One way to question yourself regarding all of your activities, whether they are at home or whether they are at work, and so on, is looking at the Ten Paramis.
How are the Ten Paramis being affected by your activity? Is there any of the Ten Paramis growing by doing that activity? Or does nothing happen at all? Or is something going backwards? Is there any Parami that is actually being hurt?
Here is a typical example when you are going to go backwards: you are tell a joke that is hurtful towards some specific religious group, race group, whatever. It is a funny joke, we have all learnt these funny jokes growing up, but a lot of them are actually very harmful. And sometimes when you are with a lot of people who aren't very meditative, aren't Dhammic, and they start joking in this way, we might laugh at one of them that is actually harmful. We have actually lost our Compassion at that time, we have gone a bit backwards. This is just a little example of what many people fall into quite often, this is something you can look at in your life.
Now your basic activities - you want to exercise? There are a lot of exercises that cost very little. There are a lot of exercises that cost quite a lot of money. For your inner direction - what do you want to do when you exercise, do you want to waste a lot of money, or would you rather save your money in order to use that money for another retreat, use that money for a donation, use that money for something of benefit? And yet in both of these situations the object is that you are going to exercise, keep your body fit and healthy. So to keep the body fit and healthy, that is a good thing to do, but as to how much money you spend on the activity, that is something to look at, something to look at for your own inner direction, for your growth in the Parami development and so on.
Are you helping people in any way at all? Or are you simply doing something that does no help at all. That is another question to look at. Here are six basic questions, when you think of an action - is it beneficial, is it not, for me, for others, now or in the future? Very simple six questions. Is this beneficial or not, for me, for others, now or in the future. Now if some of them end up the answer is no, be careful, because there is only one question where the answer is supposed to be no - is it not beneficial? No. But all of the others should have a "yes" in it somewhere. If it is, then good, then you can see it is going in the right direction, is it beneficial for you and for others. There are a lot of these types of questions that you can ask yourself.
Something we teach in the 20 day retreat is to look at things in the light of the Triple Gem - the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. When you get caught up in some activities, are you forgetting, being torn away from the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, or is there still some understanding that this is part of your life and your activities. When you are keeping that as part of your life, then generally that part of your life is going well. But if you have thrown away the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha for too long, then often you are losing that part of your life.
As to how can we realize when wanting and desire, for example, to be good or to get praise are working against our inner direction? To be good and get praised by whom? Praise can come from ordinary people, praise can come from your Dhamma friends. Ordinary people often praise us for things that aren't very important. Take this for an example: after I became a Dhamma teacher, maybe three or four years after we were teaching, we were back home visiting my parents and a friend of the family of a similar age to my parents who had known me since I grew up, came to visit, and he had known that I was a very good swimmer, I was a swimming coach and so on. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I am teaching meditation and he said, "Oh, too bad. You were such a good swimming coach, too bad that you are not a coach." Ok, he praised my ability for being a swimming coach and he basically blamed me for not doing it any more, is that important? Should I want his praise? No, because he is an ordinary person who does not understand the Dhamma. So when you want to be good and you want to be praised, who is it that you want to get praise from? And what is it that you actually going to do to get that praise?
And even with Dhamma teachers, we have students who would like our praise, of course, but sometimes they are doing things that are not very wise or compassionate, how can we praise them?
So when you are actually doing something that you would like to be praised for, watch out for that. Watch out for what it is you are you actually doing it for? Can you actually do something good and not care if you get praised? This is very important. Can you do something good and not care if you get praised? Because you know in your heart that what you did was good, and it does not matter if other people praise you or not. There are the 8 worldly dhammas, the 8 worldly conditions, most of you know them, others will find out later in the retreat, hopefully. Praise and blame are a pair of opposites that can be very deadly, if we get attached to wanting praise and not wanting blame. Even more important than praise and blame is the pair or fame and obscurity, wanting to be famous. Often fame and praise go together, but sometimes not. Wanting people to know who I am, wanting people to think I am ok. People are always seeking outward for happiness. It is much better to seek inside - do I feel ok about myself? - that is more important. This is something we plan to talk about later in the retreat, but wanting praise in itself can be something that is going to end up going against you, because there is too much wanting happiness from the outside which we do not have total control over .
Being able to praise yourself, this ties in with making good Kamma, to have Sympathetic Joy with yourself. The more goodness you do and you know it is good, then you don't need the praise of others so much. Now on another little level, it does help to get praised by people you respect. If you come into an interview and you have worked through some anger this morning, you got upset with people in the kitchen or whatever, but you explained to me or Rosemary how you worked through it, you opened your Compassion and heart, you realized that you were wrong, you are so happy that you got rid of the anger so quickly, we will say "Good, good". And that is helpful, because we agree that you are doing well, giving you extra support. But in your heart you already knew it was all right. So this little bit of extra praise only supports what you already knew. If inside you thought it wasn't ok, then no matter how much praise I give you, it doesn't change that inside you don't feel it was ok. To know inside what you are doing is good, that is most important.