To stimulate interest in anything, and to a certain extent, when this person says strengthen awareness of the Four Noble Truths, we're actually talking about increasing our Interest in the Four Noble Truths. Because the more you're interested in something, the more you want to be aware of it as an object, where it is, what's happening. You've got to stimulate your interest in this.
So, how do you stimulate your interest in this? Reflect on the benefits of the practice, reflect on what you've gained. Reflect on how special it is, reflect on just how rare this opportunity is and that you don't know how long it's going to be. There are people in the world 28 years old right now falling over dead. There are people 47 years old right now falling over dead. There are people who have fallen over dead and they didn't expect to fall over dead. You've got no guarantees that you're not going to fall over dead today. Stimulate the interest that you've got a rare opportunity. You're basically an "odd one". You're odd, you're not normal, you're not a regular person, you're odd (there are lot of silly grins from people who know what's going on!) For those of you who don't know what's going on: You're odd, you want to remind yourself that you're odd, that's why you're here.
Now the fact is, everybody on the whole planet is odd. But they don't know they're odd. You're odd and you know you're odd, so you want to use that to remind yourself that you've got a special thing to do with your life, you've been given a special gift. It's up to you to use it, to work with it and develop it. You don't want to let it go, you don't want to let go of the Four Noble Truths for a whole full day, you don't really want to let go of it for part of a day. This is why you're odd, you've got this special gift. You've got to remind yourself it's what you've got to work with, it's your tool, it's your kind of life raft for getting out of the ocean of ignorance, so to speak. The more you can reflect in this way, the more you can stimulate this fact that you want to learn more about this, you want to use it more and more, then you are going to grow.
Now most of you have heard Mae Chee Ahmon in her introduction talk. Sometimes she refers to the preciousness of the human life. The Buddha used to talk about that, that's why we're giving it to you as a reflection, to reflect on How Fortunate You Are. How many human beings are there on the planet? Someone says over six billion. Seems like a lot doesn't it, six billion people. Wow, seems like a lot! How many ants are there on the planet? Does six billion humans sound that much when you start thinking about how many ants, how many flies, how many mosquitoes, how many little amoebas, all those other little creatures there are? When you start adding up all of the other creatures on this planet, does six billion humans sound like a lot? They give an example, you walk down on the beach, you look up the beach in one direction you look down the beach the in other direction; it's a lot of sand right? Take a spoon, bring up some sand. That's humans! The rest are all the other creatures in existence. Not so much is it? Now out of the six billion human beings, how many of them get the Dhamma? That's what Mae Chee Ahmon is saying to you guys often! How many get the Dhamma, wow, how many get the Dhamma? Now suppose there's, I don't know, one billion people who refer to themselves as Buddhists on the planet. A lot of them right? How many of them actually listen to the teachings? We're shrinking down some more, aren't we? We started with six billion, and thought that was big and then discovered that it was very small, you know that little spoonful. Now we're starting to throw out some of those grains, first we threw out five or six, so we're left with, you know, I don't know what that is, maybe one gram of sand? Now we're going to start throwing those out! How many are we going to be left with in the end, who actually not only meet the teachings, but actually practice the teachings? Yeah!
Now to reflect in this way, to realize just how odd you are and what a special opportunity you have is very important. That will encourage you to hold on tighter, to want to understand these Four Noble Truths in more and more depth all the time. When you hold onto them, then as the last bit of this said, the third and the fourth one, the third and the fourth Noble Truths become the biggies. Now I think I mentioned that the other day. The fourth one is our way out! We've got to dive into it, we've got to try to understand as much as we possibly can in order to have more happiness.