a very simple belief, which is that—you can think of it as just one general principle or two points—it is possible to abandon unwholesome actions of body, speech, and mind, and it is possible to cultivate wholesome states of mind. Just that. That's really the foundation. And it is a belief. You can either choose to believe that you have some level of intention, some level of agency, that you can affect your mental states, you can get rid of unwholesome, unhealthy, unbeneficial mental, physical, verbal actions, or that you can't. And each of those beliefs is going to have an effect on your life and how you relate to the world.

In a Buddhist context, you take the positive view that it is possible to abandon the unwholesome and to cultivate the wholesome. The Pali Canon does talk about beings in other realms, it does talk about rebirth, but really those are not at the foundation because most of us have not experienced anything like that. We just have our daily experience. And what's more important than these seemingly philosophical, perhaps esoteric concepts is what we do in the present moment and the belief we have about our capacities in the present moment.

So how can faith, Saddhā, lead to well-being? On a daily life practice, how this manifests in Buddhist countries or for people who are, you know, calling themselves Buddhists anywhere in the world, often times that'll manifest as having a Buddha statue in your own home. It can manifest as you having a shrine. It can manifest as daily bowing practices. These are all aspects which some cohort of secular Buddhists don't really feel comfortable with. That's almost the definition of a secular Buddhist, someone who doesn't really feel comfortable with the different rituals of seeming religiosity, like bowing, like maybe wearing robes, or having different religious iconography in your house.

But that statue, what it really is, is a symbol for whatever you believe it to be, at least in your own context. So if you take this foundational belief that the Buddha puts forth, that I can change and have an effect on my life and my actions, and if you take that as the symbol of what the Buddha represents... the word Buddha itself means "knowing," it just means one who knows or one who is awake. So it's a symbol for awakening in your house. He is also, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a scholar who doesn't feel that the Buddha was a historical figure who walked in India 2600 years ago. This statue does represent that, but that also can be an inspiring source for well-being. "Yeah, the Buddha was a human and I'm a human, and he attained enlightenment through his own efforts, and I can do that as well. I can practice awareness, being awake in the present moment and inculcating and just inclining to this belief in the efficacy of my actions." That's what this Buddha statue represents.

Then a bowing practice, that's another thing which seems like it's super religious, and maybe it is in other contexts. But what does it really mean for something to be religious? And just simply by bowing, does that necessarily mean that you're giving your life over to a totally unreasonable ideal? It doesn't have to. In the tradition that I ordained in, the Thai Forest form of Theravāda Buddhism, there is a lot of bowing that we do. We're encouraged to bow when we first wake up. It didn't take too long. Myself, like many people, you first go to a monastery and you see all these people bowing and you don't like it, and it's kind of annoying and it feels uncomfortable and you're not used to it. But after time, you start seeing that the most beautiful people around the monastery are the ones who have a bowing practice, and it doesn't seem to hurt them. So, taking it on, bowing when you first wake up to whatever it is in your life that you feel is most meaningful, your North Star, reorienting yourself every morning to whatever it is that's most important. The Buddha is also a sign of enlightenment, a sign of full awakening, a sign of being completely free from greed, anger, and delusion, and the belief that, if you can get your mind around it, "I too could be completely free. I could transcend greed and anger and delusion." It's a very inspiring and aspirative North Star to have.

So that's a little bit about faith, how you can cultivate it in your daily life through these different symbols and these different gestures.

But also on generosity, that's the second cloud of well-being. So how to cultivate generosity in your daily life? I don't want to point them out specifically, but my mother is somewhere in the audience here. [Laughter] She's the one knitting. Anyway, she does so much of the day, and now that she's retired, she does it even more, knitting or sewing. She's knitted many things for me. She sewed this jacket. It's a really beautiful practice to have ways to, literally every stitch can be a stitch of love and a stitch of giving away.

