This talk begins with a short acknowledgement of the Buddha’s life during this month of Wesak, followed by the importance to focus on fully engaging with life as we learn to contain the habits that cause attachment and dukkha. We learn with a spirit of playfulness and experimentation to redirect our thoughts, speech and actions into a more skilful way of living all with the guidance of the six paramitas, as we slowly come to recognise the selfless engagement and function of our true nature and its aspiration of revealing the true human being.

We are creatures of habit, or looking from a dharmic perspective conditioned beings. This means when we learn something it then becomes a habit in our everyday life and it so often then becomes something we follow without any notion of being present through awareness, and so become like a mindless mechanical thing. The habit learned in the body takes over so that we can get lost in our thoughts and fantasies yet still perform the function that we set out to do. By living like this we are cutting ourselves off from the very source of our true nature and liberation and will be forever unfulfilled. The challenge that we all face is with energy (virya) be alive with ever present awareness and be with all of our daily habits and mundane routine, for it is just being like this that the door to freedom and awakening can only be found.

In this talk Āloka uses the upcoming retreat for the group in Snowdonia as an example of breaking the habit of needless mental projections. Using this retreat as a metaphor for life he encourages the student to rather than spend time creating situations in their mind about the retreat that may or not occur, to instead turn away from this common habit because it only produces burdens and expectations that almost certainly will not take place anyway. Best to arrive at the retreat without any expectations at all and so arrive with an empty fresh openness often described as a beginners mind. This is but an example of how we should approach everything we do in our life.