Good evening everyone and welcome to the Buddhist center. I see many of you are here for the first time, but I also recognize some familiar faces.

Tonight we’re going to talk about something from the Chan Buddhist tradition—or as it’s better known in the West, Zen Buddhism. Chan and Zen are actually the same tradition, just different names as it traveled from India through China to Japan and beyond.

The Two Pillars of Practice

In Chan, when we talk about practice—or “cultivating the mind,” as we sometimes call it—we usually mean two things. First, there are the meditation methods we use. But just as important are what we call “right views”—basically, having the right understanding about life. Both are essential.

The whole point of cultivating the mind, in Chan and in Buddhism generally, is to free ourselves from unnecessary suffering. The first big realization is that suffering isn’t mandatory—it doesn’t have to exist. Once we understand that, we can start looking at what causes it. And when we understand the causes, we begin to see how we can let go of that dissatisfaction and sorrow in our lives.

So why is Chan different from other Buddhist schools? It really emphasizes meditation. That’s literally what the name means—”Chan” comes from the Sanskrit word “dhyana,” which means meditation or meditative absorption. “Zen” is just the Japanese pronunciation of the same Chinese character.

Cultivating the Mind—What Does That Even Mean?

Maybe “cultivating the mind” sounds strange to you. We usually talk about nurturing our bodies—but what do we do with our minds? We talk about developing them, training them, but rarely about cultivating them. If you stop and look inward for a moment—”turn the light around,” as they say in Chan—and honestly ask yourself whether your mind needs some nurturing, you’ll probably find that yes, it does.

So what does cultivating the mind actually involve? Two things: First, bringing the mind into a state of stability and calmness. Second, developing clarity and insight—a deeper understanding that only becomes possible when the mind is settled and clear. That’s what we mean by cultivating the mind: finding inner calm and mental stability, then using that stability to understand ourselves and life more deeply. All with the goal of freeing ourselves from unnecessary suffering—or to put it more positively, establishing a state of harmony within ourselves and with others.

The Forgotten Third Aspect

Here’s where it gets interesting. In Chan practice, there’s a third aspect that doesn’t get nearly as much attention in the West as those first two. Everyone’s curious about Buddhist philosophy—how Buddhists see life, what advice they have for improving life. And everyone’s interested in the meditation techniques, in that process of self-discovery. We all want to know who we really are, why we’re here, what hidden potentials we might have that could transform our lives from the ground up.

But there’s less interest in what we call “right approach” or “right approaches to life.” That third aspect is about the inner climate we bring to our practice. Think of it like weather for plants—the right conditions can make them flourish, the wrong ones can hold them back. We can have the right views and use the right techniques, but if we haven’t cultivated that inner atmosphere—that particular attitude toward what we’re doing—our practice won’t be as effective. It might still give results, but without that right inner climate, something essential is missing.

Inner Contentment: The First Approach

The first important approach is inner contentment. Now you might be thinking, “Wait, isn’t contentment supposed to be the result of practice, not something we start with? How can we develop contentment at the beginning and use it as a foundation?”

Good question.

When most of us think about contentment, we’re really thinking about sensory pleasure. That’s what drives so much of modern life—we’re constantly chasing pleasure through our senses. And we often mistake that for happiness. The more pleasure we experience, the happier we think we are.

But the contentment we’re talking about here isn’t of that kind. And no, that doesn’t mean sensory pleasures are bad or that we should avoid them. It’s just that true happiness, real inner peace, doesn’t come through the senses. Why? Because the senses can never be fully satisfied.

There’s a classic comparison: chasing sensory pleasure is like trying to quench your thirst by drinking salt water. At first it seems to work—the water goes down, you feel less thirsty. But pretty soon you realize you’re actually getting thirstier. That’s just the nature of sensory experience. There’s nothing weird or unnatural about it. The problem is we live with the mistaken belief that happiness and peace can be found through satisfying our senses.

