Consider the "how fortunate" reflection - what are your needs that are not being met? That's what you want to examine. Do you know you're actually fortunate? Every one of you here in the hall is fortunate. Sure, there are some of your "desires" that are not being met but are there any of your "needs" that are not being met? Do you get hungry? Do you eat every day? Do you have enough clothes? Do you have enough medicine, and do you have shelter? In Buddhist terms there are four needs, they are food, clothing, shelter and medicine. That's it. There are no more needs than that. Still I tend to think, yes, there's another need, and that's the Dhamma. But as to the physical level, there are just four needs. We don't need a new car, need a new house (unless your house was burnt down, etc.). So actually look at what your needs are.
Being depressed for most people doesn't arise from their needs not being met, it comes from their desires not being met. A lot of people in Africa don't have their needs met and they are depressed. Ok, they are not having their needs met. But if you're here in the West and you think that your needs are not met, then maybe it's your desires and not your needs.
Let's go back as this is mainly on the physical level. Let's look at the emotional, the mental level, the Dhamma level. Perhaps your needs are not being met if you don't have enough good friends in the Dhamma, if you don't have support. I've told most of you that you all need good friends. This is great here in the retreat, you've got 20 people doing this practice together, you've got two teachers, you've got staff members who meditate - this is a wonderful place. When you go back home you don't have this. So what we encourage in the interviews is that we need good, kind, wise spiritual friends. That's a need! You can be as fortunate as you are on your material level, but you're going to be depressed if you don't have support on the Dhamma level. That's going to be a fact. So you are going to have to fix it. That's totally up to you, I can't come and visit you every day at your home. It's totally up to you to take care of your needs on the Dhamma level.
Rosemary and I had a beautiful farm up in Queensland, around 1000 acres, including 4 acres around the house with beautiful blue couch grass, fruit trees, vegetables. A lovely home, high set, with two cars and a ride on mower. We even had a telephone out in the bush. We had a workshop, we had lots of material stuff but we were missing good, kind, wise spiritual friends. The neighbors couldn't believe we were selling this place, that we worked so hard to build the house and everything, they just couldn't believe we were selling it. But we didn't have good, kind, wise spiritual friends so we took a gamble. We had visited Thailand twice before, and we thought "Well Thailand has 60 million people of which over 90% are Theravadin Buddhists. It's the most concentrated place on the whole planet for Theravadin Buddhism."
We took a gamble and said, "Well, maybe we are going to find some friends over there." That was more important to us than our beautiful property with our workshop, with our cars and whatever else, that was more important, that was our need. We were lucky, we were able to satisfy our needs. It's not just luck, we put in the work for it. The Chinese have a proverb "The harder I work the luckier I get!" But you've got to put your work in the right direction.
So Rosemary and I worked towards going to Thailand. We went, we met people, we ended up doing what we are doing, out of chance. We had no idea when we went there. I also tell anyone else who is fumbling in their life, you won't lose, to step back from their normal lives and see if you can satisfy your Dhamma need.
Physical needs are easy to satisfy, there's no reason why any of you should ever feel depressed on your physical level, because personally from what I know of each of you, you have plenty - compared to the rest of the world. But the depression that comes from the spiritual level, not having good friends, not being able to talk to somebody at least once a week on a Dhamma level.