Yogi: I need to find a way to balance my own life and meditation so that I can enjoy sensual pleasures as well as meditate.

Sayadaw: I don’t say that you can’t have sensual pleasure or do your work. Meditation doesn’t tell you not to do that.

Don’t try too hard to meditate; the key is just to recognize when you’re aware and to always appreciate yourself for having done that even if it’s one moment – e.g. you’re working on your computer and all of a sudden you recognize yourself.

Pat yourself on the back for recognizing that you’re aware; and the more you recognize little bits like that, the more awareness will show up.

The key is to be happy that you have done a little bit. It is the same with recognizing sensual pleasures.

That’s how you inject meditation into your life. It is not like meditation is a separate activity and sensual pleasures and work are a separate activity.

Because meditation is just being aware, you can be aware of your work or sensual pleasures without trying.

When you recognize and appreciate the awareness, it will help you to grow the awareness because you’re happy enough with it whenever it is there.

When you try to practice in daily life, you’re not trying to overcome all the defilements because we also cannot, don’t even have that idea. Your only goal is to be aware, it’s like if you’re aware, you’re happy.

Even if your awareness is scattered moments in the day – you recognize a bit here and a bit there and you’re happy, the mind will put all these moments for us and we’ll begin to understand some of our defilements more.

There will be times when we are carried away into whatever, and that’s okay because we’ve been doing that all our life. It is not a loss, but every time we recognize it a bit, that’s a gain. It doesn’t matter if we understand anything yet, that’s fine; we’re aware and that’s the way we want to go.

It is like we’re allowing the defilements to co-exist with us – we’re not pushing them away. We also do not purposely go and sink ourselves into it. Of course, there’re times we get swept away; that’s okay.