Closing

We began the retreat with thoughts of goodwill, and it would be good to end the retreat with thoughts of goodwill, too.

Ajaan Suwat, who was one of my teachers, once said that it’s good to begin and end your meditation with goodwill for two reasons. When you begin with goodwill, it’s basically for yourself. You’re coming home from the outside world where you’ve had issues in the course of the day. To clear those issues out of your mind so that you can meditate, it’s good to develop goodwill for all beings. That way, the mind has a good place to settle down. If any other thoughts come up in the course of the meditation that would disturb you, you can remember, “I’ve extended goodwill to that person; I’ve extended goodwill to myself. I can let that thought go.”

When you end the meditation session, the mind should be at least somewhat more concentrated and more powerful. That’s a good time to spread thoughts to other people for their sake, both because the power of a concentrated mind that gets devoted to goodwill has more influence on the world around you, and because you want this to be the attitude you take out of your meditation into daily life.

All too often it happens that you’re thinking thoughts of goodwill as you meditate, “May all living beings be happy; may all living beings be happy.” Then you leave meditation and go driving down the road. Somebody cuts in front of you, and you think to yourself, “May this living being go to hell.” You want to avoid that. Remember what goodwill means: “May all beings understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” You realize, when you meet up with people who are difficult, that it’s not too hard to have that thought for anyone, even those who are hard to deal with. So, for the next half hour, you can spend the session thinking thoughts of goodwill or you can use part of the time thinking thoughts of goodwill and then return to your breath. It’s up to you.

Also at the end of the retreat, it’s good to dedicate the merit of what you’ve done to those who have passed away. As we said during the retreat, mettā or goodwill can be for anybody, but dedication of merit is specifically for those who have passed away. Basically what you’re thinking is, “I’ve done all this goodness. I’ll be happy to share this goodness with anyone else who approves of what I’ve done.” You can’t simply take the merit out of your own heart and put it in someone else’s heart. But if someone else who’s passed away knows what you’ve done and appreciates what you’ve done, that act of appreciation then becomes that person’s merit.

The third thing we’ll do this morning at the end of this meditation session is to have a formal ceremony for taking the five precepts for anyone who would like to do so. Years back when Ajaan Suwat was teaching a retreat in America, at the end of the retreat someone asked him, “How do we carry the practice into daily life?” And he said, “Observe the five precepts.”

Some of the people in the group were offended. They thought he was implying that laypeople can’t practice meditation in daily life. But that’s not what he meant. Basically he was saying that observing the five precepts is a type of meditation in action, and it also provides a good foundation for more formal meditation. It gives you exercise in the three basic qualities that go into mindfulness practice: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. You have to be mindful to keep the precepts in mind, you have to be alert to see what you’re actually doing to ensure that it’s in line with the precepts, and when you find it difficult to follow a particular precept, you can figure out ways that you can actually do it: That’s where the ardency plays a role.

I’d like to thank you for your attention and your dedication. I hope the retreat has been helpful for you and will be helpful long into the future.