Why does the heart race during meditation? Someone asked why, during sitting meditation — both morning and afternoon sessions — the heart sometimes felt like it was pounding abnormally.

The teacher explained that when an unwholesome state's body-feeling-mind-mental-object overlays ours, agitation and intensity naturally follow, and we register it physically — through a racing heart or tensed muscles. The stronger the unwholesome state taking hold, the more pronounced the physical reaction. This uncontrollable agitation can undermine us, for instance making us freeze up when we need to speak in front of others. This is exactly why the Buddha taught us to establish awareness of body, feelings, mind, and mental objects — because that's the very point where the three natures overlay themselves onto us. With steady awareness, we come to see impermanence directly: these thoughts and feelings aren't truly "us" at all, just whichever nature currently holds the seat of the heart.

Where did the Bodhisatta get his strength in his first life? Someone asked about the Bodhisatta's very first life, in which he carried his mother on his back and swam across the ocean — how could an ordinary being, in a first life, find that kind of strength?

The teacher explained that it came from an already substantial proportion of wholesomeness, enough to have developed him from an ordinary being into what's called a "great being." As he and his fellow survivors floated together at sea, enduring extreme hunger, cold, heat, and exhaustion with no shore in sight, the inner voice of unwholesomeness urged them toward despair, and one by one the others let themselves sink, in proportion to how much unwholesomeness outweighed wholesomeness within each of them.

But the great being endured seven days and seven nights, because the wholesome side within him had enough strength to guide him. At the very depth of that suffering, wholesomeness pointed out to him that everyone faces suffering like this — and posed the question: who, then, is willing to give themselves for the sake of others? While unwholesomeness tried to use that very moment to crush him further, wholesomeness used the same moment to guide him toward an immense resolve — the aspiration to become a Fully Enlightened Buddha, able to free both himself and others from suffering. The instant he accepted and made that resolve, he became one with Nibbana itself, and a boundless stream of merit poured through him — sublime strength of body and mind arose, and everything transformed.

The teacher concluded that when karmic results haven't yet run their course, the only thing that can truly help is standing firm within the system of wholesomeness. This story, he said, also mirrors how all ten perfections — including wisdom, effort, and endurance — are forms of energy that must be continually accumulated and repaired, carrying a being's development from an ordinary creature onward toward becoming a great being, and eventually a Bodhisatta.