This is not black and white. Some of you have partners who are not into the Dhamma, some of you have partners who are into the Dhamma; it is not black and white.
How do you tell your partner that this is so important? How do you really express it? A lot has to do with how your partner is going to take it, I can't tell you that exactly. It would be wonderful if you all had partners who were into the Dhamma, it would be great! That gives you energy right there at home, it gives you support. Those of you who have it are so fortunate. Those of you who don't have it have to use Skype, and email and so on, in order to talk with some of those contacts that you have made to get help elsewhere.
As to helping your partner to get into this? For some of you it will be impossible, it will never ever happen. Some of you have partners who are nice people anyhow and you can at least appreciate that. Some of you will break up with your partners in the future because of these differences, who knows. That is what happens to a lot of people who are not going in the same direction. And this is true, whether it is in regards to Buddhism or whether it is in regards to other major difficulties.
One relative of mine, he was a communist, socialist, whatever, his wife was the same when they got married. 15 years later his wife wanted to become a lawyer and got involved in something else and they split up because of that. There are a lot of different reasons why difficulties can occur.
There are Four Qualities in people that have to match pretty well in order for a relationship work. You have already heard us talk about that and you hopefully have already realized that. It would be difficult if your spiritual practice, and the way you want to live your lives, are very different to that of your spouse or your partner, it would be very hard. So to try to help them as best as you can, try to help them understand that this is something that works for everyone - that is the key point.
Whether it is going to be your partner that you talk to or whether it is anyone else on the whole planet, try to convince them, or at least try to explain to them, that this is a practice that works for everyone. It works for a Buddhist, it works for a Christian, it works for a Jew, it works for a Muslim, it works for anyone. The Buddha did not teach Buddhism; the Buddha taught methods on how to end anger, how to end fear, how to end jealousy, and so on. The Buddha taught ways to develop more Compassion, develop more Lovingkindness, develop more Patience, and such. The Buddha never taught Buddhism.
So when you are talking with other people and you talk about how important this is, try to talk in words that they can understand. That is a key point to remember. It is better not to tell them that they have Dukkha; but you can still talk about problems, suffering, stress and so on. Why is it that for the first seven days of the retreat, up until last night, Rosemary and I have been talking about Dukkha every single talk, but we never use the word "Dukkha"? We do. Look at every single talk, we are talking about Dukkha, it is in there, but we never use the word "Dukkha". On Day Seven we introduce the word "Dukkha" to all of the new people so that they already understand Dukkha before they get a new word to describe it. So with people that you talk to, talk with them in terms that they might understand.
Twice Rosemary and I have had very nice conversations with Christian ministers, one-and-half to two hours with one of them, very nice conversations. We talked about real things. We talked about things going on in the world today, we talked about reality, we talked about how hard it is with kids, we talked about this type of Dukkha and about that type of Dukkha - without ever mentioning the word Dukkha, and without ever mentioning the word God. They knew that we were Buddhist teachers, we knew that they were Christian ministers, we never used the word God, we never used the word Dukkha, we had really nice talks. This is because they basically understand pain, and they understood their ways to end pain, and they were curious as to what kind of ways we knew on how to end pain.
So when you do talk to your partner and try to explain to them how important meditation is to you, try to explain to them how it has helped you. Maybe explain to them that you do it to lessen your fear, maybe to lessen your anger, maybe to have your heart more open and more spacious. So use words that they understand, and maybe words that they also want to grab onto, and then maybe better communication can come between you two.