Ahead of Vesak Day, the teacher gave a talk on the significance of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and passing, explaining that even someone who dwells in goodness, avoids wrongdoing, and purifies their mind cannot attain the path and fruit of Nibbana without understanding that they are governed by three natures — knowing right from wrong yet still doing wrong regardless. He recounted the jataka tale of the Bodhisatta's shipwreck at sea while traveling with his mother, enduring hunger, cold, and despair as his crew drowned one by one from hopelessness, yet refusing to give up himself, since his death would mean his mother's death too — and it was in the midst of that very crisis that he vowed to become a refuge for all beings. A follow-up question arose from this teaching.

The Inner Voice Is Not Always Our Own Thought

Someone shared a case drawn from a public interview with a parent raising children alone. As tensions rose at home, an inner voice kept insisting she had been raising her children wrong for decades and needed to change immediately, leading her to impose increasingly strict rules on them. Family relationships grew more and more strained, nearly leading to tragedy involving one of her children. She later recounted realizing what had happened, stopping her obedience to that inner voice, and turning to correct herself first — after which the family relationship gradually improved. The questioner noted that most people in the world don't realize such a voice is guiding them, and rarely think to correct themselves first.

The teacher explained that the lives of all beings are constantly directed by the inner voice of one of three natures. No thought that arises is truly ours — each belongs to whichever nature has possessed the mind at that moment. Unwholesomeness in particular draws in a mind-state from a lower realm and overlays it onto the human mind's own sphere, making us feel and think according to its guidance, which we then mistake for our own thinking — when in truth, we are merely perceiving through the heart, which is only an instrument.

The Remedy: Sustained Right Mindfulness

The teacher explained that the remedy is to maintain awareness through right mindfulness, as the Buddha taught: contemplating body, feeling, mind, and mental objects clearly, in order to eliminate craving and aversion. When an unwholesome mind-state overlays itself and produces some thought or feeling, one should remain still, establishing the sphere of awareness — mindfulness itself — which draws in pure energy to clear away impurity, purifying the heart and allowing wholesome states to take hold instead. He stressed that without deliberately maintaining awareness where it's needed, some other nature will simply step in to guide us instead, with no benefit at all. Sustained awareness of this kind gradually and continuously moves us from one dimension into a subtler one.