Where Real Contentment Comes From

So what is inner contentment based on? Firstly, it comes from realizing that genuine satisfaction doesn’t come through the senses at all. Secondly, it comes from learning to distinguish between needs and desires—and choosing to live with fewer desires, not constantly running after every impulse that pops into your head.

It also comes from understanding what desires really are. Every desire is an expression of some inner lack, some sense of being incomplete. We think that if we could just get what we want, we’d finally feel whole. But desires keep coming, one after another. Sometimes we get what we want, sometimes we don’t. Either way, that feeling of emptiness inside? It’s still there. That sense of being somehow incomplete or divided? Still there.

Now I’m not saying life is completely unsatisfying or that there’s no happiness in it. Of course there is. But if you look beneath the surface—through both happy and unhappy experiences—you’ll notice this thread of restlessness running through everything. This uncertainty, this insecurity. Sometimes it barely registers, other times it grows into real dissatisfaction and inner turmoil.

Understanding this helps us look at life differently. It helps us reconsider what really matters. We start to realize we can be happy with less. We can be happy with what is, with what we have, instead of being unhappy about what we don’t have. It’s worth asking yourself: when you’re unhappy, is it really necessary? Could it be mostly about how you’re looking at things right now? If you shifted your perspective, would the unhappiness still be there?

This is all open territory for exploration. I’m not giving you ready-made answers here—I’m inviting you to investigate for yourself. It can make a huge difference in your life.

Contentment as an Inside Job

So this feeling of inner contentment arises when we realize that satisfaction is more connected to the state of our mind than to external circumstances. Whether we have things or don’t have them, whether people are supporting us or opposing us—all these situations affect us, sure. But when we understand that our happiness is fundamentally our own responsibility, that it’s about our mental stability and depth of understanding, then we can start taking things into our own hands. Our happiness. Our destiny, if you want to call it that.

As long as we don’t get this, we’re pretty much at the mercy of whatever happens around us—events we can’t control that still affect us deeply.

That inner contentment? It comes from this way of understanding ourselves and life. And it’s possible because it really is about changing your angle of vision. It’s about recognizing what’s truly important and, through that recognition, turning situations to your advantage. And when I say “your advantage,” I don’t mean just yours—this kind of shift never benefits only you. It benefits others too. That’s what confirms its value. If something helped only you while hurting others, that wouldn’t be a good sign. That wouldn’t speak to the universal usefulness of this kind of inner shift.

Can you imagine that feeling? Being okay with situations as they are, knowing you have the capacity inside yourself to be okay. Everything can be alright—and whether you see it that way depends on how you look at things, how you understand them. We all have this potential inside us. It’s incredible, really. We all have it—we just need to wake it up, discover it, realize it.

Humility: The Second Approach

The second approach is humility. This goes hand in hand with the first.

Humility comes from self-reflection, from really knowing yourself. It comes from recognizing that you make mistakes—many of them—and that this inner transformation you’re working on isn’t finished yet. Knowing that you’ve probably hurt quite a few people along the way, you cultivate this inner sense of humility.

This isn’t about guilt. Not that feeling of “I’m so terrible, I’ve done so many wrong things, I feel awful about myself.” That kind of guilt just traps you, keeps you stuck and unable to move forward. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Humility is simply knowing yourself well. Yes, you make mistakes. But you also have the ability to correct them. So instead of getting stuck lamenting past mistakes, you move on and try not to repeat them. You live differently. That’s genuine humility, and it’s a real virtue. Understood this way, it’s something that can make your life much more harmonious and satisfying.

The opposite of humility is arrogance—that certainty that you’re always right, that everyone else is wrong. You can probably imagine how much trouble that attitude causes. On the surface, arrogant people might seem strong, decisive, maybe even successful. But scratch that surface and you’ll find a lot of misery underneath. That’s not real strength, and it’s certainly not a good way to move through life. It doesn’t reduce suffering—it usually increases it.

So humility has a very important place in how we relate to ourselves and others.

Gratitude: The Third Approach

The third approach is gratitude. As obvious as it sounds, feeling gratitude—letting it grow inside you—is genuine wealth.

