OK, Salt in the Water. Imagine you've got a glass of water, really nice water, fresh, clean. You take two big spoonfuls of salt, put it in a glass, stir it up. Wanna drink? Probably not. It's possible but generally people will say, "No". For most people it's far too salty.
Now imagine you have a bathtub full of fresh water, take the same two spoonfuls of salt, put it in the bathtub, stir it up. Can you drink any of the water? Yep, won't even taste the salt.
The analogy here is that the water is our good Kamma, the salt is our bad Kamma. If you've only done a little bit of good Kamma and you get some salt, some bad Kamma coming, ooh, it hurts, it hurts. If you've done a lot of good Kamma, and you get the same salt, the same bad Kamma coming, it won't hurt because of all that good Kamma. So it's very important to build your good Kamma as much as possible. You just don't know when the salt's coming, and you don't know how big it's going to be. So that's the salt in the water.
The Wif word, OK, wif, W-I-F, I invented this word some years ago. It's for meditators who practice death reflection in their speech. Now we've got plane tickets to go to America on Monday, and somebody might say, "Oh Steve, when you get to America, are you going to do this and that?" Isn't it more, "If you get to America, are you going to do this or that?" So the word, wif is a combination of the two words, when and if. And it's really when and if everything's okay, then I'll do such and such in America. That's the word wif, and if you want to start using that in your speech, you're more than welcome.
Now many of you have been caught by me and Rosemary, when you say, "I'll see you tomorrow" or "I'll be at the retreat next year", etc. This is where we need the Death Reflection in there.
It's just so much a part of human psyche to think we're going to be alive tomorrow.
If we want to grow in the moment, we need to remember we're not guaranteed the next moment, this moment is all we are assured of as we never know which will come first, our next breath or our next life.