There's a little saying that's helpful to remember, "Conditions produce results, and certain conditions produce certain results."
Now, something else that's helpful to think about is that, "if you live with crows, you become one." If you want to develop more peace and happiness and be able to maintain it - there's two different aspects that I am talking about here; one's developing and one's maintaining - if you want to develop and maintain more peace and happiness in your life, then having good friends is the number one thing you need. With good friends around you, you're going to want to be similar.
How much is peer-group pressure affecting people in the world? It's amazing. So, the same thing works in this practice. To maintain the practice, you need good friends around you as much as possible. You have to work with people who think this way, you have to live with people who think this way. And of course, most of you are going to say, "I don't live with people and work with people who live this way. Well, yeah, that's why you're here tonight, right? To get support, and support is absolutely essential to maintain the practice.
Coming for a ten day retreat can be great. The retreatants like it. We're very happy to see some of our old students here tonight. In our retreats, there's forty or fifty people, working together, helping each other. They don't even talk to each other. It's silence, except with me and Rosemary and interviews. And yet, everybody is working together, helping each other. There's energy there, and they are all going in the same direction, and most everybody feels great at the end of the ten days.
But then, the maintaining part of it is hard. Some of you are going to have to change your jobs to maintain your practice. Some of you may have to move countries. What are Rosemary and I doing in Thailand? I'm an American; she's an Australian. We shouldn't be here in Thailand. We came to Thailand to be supported by the Thai people. This is a Buddhist country; 95% Buddhist. That's incredible. Theravadin Buddhism, the one that is down to earth, the one that really works towards solving mental pain. This is it, and we came here to be with it. So, as much as possible remember, "Conditions produce results, and certain conditions produce certain results". Keep that in mind and try to change your conditions so that you get good results.