Gratitude comes from deeper understanding and greater openness. It comes from recognizing everything that makes up our lives, especially the other people around us. Without them, our lives wouldn’t be remotely what they are.

So why do we have trouble with gratitude? Because it requires acknowledging all the good things others have done for us. And that’s not always easy to admit. There’s that egocentric part of us that wants to believe we’ve made it on our own. How many times have you heard someone say, “I built everything in my life myself. I alone deserve credit for the good things. The bad stuff? That’s everyone else’s fault.”

See how humility and gratitude both work against that egocentric, selfish attitude that creates so much misery? Self-aggrandizement on one hand, diminishing others’ contributions on the other—direct opposites of humility and gratitude.

Gratitude also gets blocked by a kind of mental fog—taking things for granted. Everything seems normal. This is just how it is, this is how it will always be. We’re not really aware that things aren’t necessarily what they seem, aren’t necessarily permanent. Everything changes. Taking things for granted means not really seeing their significance—not just physical things, but situations, people, the way others relate to us.

Waking up from that taken-for-granted attitude toward life—that’s what it means to wake up to life itself.

Gratitude as a Way of Seeing

When you experience life directly, as constant change, as something always flowing and never the same—then taking things for granted becomes obviously wrong. Nothing should be taken for granted. Not even this body. It’s fragile. Its existence depends on so many factors. Feeling good and healthy right now doesn’t mean you’ll feel this way forever. I’m not trying to scare you—I’m trying to point out that we’re not even grateful for not having a toothache. We just take it for granted. We’re not grateful for being healthy, for being able to hear, see, feel, touch, think, understand, perceive this incredible life around us. It’s all miraculous. Totally amazing. And we’re mostly blind to it. Why? Because we’re absorbed in our problems, trapped in that small world of difficulties that seems like the whole world. But it’s actually tiny, insignificant compared to everything that surrounds us.

In this context, gratitude is what naturally arises when we become directly aware of life. We realize that from the knowledge we have to the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the air we breathe—all of it comes from outside us. Sure, we participate. But without others, without our environment, without everything around us, there would be no us. And that can’t help but awaken gratitude for all the good others do for us.

Gratitude for Everyone

Now what kind of gratitude would it be if it didn’t include those who do us harm? It wouldn’t be complete. That would leave us divided, with friends on one side and enemies on the other—still a source of unrest, not the inner contentment we’re talking about.

So we need to feel gratitude even toward people who aren’t favorable to us. Who oppose us. Who might even attack us. Because without them, how would we see ourselves clearly? How would we observe our own reactions to difficult circumstances? They’re like mirrors showing us ourselves. And the better we understand ourselves, the better we understand them. We start to see why they are the way they are toward us. And we see that often they don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s not personal. They’re projecting, seeing others as obstacles, fighting for their own happiness in a way that pits them against everyone else. They do this not because they’re inherently evil, but because they don’t know any other way.

You don’t get angry at children when they misbehave, right? Because you know they don’t know better. Same thing with adults, really. When they act that way, they don’t know.

Besides, if we respond with anger and opposition, we’re just perpetuating the cycle. Someone has to stop at some point and show there’s another way. A deeper understanding. A different approach. If you don’t respond to insults or provocations, two things happen. First, you keep your own peace. Second, you remove the negative response they were expecting—you free them from some of the consequences of their actions. Double benefit. And you give them a chance to see what they’re doing. When you respond to insults and provocations, they don’t see themselves—they see you. Or they see themselves, but in the wrong way. Does that make sense?

This is actually how we change others—not by forcing them, but by changing how we relate to them. We’re the ones who, by changing our behavior, create conditions for them to change. Don’t expect instant results. People don’t change that fast. But if you think about it deeply and try this approach, you’ll see how wise it is, how much more likely it is to actually improve relationships.

