Warm-hearted
February 01, 2024

Settle your mind inside. Remember where your true refuge is: It’s in the mind and the goodness that you do.

There’s a term in Thai, oon jai, which literally means warm-hearted. Idiomatically, it means you have a sense of security, you feel safe—as when you do good, you know that the principles of goodness are always the same. They’ve never changed. You want to be harmless, to be generous, to be virtuous, to develop qualities of goodwill in the mind. These things are always good. When you take refuge in these things, you’re always safe.

The values of the world go up and down. Sometimes they say that killing people is bad, sometimes they say it’s good. How much can you trust a world like that? Even physically, the world is unreliable. Look at it: It’s raining right now. It’s cold. In a couple of months, it’s going to be really hot. Things keep changing outside, and if your goodness depends on things being easy outside, you know you can’t trust yourself. So, when you find you can do good in the mind, even when it’s difficult, even when it’s cold and raining, you have a sense of confidence both in the goodness and in your own strength, your own determination, that you’re not going to let little obstacles like this get in the way.

There are a lot of people out there who find it easy to do evil even in spite of obstacles, so we should show them that we can still do good in spite of obstacles – that there is still goodness in the world. As to whether other people will appreciate it or not, that’s their business. But we know inside, deep in our hearts, that this really is good to be generous, to be virtuous, to develop goodwill. So be warm-hearted about that.

We can feel secure and safe, because it’s in our own actions that true refuge lies.

We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. On the external level, that means we take them as examples. We also take them as inspiration, realizing there have been good people in the world, they’ve found the truth and they’ve have passed it on to us. So, it’s up to us to find that goodness and truthfulness inside ourselves. We can generate it from within.

Sometimes we hear the idea that an independent self is a bad thing, but if you can be independently good—in other words your goodness doesn’t have to depend on conditions outside—that kind of independence is something worth treasuring, something worth developing. So, try to find a sense of security in goodness. It’s there. It’s simply a matter learning how to appreciate it and to hold on to it in spite of obstacles. When you see yourself getting past the obstacles, be confident: “I have some goodness in me that’s not weak and is not dependent on other people being good, or on conditions outside being good. There is something good I can give rise to from within”: That’s when your heart is really warm, secure, safe, confident. It’s a good quality to have.