A more familiar term for generosity is Dāna, and that is literally what you give to someone else. But Cāga has a much broader scope of meaning. It runs all the way from, yes, specifically the donations that you might offer a monk. In Buddhist countries, there's a tradition of monastics going for alms round every day, and that's an opportunity for the people who live around the monastery to literally put food—that's how we survive. We don't use money. Everything that we eat, all the food that I've eaten, all the food that every monk in my tradition has eaten for the whole time that they've been a monastic, has been donated.

But Cāga, on the other extreme, it's a synonym for Nibbāna¹³. It comes up in the definition for Nibbāna in the Third Noble Truth. What is Nibbāna? It's the remainderless fading and cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, and letting go of craving. So it's all the way from just letting go in this way, just a little bit of food, to all the way to the other extreme of the complete letting go of defilement, letting go of craving, the emptiness of Nibbāna. And everything in between, every gesture of this, of just not clinging.

The Buddha had a principle. He said, "If beings knew as I knew the true results of giving, they wouldn't eat without first having given." There's a very impressive practice that I encountered in monasteries in Sri Lanka called the Sāraṇīya practice. Sāraṇīya literally means remembrance, but it's referring to this principle of giving before you eat. In those monasteries, the monks specifically will take their alms food, but then before they start eating, they will go around and make an offering, take something from their bowl and put it in one of their fellow monastics' bowls.

So how could you institute some act of giving in your daily life? It is natural that giving will lead to well-being. And that will happen the more you give, but the more you're able to actively appreciate that, to have this gratitude for the whole process, then that is like a supercharger for the action itself.

Q&A

Q: How many times do you bow in the morning, or how long do you do it for?

A: In our tradition, it's a practice of just when you first wake up, three times. And then as soon as I wake up, basically three bows from the kneeling posture. Myself and a number of other not just monks but people have what we call the 28 Bow Club, where we do Tibetan-style bowing, which is a good exercise. You're basically standing up and then going down and then lying all the way flat and then coming back up and doing that 28 times. And if you do that every day for a year, that's 10,000 bows.

Q: A legitimate bow would be all the way down?

A: No, it doesn't have to be. That's kind of Tibetan style. In the Thai style, we sit on our toes like this and it's not always very comfortable for some people, but bringing your hands up to your heart like a lotus, and then your thumbs to your forehead, and then bowing down with your head between your hands, and coming up and bowing again a third time. And then just ending with a little half bow like that. And that's bowing to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha.

Q: If one is challenged by physical issues, could one modify that bow?

A: Absolutely, absolutely. Whether you do it standing and just do a half bow... certainly modifying and doing what works for your body. There's nothing holy or special necessarily about the posture.

Q: I'm just curious, you said that you weren't born a Buddhist monk. What was the defining moment for you to want to go down that path of monastic life?

A: I sat a meditation retreat when I was 20, a Goenka 10-day Vipassanā course. I was in university at the time, and it just had a totally transformative effect on my life. Day one and day two, you're just focusing on your breath for basically three days straight... and it was just very difficult. I had not seen how unwieldy my mind was because I'd never really tried to focus on an object like that. But then after three days, the third day, I started experiencing levels of well-being, this whole cascade. I experienced the whole cascade of well-being to joy, to physical tranquility, to happiness, to some level of Samādhi or concentration and was just mind-blowing. And so that and then so it's like a heaven realm on day three, and then that lasted for maybe a day, and then it was a hell realm, basically. And it's like up and down like that. And so the lesson of that retreat was, "Gosh, I really need to train my mind, and it's possible to train my mind."

Q: My question is about identification, because I can sense that the transcendent joy is there, but oftentimes in that state, I don't feel like it's me. The ego wants to claim that, and the moment it claims that, it disappears. Is there an intermediate step of shifting the identification to one of joy through the body, maybe?

