With the Paramis Reflection last night: The primary purpose of it is to push us to do more, to do more. When I was asking certain questions about whether you have actually grown in a particular Parami, there needs to be a set answer to that. If we are honest, it will all be the same answer: It needs to be "Yes!" Right? So we don't have to think much about that particular question, it's a straight yes. OK, how do I feel about the growth, how much have I grown? These two are a bit different. This is not set.
We consider, "How much I've grown?", that's for you to consider. Do you really feel you have grown? Do you have twice as much Generosity as you had 10 years ago? 5 years ago? 20 years ago? How much more is your Generosity? How much have you felt you have increased it? It has to be something that you feel you judge for yourself.
Now, "How do you feel about this level of growth?" Do you feel content? With your level of Generosity, your level of Morality and everything. Do you feel content? OK, that's a personal question again. But by and large, we don't want to be totally content. We can feel happy, in a sense, about our growth. We feel happy that we have grown, but feeling actually content means we might stop growing. We might say, "Oh Yeah, that's fine, that's enough." So really, in the sense of how we feel about it, we would like to feel glad, we would like to feel sympathetic joy with ourselves that we have grown. OK? This is a play on English words here. Again, it's something that you have to look at within yourself.
But the last question, "What can I do in my life to help this Parami grow?", that's really the focus of this reflection. Now we actually see "Yes, I've grown, but there is more to do, I'm not finished yet. Sure I can feel good about it, sure I know I've grown a certain amount. But still there is another something I can push myself in." So that's the main focus of this meditation. We inspire ourselves. Let's get on with doing a little bit more!
It's like New Year's resolutions: it's common that when New Year's day comes, a lot of people make resolutions. Some of them they keep, a lot of them they don't keep. It just happened when we did the first Old Students' Special Retreat, it happened over the New Year's break. It started in December, it ended in January. And it was not planned, but it happened that that talk was New Year's Eve. So it worked extremely well that retreat as a New Year's resolution practice! Try it often for a New Life's resolution!