Digging my own well

 

 

During the last weekend, I participated in the coursse „Mindfulness is the Source of Happiness“ with thay Phap Nhat. On the last day, he draw a picture of a pond and a well. Looking at the pond, it first seems that there is a lot of water in it; we can even take some water out of it and bring it somewhere to share it with others. But when the sun is shining, the water will evaporate and the pond may dry out. When we are looking at the well, we see that it is smaller than the pond on the surface, but it is very deep. When we take water from the well, we take it from deep down from the stream. This source of water will never be empty, because the stream continues to flow down there under the soil. Thay Phap Nhat explained the meaning of this picture for our practice. We can accumulate a lot of knowledge by studying. But if we stop at that point, we will be like a pond that can easily dry out. If we want to go deeper, we have to really become a practicioner; we have to dig our own well by developing the energy of mindfulness so that we are able to draw the water directly from the source.