A: Yeah, no, it's a great question. And there are actually suttas where the Buddha actually encourages some level of wholesome ego function, where he says a practitioner is very generous and they reflect, "I am very generous." Such a one finds uplift in the significance of this... and finds a sense of well-being connected with this Dhamma. So there is a place for actually, "You know, I am someone who has a measure of faith. I am someone who has a measure of generosity." But as you're saying, that can be easily co-opted by conceit, and that's really dangerous. That's why the Buddha taught the truth of not-self as a corrective to that. The highest way of giving is just to give thinking, "Giving is an ornament for the mind." So you don't, there's no "I" in that formulation. So shifting from "I'm someone who's really generous" to "this giving, studying, it's just an ornament for the mind."

Meditation II – Guided

Again bringing some levity or uplift, some not tightness and not over-seriousness to your posture and to your mind. And lightness, and the sense of letting go.

In this period, we'll just do a bit of a guided meditation combining the recollection of generosity, Cāgānussati, and recollection of the Buddha, Buddhānussati. If you're not so comfortable with any of this, you can just come back to the breath.

But for those who are open, I'd just like to paint a scene, a mental image. Imagine that you're back in your home and it's just a morning about this time, and you look out the window. And coming down the street, you see Shakyamuni Buddha. You're not bothered by the anachronism, don't worry about how this is possible, but you can tell as soon as you see this being, this somewhat tall, it's very handsome but extremely serene person, you can tell it's the Buddha.

And as you watch him just walking so gracefully, you notice that he's moving in your direction. He's actually headed to your door. And what does your mind do? And supposing that you do open the door, his serene expression would be open to being invited in. So if you're comfortable with that, you can actually invite the Buddha into your house. And he comes and sits. And there you are, just sitting with the Buddha.

And just as visualizing a lemon might make you pucker your lips, you might even right now be feeling some level of warmth or even, I know people have done this and actually experienced the hair standing up. But what are you feeling? And who speaks first? And what do you say, or what does he say? Or do you just both sit there silently in each other's presence? Do you just naturally come back to your breath and, as can happen, just naturally find the mind in a very deep and very quiet place?

But you realize that it's the morning time, and the Buddha has his bowl with him, and you realize that you actually have enough food that you can share. And so you go to the kitchen and take whatever it is, maybe it's the nicest dish you have prepared, the most healthy food. You come back, and if you're so inclined, you can pay respects, you can bow to the Buddha. Or just when you're ready, he knows what you're wanting to do, and he opens his bowl. And you put your food in this bowl, and you sit back down and come back to your breath. Training, "I can breathe in experiencing gladness. I can breathe in experiencing joy. I can breathe in experiencing happiness." And just letting those natural feelings just allow them and moisten them if you can.

And after some period, just sitting together in that quiet space, it's as if the whole room has become more quiet, maybe as if the whole world has disappeared. And the Buddha calmly leaves your house and continues his alms round. And you just continue to sit there, allowing any joy or Pāmojja, this well-being, just allow that to fully seep in with the goodness that you've done.

The Joy of Appreciating Sīla (Virtue) & Suta (Learning)

Okay, hope everybody had a happy bio break. I didn't introduce myself. My name is Ajahn Kovilo. I ordained at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, just about two and a half, three hours north of here, in the Thai Forest tradition. And I'm starting a monastery with a monk named Ajahn Nisabho up in Seattle called Clear Mountain. We have a really impressive and wonderful community of people that are coming together. You can just search for Clear Mountain Monastery.

With that, transition into speaking about another two of those clouds that rain down the Pāmojja or well-being: Sīla¹⁴, which is virtue, alternately translated as morality or integrity, a sense of having principles; and Suta, or learning.

The first is Sīla, this morality or virtue. Typically, there are various different levels of precepts that Buddhists will take. The five precepts are somewhat of a foundation for Buddhist lay practice. They are framed as trainings: "I undertake the training to refrain from killing. I undertake the training to refrain from stealing. I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct. I undertake the precept to refrain from lying. I undertake the precept to refrain from consuming intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness."

What is the purpose of keeping precepts? In two different discourses, he gives two different purposes. One, what's the purpose of keeping precepts? Non-remorse. So when you keep precepts, when I'm not killing anybody, I'm not stealing anything, I'm not doing sexual misconduct, I'm not lying to anybody, I'm not consuming intoxicants, then a level of non-remorse comes about. I don't have anything to regret.

