The question we would like to pose is...
Do we want survival, or do we want happiness?
And the second question is, can happiness and survival go together?
Because, while struggling to survive, we have to destroy, to kill.
And the deep motivation inside is not only to survive but to have pleasure.
Looking deeply into the present situation, we can see that very clearly.
People are killing each other, and many believe that others are obstacles on their way to survival and to sensual pleasures.
On one hand, we try to fight in order to survive, and on the other hand, we try our best to get sensual pleasures.
And both kinds of action are bringing a lot of suffering to us and to our victims.
We can see that the one who has to perish in the cycle, of course, they suffer.
But the one who wins also suffers.
And that habit, that seed, is so deep in us—the drive to survive, the drive to get as much sensual pleasure as possible.
When we look into the teaching of the Buddha, you can see a way out.
The Buddha does not speak about survival, nor does he encourage us on the path of seeking sensual pleasure.
His message is centered on how to cope with our suffering, how to transform our suffering.
When we get angry, we suffer.
And we make the people around us suffer.
The Buddha would like us to learn how to recognize the suffering caused by anger and by the kind of action that is the result of anger.
The Buddha encourages us to look deeply into anger as the cause of suffering and find ways to transform that anger into something else like compassion, loving-kindness.
Because, while anger makes us and people around us suffer, understanding and compassion bring relief.
And he also advises us to recognize our fear.
Because fear also brings a lot of suffering.
And out of fear, we can act in a very destructive way.
We try to kill them before they have a chance to kill us.
And we cannot sleep well, always afraid: "The terrorists are everywhere, and we can die at any moment."
So we are pushed by our fear to do something, to kill the terrorists before they can kill us.
In the process of trying to kill them and to get safety, we kill so many innocent people.
The Buddha advised us to look deeply into the nature of our fear and to see whether there is a way to transform our fear into understanding and compassion, because understanding and compassion will help us and help people around us.
He advised us to look at our delusion.
We are confused. Our confusion.
We are confused; we don't know where to go, what to do.
We don't have a path.
We are lost.
And confusion, confusion leads us to be angry, to be fearful, to be desperate.
Caught in a state of being angry, desperate, desperate and fearful, we can destroy ourselves.
We can destroy our health, and we can cause a lot of suffering to many other people due to confusion.
And then the Buddha also advised us to look at our craving, the nature of craving, because craving also pushes us in the direction of wrong action.
And when craving is there, we don't have peace; we don't have happiness.
And these things are described in Buddhist teaching as poisons. Poisons.
And when we have the poison in us, we suffer, and we make other people suffer.
Already having poisons in us, we continue to get more poison from the outside, from our environment. We get more fear, more anger, more confusion, more craving.
And that makes the situation more and more difficult.
Looking deeply, we can see that in terms of survival, only just in terms of survival, the practice to help us transform our anger, our fear, our confusion, and our craving, helps us to suffer less.
It helps us to bring... helps us to heal, helps us to have better health for ourselves.
And also helps us to change the environment.
And with that, the chance to survive is better.
Now, looking at the situation of the world, we see how much confusion, fear, and anger destroy us and destroy the people around us.
And that goes in the line of evolution.
You may think evolution is for survival, but it is not.
It is creating a lot of suffering, and survival cannot be something very sure.
Because if we continue like that, no one will survive in the future.
And that is why we have to bring in the dimension of "spiritual evolution," "cultural evolution," and understand the word "survival" in another way, with another meaning.
There are those of us who have a serious illness, and the doctors say that we cannot live very long. We'll die in a year or two, or in six months.
And because of that, we have a lot of fear, we have a lot of despair, and anger also.
And that fear, that anger, that despair, will make the situation worse.
But when we bring in the teaching and the practice of the Buddha, we can change the situation.
Because the teaching and the practice can help us deal with the anger, the fear, and the despair.
And we learn how to live peacefully and happily, even if we accept that the time left for us to live is shorter than for other people.
When you have learned to live peacefully, deeply, enjoying every moment of your daily life, you learn how to smile, how to relax, how to nourish yourself with refreshing and healing elements of life.
Then these poisons do not harm you anymore.
And many of us, thanks to the practice, have been able to live much, much longer than predicted.
There was a young man in Canada, and his doctor told him that he had only three months to live.
He was sitting next to me in a tea meditation, and he told us about his situation.
And I said, "It's okay, it may be true that you will die in three months, but are you capable of drinking this cup of tea with me in peace?" I challenged him.
"Because this moment is a very wonderful moment. You are surrounded by friends. Today is a beautiful day, and we have tea. Are you capable of enjoying your tea in the presence of the people sitting around you?"
I challenged him.
"What is the use of having 100 years to live if you are not capable of drinking your tea with peace?"
He was challenged.
And he tried to drink his tea.
And after that, he received the teachings on how to enjoy walking, sitting, drinking tea, breathing.
He took the Fourteen Precepts and got the Dharma name, "True Birth" (or "True Life").
And he was able to live 11 years after that.
So that is also survival, but survival not by killing, by destroying the people or species around, but by bringing in the practice of transformation and healing.
Subtitles created by volunteers on the Amara.org public platform