Peace In, Peace Out

Peace In, Peace Out

Meditation Class Dhammakaya Georgia Meditation Center
August 1, 2012

Every Wednesday we come together in a group environment at the Georgia Meditation Center to meditate and with each class I hope that there is a piece of wisdom that our members gain. I believe that we are sitting on a mound of spiritual treasures; however I don’t know how many people see it. I would have to guess that our meditation members who come consistently know this J we also have members that come one time and we never see them. If anything our GMC team can definitely smile because within the 5 years of us consistently meeting to meditate every Wednesday we have touched upon at least 1200 people in giving them the tool to inner peace through meditation. With that I hope you enjoy the next piece of wisdom that we learned the other day in class.

Note: Generally before our guided meditation, a meditation member will read out loud a quote or lecture written by our teachers, either our Abbot, Venerable Dhammajayo, or our Master Nun, Khun Yay, which helps inspire us to pursue virtues in our journey of inner happiness and peace.

The other day we skipped this portion of class and instead a parable was read.

A man raised fighting fish to earn a living. His fighting fish were widely known for their beautiful colors. Anytime, he sent them for a contest,  he  won  the  prize. Someone observed that his fish displayed not only the beautiful colors of blue, green, purple, and red, but also less common colors such as light lavender, pink, and gold.

People frequently asked him where he got these kinds of fish or how he bred such beautiful fighting fish.    He said that  he had not  brought the fish  from  anywhere, but that he had a simple method for developing the breed.  He asked an artist to draw pictures of fighting fish  and  paint the colors as he wanted  them  to be.   Then, he placed the drawings near female fighting fish for them to see.  These female fighting fish looked at the pretty fighting fish drawings everyday.

When these female fighting fish gave bi1th, one portion of the babies amazingly had beautiful colors as he wanted.  Though he did not possess any knowledge of breeding techniques, he successfully  developed a new fish breed by systematically  influencing the minds of his fish.

This  parable  demonstrates  that  if the mind perceives good  things;  it will result  in good powers or creative powers that generate good results.  For example, the female fighting fish  were familiar  with colorful  pictures which had been recorded  in their minds.   Ultimately,  the mind controlled the physical body by enabling the body to reproduce in accordance with a mental image.  Our minds are similar.  What happens to us is a result of the accumulated  images in our minds.  Thus, we should choose to keep  only  good  situations,   people  and  emotions   in  our  minds  to  support  our meditation.

What a great way to inspire people to turn on a different channel to what you input into your mind. I remember, Venerable Payungsak, who came to visit our center a few years ago. He compared the mind as a tv frequency and for you to turn on the channel that you want, you are in control if you want to generate good feelings, tune it into a good channel, if you want to generate feelings of sadness well then watch something sad or unjust and the mind follows the emotions. So there you go! I truly believe we have to tune ourselves into a good channel, and try to discourage anything bad because it plants a bad seed in our mind. When I see a movie and there is a lot of gruesome killing, it truly makes me sick and distraught, so therefore I try not to watch anything like that; the problem is these days there is so much violence in television and the media, but one must try when we know about tuning your channels to the right waves…right?

For the dhamma portion of class we watched a documentary on the life of Venerable Sodh, the founder of the Dhammakaya technique. Check back on this blog and when I load it I will update on this page if you have any interest in watching it.