The first question: How to differentiate between desire and something that is really good for you? We actually want you to have desires for things that are good for you. Yes, we do want you to have those desires. We want you to have desire to do meditation, we want you to have desire to do a retreat, we want you to desire to do good in your life, charity work, whatever else, yes, we do.
How to distinguish between the desires that cause you Dukkha and the desires that don't cause you Dukkha? If the desire is causing you Dukkha, watch out. If the desire is not causing you Dukkha, okay. Then you can assume you are going the right direction. It may not be absolutely right, yet at least, if you see whether Dukkha is coming or not, is one indication.
Does it help you? Does it help others? We actually have six questions on decision making. If you have a decision to make, ask yourself these six questions and if five of them turn out to be, yes, and one turns out to be, no, then you are going in the right direction, whether it is a desire or an aversion doesn't matter, any decision. The six questions are: Is it beneficial? Is it not? For me? For others? Now? Or in the future?
If the five right ones turn out, yes, then you are going in the right direction. So when you have a desire, what is it that you want? Is it going to be a beneficial result? Or not? Is it going to be beneficial for me now? Beneficial for me in the future? Someone else now? Someone else in the future? So you want to look at the Law of Cause and Effect with your desires and your aversions.
So the question about discriminating: you have to have more wisdom about that situation. We teach you to reflect on actions and results of actions, why? So that you can get ready for your decision making. The more you reflect upon different situations that you may encounter in the future, if you reflect on them beforehand, then you develop more wisdom that can make you prepared if that situation arises.
You have all heard me talk about the four stages of developing Mindfulness and the wisdom that can come from it. The first stage is after the situation is done - we think about it, we think about it. The second stage is that we catch ourselves while we are in it. The third stage we catch ourselves at the beginning. The fourth stage, which is the very best stage, is that we are aware of the conditions before the situation even comes. We are aware that things are coming again. I know that is coming. Only if we have developed a lot of wisdom beforehand, can we get to this fourth stage - to be ready beforehand. So by reflecting a lot on everything that you possibly can, then you getting ready in case that thing actually happens to you.
You are sitting on a boat. The boat has a raised platform/box. You are sitting on the floor leaning against this big box thing. Somebody else is sitting up on top. It's very crowded as often the express boats are. This person gets down off the top and goes to the bathroom. The person comes back to get up on to the box. As they jump up on to the box their knee hits you in the head. How are you going to react? It's a clear example of something that a lot of you have possibly never thought about. But how would you react?
This actually happened to me some years ago. I was happy with my reaction, I realized that the person probably thought they hit their knee into the box because they didn't say, excuse me, they didn't say, sorry. So they would have thought they hit their knee into the board. I thought to myself, I wonder if their knee hurts. I was so happy with my practice. I was thinking, wow, those thoughts are neat.
Nobody had ever hit me in the head that hard, except my brother, which gave me this scar here. It was an accident. But no one else had ever hit me in the head that hard before. I had been in quite a few fights but nobody had ever done that. But my reaction to this person was so nice.
If that had happened to me as an 18 year old, my reaction would have been so different!
Now, what would be the reaction of somebody say in the mafia, who happens to have a knife, who happens to make certain that as they all get off the boat the knife goes right in the guy's gut and disappears? Now that's another type of reaction. What I'm doing here is I'm throwing out three different reactions to the same event.
That's how you can reflect when you are sitting down reflecting about actions and results of actions. Throw up different examples of different types of people in situations. "What's the outcome of this?" You can get very clear on what is the best type of reaction to do.
This is just one little example taken from a boat trip, but these type of things happen all the time.
You are getting onto the airplane and their seems to be a rush, everybody wants to get up to that ticket person real quick, especially Asian airports, it's like there is no line usually. Imagine somebody bumps you, somebody hits you.
These things are happening to us all the time, whether it's physical or whether it's verbal, right?
How many people have said things to you, that didn't feel good at all. How dare they? How can they possibly say that to me? Well, that's the verbal level of exactly the same sort of thing.
People are making mistakes all the time and people's mistakes often hurt other human beings. Whether it's the knee in the head or whether it's something else. Can we reflect in this way, reflect on how we want to react. What is the best way to react to these different situations.
Discriminating in this way can be helpful. Also, by reflecting on your desires, as to if something is good or bad, then consider those six questions. These things tied together, will hopefully help you a great deal.