Samvega is a Pali word which means getting more Energy and motivation into the practice. For those of you who don't know what the Heavenly Messengers are, the story of the Buddha was that he lived in a very restricted environment. His father made sure that he never saw anything that was dead, not even dead leaves; the servants would take them off the trees. He never saw any injured people, never saw any ill people, never saw any old people. His father tried to protect him tremendously, so that the first time he went out to see the village, the father also made the village perfect. Everything was fine. There were no old people, no sick people, nothing that could disturb his son.
However the story goes, that the Devas, which are kind of like Buddhist angels, knew that this man named Siddhatta Gotama was supposed to see these things to wake up to the reality of life. The Devas manifested in four different forms, so that he would wake up to these heavenly messengers. Even though his father made sure these things weren't there, the Devas made sure they were. One was an old person; one was an ill person who was very sick; one was a corpse; and one was a wandering monk ascetic. These were the four heavenly messengers that the Buddha saw that first time he went out. The stories vary - sometimes they say he went out four times, sometimes they say he went out just once - but he saw these four heavenly messengers. This woke him up to realizing what life was all about.
We look at our bodies now. We can all walk. There are people who can't walk. We can all talk. There are people who can't talk. There are people with their teeth falling out. This is Dukkha. How many of you get aches in the body? I would assume all of you get aches in the body from time to time. The next time you get any ache, magnify it. Think of it as being something even bigger than what you have so that you actually get more of a sense that you, your body, is probably going to get ill; your body is going to die.
This person mentioned seeing old and disabled people. That's outside. There's often still this distance, that while it may be happening to them, it's not going to happen to me. To develop more Samvega, Energy in the practice, take these heavenly messengers in. Let's identify with what it's like to be this way. Let's actually contemplate what it's like to be sicker than we are, more ill then we are; what's it like to walk slowly because you have to, not because you feel like you want to in the walking meditation, but because you have to. One teacher actually taught walking meditation this way: "Walk as if you are an 85-year-old person who's ill." Now, what does that actually mean? It doesn't just mean that they're feeble. It doesn't just mean that they're slow. It means that they have to be so careful not to fall down. Ah, interesting. This is something very different, something that most young people probably don't have the ability to understand. So most of you are going to have to work on this.
I have a history of a bad back. Last season it was very bad. If I got up out of bed the wrong way, it stabbed like a knife straight into my back. Believe me, it was just like a knife right into my back. I had to be so careful. I had to be so slow. I had to move just the right way just to get out of bed every morning. That's what we're talking about, to identify with what it's like. If it's actually happened to you occasionally, try to remember it. I try to remember how it felt. It's gone now; my back's been good for the last couple of months. I'm happy about that, but I expect that sooner or later it's going to go bad again if I live long enough. Expect it to go bad. Imagine that it's bad. Try to identify with this body as something that's not so super, so wonderful. It's going to fall apart. It's going to die. It's going to pass away. So, identify your own body with what you see outside. If you see somebody old, injured, etc., try to identify with what it would be like to be that way. And maybe that would be a way to bring the heavenly messengers more into your thoughts.