Gratitude Expands Us

Gratitude is also simply a positive emotion. It arises when the mind is open, when we’re aware of others and our environment, when we’re not completely focused on ourselves. And being positive, it expands us further, makes us happier and more satisfied just by being present. Because we feel grateful as we recognize how much our lives depend on others, how much others help us. We’re thinking of others, and we feel happy. Interesting, isn’t it?

I could almost conclude: the more we think about ourselves, the unhappier we get. The more absorbed we are in ourselves, seeing ourselves as separate from others, the more miserable we become. And the more we think about others, about how to help them, the happier we become. This points to something that’s been here all along—that nurturing the mind, practicing Buddhism and Chan, is really about transforming that egocentric, self-centered approach to life. The more we open up, the more aware we are of the connection between ourselves and the world, the more at peace and satisfied we are.

And that whole process? It’s a kind of awakening. Waking up from the dream of life into what life actually is. And that positive awakening, that inner transformation, affects everyone we interact with. The wave spreads.

Living in the Present: The Fourth Approach

I’ve saved one important approach for last: living in the present moment. Unfortunately, this has become something of a cliché. You hear it everywhere—”be present,” “live in the now.” But there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what it actually means.

Some people think living in the present means forgetting your past. Not learning from it. Maybe even losing your memory of it. Others think it means never planning for the future, never thinking about what’s ahead. Just be here now, unattached to before or after, and everything will be fine. And then there are those who interpret it as a kind of spontaneity—doing whatever comes into your head at any moment. “That’s being spontaneous, being in the moment!”

None of these are right. And some of them are actually dangerous. They can really mess up your life.

So what does living in the present really mean?

First, it means understanding that the only moment we actually have—the only moment we can truly influence—is this one. Right now. The past is gone. The future hasn’t arrived. This moment is where we create ourselves, moment by moment. If we’re not aware of this presentness, we lose influence over how we’re creating ourselves. We don’t know what we’re doing. We only find out later, when we encounter the consequences of our actions. Then we look back and wonder why we did what we did at some past moment—the moment that set the direction for everything that followed.

That’s why being here now, being aware and open in this present moment, is so important. Because this is the only moment we actually have.

But living in the present means more than just understanding that intellectually. It means giving yourself completely to whatever is in front of you right now. Wholeheartedly. If you’re listening to music, listen with your whole being. If you’re walking, walk with your whole being. If you’re eating, eat with your whole being. If you’re talking with someone, talk and listen with your whole being—fully present, not running internal commentaries in your head.

That presence, that wholehearted engagement with whatever you’re doing—that’s what it means to be in the present moment. And when you live this way, two things happen. First, whatever you’re doing, you do it much, much better. Second, you’re simultaneously nurturing your mind. And you can do this in every situation. Every moment of daily life becomes an opportunity for practice. The benefits are incredible—for you and for everyone around you.

The Opposite of Multitasking

Being fully present means not doing what we usually do: doing one thing while thinking about another. Talking to someone while already formulating your response, barely hearing theirs. Eating while worrying about ten other things, shoveling food in without tasting it, without any awareness of how it got to your table, without gratitude for not being hungry.

Multitasking—that modern buzzword—is a real ability. We can do multiple things at once, and that capacity has helped us develop as a society, especially technologically. But multitasking also scatters our mind. It keeps us on the surface, prevents us from going deep into anything. We end up with a fragmented picture of ourselves, of reality, of others. We know a little about everything, so we think we know a lot—but we actually know very little about anything.

In that scattered state, we’re always somehow detached from whatever we’re doing. We do many things at once, but we’re alienated from all of them. From ourselves, from others, from nature. This alienation runs deep. It’s partly a product of modern life. And nurturing the mind can change it.

This doesn’t mean abandoning modern life—moving to a cave, throwing away your phone, disconnecting from the internet. It means using the benefits of technology while transforming your relationship to life. Living differently. Living more deeply. More fully. To your own satisfaction and to the satisfaction of others.

Questions and Answers

Audience Member: I’m interested in this thing called “mind.” What actually is it? Is it the same as ego? What kind of stuff is it made of? I honestly can’t grasp it—when someone asks what the mind is, I don’t even know what that means.

