So I just graduated high school.
Quickly all my friends are moving away.
It's been really hard on my soul.
How does one accept this change and grow?
Well, this is growing, really.
The suffering that comes from change is teaching you something.
It's teaching you the disadvantages and clinging.
And it's teaching you really from an empirical, from a real, from a reality perspective.
I'm losing my words here, losing my vocabulary.
It's teaching you from a real... Sorry, it's been a long night.
It's really teaching you.
As opposed to just thinking about it and saying, yeah, yeah, clinging causes suffering.
It's not something that's easy to understand.
But when you experience change, when you lose the things that you cling to, then you see, ah, it leads to suffering.
And you see clearly from an empirical perspective.
So living with it and learning to accept this as reality and learning to see deeper
is really the core of the Buddhist teaching, which is the great thing about this.
The problem is people don't think like that.
They think something's wrong.
And they try to give you an answer.
They say, come on, enjoy where you are now.
Don't worry, you'll find new friends.
Basically setting you up for the exact same suffering later on.
Exact same disappointment.
And until you learn and realize, you know, really, if you cling to something, it's just going to bring you suffering.
You'll continue to experience this same disappointment.
So the best thing you can do is to accept it and to say, you know, the problem is not that I moved, the problem is that I was clinging.
The problem is that I preferred these people and these experiences.
I preferred those and I really enjoyed them.
As opposed to accepting present moment experience and the experience that you have right now, right?
So best thing for me right now is to accept that now I'm giving a talk or now I'm answering people's questions.
As you could see, tonight I had to give an ordination and then answer some questions, then ordination.
And you should have seen the things that have to go through your mind.
Having to print something up for her, having to get a razor and robes and
all the time considering in my mind, is this proper?
Is this correct?
How exciting the present moment is, if you stay with it, how much is going on right here and right now, and how it changes so much.
And if you get stuck on one experience, like I like this part, I don't like this part, you immediately set yourself up for suffering.
So the best thing that you can do is to learn to not find happiness and cling to the present moment, but to learn to not cling to anything and to be happy without relying on any experience.