Because I Like It!

Summary

The talk is a teaching on the practical, lived meaning of the Buddhist path, delivered on June 11, 2009 in the Assembly of Stars Meditation Hall at Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, during a 21-day retreat. The speaker frames the Four Noble Truths as an exact science, emphasizing that right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, and right diligence all directly generate well-being, while their opposites generate ill-being. The discourse repeatedly returns to the idea that Buddhist practice is not abstract doctrine but immediate experience: wholesome thoughts, words, and actions bring healing to body and mind right away, while hateful, fearful, or discriminatory mental states create suffering for oneself and others. A major section of the talk focuses on right diligence, which the speaker prefers to call diligence rather than effort. The distinction is important: effort can imply strain, fatigue, and eventual burnout, whereas diligence is sustained practice done with joy. The speaker insists that the best answer to why one practices meditation, walking, breathing, or vegetarian eating is simply, “because I like it.” Practice should not be driven by obligation or the desire to become something else, even a Buddha. The Buddha is described as continuing to practice because he enjoys breathing, walking, sitting, and eating in a way that brings well-being. This reframing turns practice into a natural expression of freedom rather than a burdensome means to an end. The talk then contrasts right diligence with wrong diligence, especially workaholism and compulsive striving for success. A vivid example is given of a businessman named Frederick, whose life is consumed by work, stock values, and enterprise expansion. His wife Claudia and their children suffer from his absence, and even serious family crises do not pull him away from the office. He dies suddenly in a car accident at age 50, and his company replaces him within three days, illustrating the emptiness of identifying life with productivity and status. Claudia’s story, shared from a Plum Village retreat, serves as a warning that many people live the same way: driven by ambition, unable to be present, and trapped in wrong diligence. The speaker uses this story to show that success without presence is not true success. Mindful walking is presented as a concrete antidote to this condition. Walking from the parking lot to the office, a person can either walk like a sleepwalker, mentally elsewhere, or walk with full presence, touching the ground of reality with every step. Each mindful step is described as a signature of life, marked by solidity and freedom. The speaker teaches that one should not talk or think while walking, so that attention remains fully on the step. In this way, freedom, joy, healing, and even nirvana-like qualities can be cultivated in ordinary movement. The talk emphasizes that happiness is available now, not in some future achievement. Another central theme is the psychology of consciousness. The speaker explains store consciousness as a basement where seeds of both beneficial and unbeneficial mental formations lie dormant. Beneficial seeds include love, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and peace; unbeneficial seeds include anger, fear, despair, jealousy, and trauma. The practice of true diligence has four aspects: first, prevent unwholesome seeds from manifesting; second, if they do manifest, help them return to the store consciousness quickly; third, invite wholesome seeds to manifest; and fourth, once wholesome states arise, help them stay longer. The speaker uses images such as a basement and living room, a peg replacing a rotten peg, and changing a CD or channel, to make the process accessible. Appropriate attention, or yoniso manaskara, is presented as the key technique: one deliberately focuses on what nourishes peace and avoids media or situations that trigger harmful mental states. The talk also addresses the second mindfulness training, generosity and non-stealing, by linking it to simplicity and the reduction of desire. Desire is traced back to the infant’s original fear of survival, suggesting that much adult striving is a continuation of childhood insecurity. The speaker encourages listeners to speak to the “inner child” directly, reassuring it that there is no danger in the present moment and that adulthood brings the capacity for self-care. This is connected to the Buddhist teaching of contentment, or samtusta, meaning being satisfied with enough conditions for happiness. The speaker argues that modern society wrongly equates happiness with accumulating more money, power, diplomas, houses, and jobs, but these pursuits often intensify stress and loneliness rather than relieve them. To support this point, the speaker cites the example of Anathapindika, also called Sudatta, a businessman and lay disciple who offered the first practice center to the Buddha in Shravasti. Unlike Frederick, Anathapindika knew how to profit from the Dharma and live happily in the present moment. The Buddha’s teaching to businessmen, preserved in a sutra for white-clad disciples, is described as a medicine for those trapped in ambition. The discourse repeatedly affirms that it is possible to live happily here and now, without running into the future. The talk concludes by noting that many people in contemporary society need this teaching urgently, and it ends with the announcement of a question-and-answer session and a “lazy day,” underscoring the value of rest, presence, and non-striving.