The Buddha said that keeping these five precepts were a great form of generosity, in that no being has to fear that you're going to kill them or steal from them or do sexual misconduct with them or lie to them. And if you're not consuming intoxicants, you're not more likely to break those first four.

The next cloud of well-being is Suta, or having some level of knowledge of the scriptures, or just learning in general, acquisition of truth and wisdom. A number of ways to bring this into daily life. There are a number of different sites. One which I list there, there's a really great email list called Daily Sutta Readings, which will send you a new sutta or discourse of the Buddha every single day based on themes.

But I think one very practical way of practicing this Suta, remembering what you've heard, and that being a source of well-being and joy, is to memorize certain passages of the Canon. For example, "This is not mine, I am not this, this is not myself." This is from the second discourse of the Buddha, the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta. And you can very easily memorize it. That just creates a really healthy context for the whole meditation. When you realize that you're off of the breath or you're off of your meditation word, just, "Oh, this distraction, this is not mine, I am not this, this is not myself." And then you're right back.

Meditation III

Levity, this lifting of posture, lightness of touch, and this letting go. You're fully on the ground, don't have to hold anything up.

For this period, again, use whatever object or practice you're most familiar with. But just a bit of guided meditation on what's called Sīlānussati, or recollection of one's virtues, one's integrity. There's a discourse where the Buddha says that the mind can be lifted up with a thought: "Others kill living beings, but I'm someone who refrains from killing living beings." So just that reflection. In a world full of violence, there is this intention to refrain from violence. And that's not a small thing.

Gain a sense of the meaning and a sense of the truth of this and allowing that to be experienced, and feeling any lightness or just wholesome sense of intention around that. In a world of harming, I practice harmlessness.

You can allow this series of thoughts to coalesce again around the breath and experiment with meditation words. Just something you say on the in-breath and something you say on the out-breath. So while we're doing this recollection of virtue, you can just think "harmless" on the in-breath and "harmless" on the out-breath.

When the mind wanders, just recollecting that quote we said earlier, "This is not mine, I am not this, this is not myself." And then you're right back with the breath, right back with this harmlessness.

Just in the last few minutes, you can practice something which is called sharing the goodness, sharing the merit. We've been sitting together and practicing, talking about Dhamma and reflecting on Dhamma together, and that's a good thing. It's a really good thing. And so just establishing this wish, and you don't have to worry about the mechanics of this or how it might work, but just, "May any goodness that comes from my practice this morning, from all of our practice, may any goodness I've done this morning, may all beings receive a portion of that. May all beings share in that goodness." And just marinating in that intention.

The Joy of Appreciating Pāññā (Wisdom)

We've got about 10 minutes before we close and have some lunch. I just wanted to point to one discourse in here, which is a really fascinating list. It's probably the longest list of conditionalities. It's in something called the Upanisa Sutta. It gives that whole simile of rain falling on a mountain, and then it describes the whole sequence of dependent origination, about how ignorance leads all the way through to craving, and then from that craving becomes clinging, and then becoming and birth, and then this whole mass of suffering.

But then it doesn't stop there. What is the result of Dukkha or unsatisfactoriness? The Buddha says there are two results of Dukkha. Either more Dukkha—you just pile Dukkha on top of Dukkha. You're suffering and you hate it, so that's the second arrow. Or the second result of Dukkha is a search, a search for some way out of this suffering. So in this discourse, the Buddha says that Dukkha is a supporting cause for Faith. And Faith is a supporting cause for a sense of well-being, all the way down the well-being cascade.

And that's just awesome to realize or to contemplate or to see when you're experiencing suffering. Could you shift away from the stories that you have around it in a direction of, "Oh, it is possible for me to relate to this differently. It is possible for me not to make a problem out of this." And then from that realization, that first level of faith that "I can train the mind, it is possible to train the mind," that can lead all the way down to awakening, to the great ocean.