Teacher: That’s an excellent question. What is the mind? We talk about it constantly in meditation. And it wouldn’t be good to just give you an answer and have you think you now know what the mind is. Because this is really the question: who are we?

We’re not just minds—we’re a whole, mind and body together. Buddhism doesn’t treat these as two separate realities. There’s no dualism of matter and spirit, body and mind existing separately. Mind and body are more like a spectrum of experience, ranging from physical to mental. The physical part is material, the mental part is subtle. And they interpenetrate deeply. You can see this: your body affects your mind, your mind affects your body. They’re almost inseparable.

If I had to say what the mind is, I’d start with what constitutes it. Our mind is everything in us that isn’t material: feelings, thoughts, intentions, consciousness—our ability to know, to understand, to distinguish. That’s the simplest way to put it.

But different cultures understand mind differently. When you hear about consciousness, subconscious, superconscious—those come from Western psychology. In Buddhism, when we talk about a person, we generally speak of body and mind. Or we go into more detail with the five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, volitions, and consciousness. Each of these is composite—not a single, permanent, unchanging entity.

Chan simplifies all this. Chan says there’s a false mind and a true mind. The purpose of practice is to discover your true mind—who you really are. The false mind is based on ego-consciousness, on egocentricity, on that narrow, limited experience of self and world that’s painful because it’s divided. As long as that egocentricity exists, you experience yourself as separate from everything else. That sense of separateness puts you in opposition to the world. It’s the source of conflict, and it’s always painful. But when ego-consciousness drops away—when the mind stops discriminating and enters silence—then you can realize your true mind, which is beyond that dualistic way of seeing.

Audience Member: What if your life is unavoidably intertwined with someone who constantly does you harm? It’s clear that with deeper self-understanding and inner balance, you shouldn’t be shaken by these things. You said we shouldn’t see these people as evil, that they’re probably projecting because they don’t know any other way. But is there some technique—an “express technique”—for dealing with these conflicts in a way that protects you without harming the other?

Teacher: I mentioned mental stability earlier. Developing that stability is actually the greatest protection you can have. A stable mind that understands what’s happening isn’t affected the same way it used to be. That’s the best protection.

But none of us start from stability and clarity. When you’re in a situation where someone’s terrorizing you, doing real harm—which is bad for both of you—you need to do something concrete. Maybe an honest, direct conversation could turn things around. If normal attempts at communication don’t work, you need to create space. Remove yourself. Change the situation somehow. Don’t accept being a victim. Don’t stay in a situation that’s destroying you. I know that change can be hard, but making that decision—growing up enough to make it—is itself part of nurturing the mind.

What I said earlier doesn’t mean passively accepting whatever happens. Things we can’t change, we accept and understand, maintaining our stability so they don’t destroy us. But if we can change something, we should. This isn’t an argument for passivity.

Audience Member: Same question, but with emotional blackmail?

Teacher: Same answer. Right view. Right understanding.

Audience Member: But isn’t “right view” itself dualistic? Right compared to what?

Teacher: In the Eightfold Path, all eight factors have “right” in front of them. So what makes something right? Simple: in Buddhism, right means whatever leads away from suffering. Wrong means whatever leads deeper into suffering. That’s the criterion. Buddhism doesn’t hand you absolute truths to believe in. It’s intensely practical. It looks at how we actually live: are we creating suffering for ourselves and others, or are we moving toward freedom from suffering, realizing the potential we all have for a wiser, more harmonious way of life?

Yes, this is dualistic. We start from duality—we can’t just jump into non-duality. We start where we are, with what we have. So making distinctions between what’s helpful and unhelpful, skillful and unskillful, is essential. That’s what “right view” really means.

Audience Member: One more question. In classical Buddhist art, Buddha is often shown sitting on an animal. What does that symbolize?

Teacher: I believe it represents strength, perseverance, the energy needed to follow the path.

This is an edited transcript of a public talk by chan master Žarko Andričević, held in January 2018