The only person who could answer the question “What did the Lord Buddha teach?” was nobody else but the Buddha himself. Let us see what his answer would be. One day when the Lord Buddha was staying in the Simsapa forest near Madhura, he picked up a few leaves, and holding them up in his hand, he asked his disciples, “What, bretheren, are more numerous, either the leaves in my hand or those in this vast forest?” They said, “Lord, what you hold in your hand are but few leaves. But a the leaves in this vast forest are uncountably more numerous”. Then the Lord Buddha rejoined, “In exactly the same way, bretheren, what I teach you ever, now as before, are but very few things out of what I know, and what I teach you are the Dukkha and the cessation of Dukkha.

People of a certain village were suffering from various kinds of chronic diseases. Though they sought treatments from some so-called physicians they could not get perfectly cured. Some of them got only a temporary relief. Meanwhile they saw a stranger come into the village. Very few of them understood from this physique that he was perfect in health. Of course, he was one of perfect health, a physician and a specialist of rare type. Some underwent his course of treatment and were perfectly cured. They, too, learned from him his medical system and assisted him in his treating the sick. After some years’ service the teacher-physician turned over his service to his pupils and left the village his pupil-physicians who had got perfectly cured had carried on the service of treating the sick very successfully for some time.

What we conventionally call ‘mind’ is not an unchanging entity but a stream of various kinds of consciousness going forward rising and vanishing, successively. Each and every consciousness of this mind-stream is associated with a number of mental characteristics or mental properties which are termed ‘Cetasikas’ in Pali. Some of those mentals are beautiful or wholesome, some are unwholesome (bad) or ugly and some others are neither good nor bad but neutral and imitating the good or bad mentals they associate with. A consciousness which arises together with unwholesome or bad qualities like anger, jealously and the like is called unwholesome consciousness (akusala-citta); and that which arises together with kindness, compassion and the like is called wholesome consciousness (Kusala-citta). For details of the different types of consciousness one may read pages 12-72 of ‘A Manual of Abhidhamma’ by Ven. Narada.

First of all I must thank Swamiji and the Vedanta nuns for inviting me to give a talk on this important occasion. The talk will be on “Meditation of Mindfulness” in practice. I will try to explain, from Buddhist point of view, mindfulness and its development. When we think of mindfulness, first of all we must understand what unmindfulness is. There are so many things which are on the opposite side of mindfulness: lack of attention, carelessness, absent-mindedness, forgetfulness, negligence and neglect. So, in this way, we have to understand the harm that unmindfulness might bring to us, to our spiritual life as well, as to our daily life. From this way we can understand, little by little, the value of mindfulness.

Some scholars who have read very little of Buddhist literature have stated that Buddhism is a religion meant only for persons that have renounced household life. Still others have tried to show it as a kind of pessimistic religion. Some others due to their prejudice or poor knowledge of Buddhism, have tried from their opinionatedness to prove that Buddhism is a kind of religion hostile to worldly progress.

Buddhism is the doctrine expounded by the Buddha. It is not a dogma, nor a revelation made known by any supernatural agency. The Buddha, the expounder of this doctrine, was neither a god, nor a son of a god, nor an incarnation of a god, nor a prophet sent by such an agency. He was a human being, a prince of the Sakyan clan of the Northernmost part of ancient India, the son of a king called Suddhodana, who ruled over the kingdom of the Sakyans, situated at the foot of the Himalayan range. The name given him by his parents was Siddhartha Gautama. Though he was not a supernatural being, he was a prodigy, an extraordinary person, a rarest type of person. He was brought up as any other child of a royal family and he lived amid the greatest luxuries, as his family was extremely rich and powerful.

Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Thero (Sinhala: අග්ග මහා පණ්ඩිත බලංගොඩ ආනන්ද මෛත්‍රෙය මහා නා හිමි;23 August 1896 – 18 July 1998) was a Sri Lankan scholar Buddhist monk and a personality of Theravada Buddhism in the twentieth century.[3][4] He was highly respected by Sri Lankan Buddhists, who believe that he achieved a higher level of spiritual development through meditation.[2][5] Sri Lankan Buddhists also considered Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Thero as a Bodhisattva, who will attain Buddhahood in a future life.