”Association with those you hate is suffering.”
It is very hard. It turns out to be quite a handful, quite a project, for us to keep everything at the ideal level.
The conclusion is that everybody is neurotic, that neurosis creates discomfort and anxiety, and that basic anxiety is happening all the time.
We can’t just practice passion, aggression, and ignorance on ourselves alone; we do it to somebody else as well, and someone always gets hurt.
We generate their anxiety, and they also generate it themselves; and we end up with what is known as “the vicious circle of samsara.” Everybody is constantly making everybody else feel bad.
We would like to watch the birth of our child and its growth, so that finally we will have a child who is competent and good because of our training.
The torturing process we impose on ourselves is a habitual pattern, or ape instinct.
You don’t want to be born into the next world, but unfortunately, the situation is such that you are born into the next world.
As we get older, we are not getting the entertainment we used to get out of things. We have already experienced practically everything that exists in our world.
We want our own particular habits to keep happening, and we do not want to give anything up, viewing that as a sign of weakness.
Then, quite conveniently, they blame somebody else, if they have a scheming enough style of thinking; and if they don’t, they just freak out with their mouths open.
Nothing will satisfy you. Nothing will be wish-fulfilling at all, absolutely not. Something is not quite working. Whether you are smart or dumb, it doesn’t make much difference: things don’t quite work.
Since you carry your burden of suffering with you all the time, you have grown accustomed to it. You have learned to live with it.
Therefore, with greater clarity, pain is experienced more harshly, more precisely and directly
The original problem began because you lost your awareness. You cannot lay that on someone else.
There doesn’t have to be a second meaning all the time, and you don’t have to philosophize everything. There could be pure motivation.
Basically, both eternalism and nihilism are ways of trying to nourish one’s existence and one’s ego. They are extreme views in the sense that either you couldn’t care less and nothing is a problem, or there is a problem, so you have to be on the right side of it.
Simply perceiving it through your mind and seeing the futility of it, realizing it is just a game, is the saving grace. That seems to be the point of the practice of meditation.
This ignorance is a different sort of ignorance than the initial triggering process. It is not basic bewilderment but rather simply boycotting situations, ignoring things, refusing to see things in an intelligent way.
Taking life, stealing, and sexual misconduct are regulated by social norms. Some forms of these actions are approved by law because they go along with the basic scheme of society; others are not approved by law because they interfere with that scheme.
You hope that if you speak your harsh words loudly and clearly, they will be a kind of weapon or bomb that you can throw into the midst of society, into the midst of your friends, or into the midst of your enemies.
As the creator of harsh, destructive words, you hope that you can destroy society, concepts, ideas, feelings, and theories of all kinds.
Because you feel so rugged and primitive, you are afraid that you might be excluded from that vision, so you stick to your particular logic, your jumbled-up confusion, your poverty mentality.
First we have to interrupt our ignorance, and second we also have to interrupt our passion. By interrupting both our ignorance and our passion, we have nothing happening in terms of the samsaric world. We have already unplugged the refrigerator.
A person experiences a glimpse of cessation as a kind of appetizer. If the appetizer is good, you have a sense of how the main course will be.
The Buddha said that cessation could be experienced. He said that suffering should be known; the origin of suffering should be renounced; the cessation of suffering should be realized; and the path should be regarded as the truth to resolution. That’s almost word for word.
We begin to feel that we could prevent such problems by being highly disciplined and by having a genuine connection with our own mind and thought patterns, which could be good or bad, virtuous or otherwise.
You practice due to your own inspiration. Nobody can make you do it if you don’t want to.
The only possibility is that at one and the same time, the simplicity of the practice can be developed with respect to the tradition and discipline, and your intuition can be developed according to your own basic understanding of life. That is the point of profundity.
Beyond that, you are becoming highly disciplined. You are realistic, proper, and industrious; you have self-discipline and project dignity. Such ordinary decency is recognized as a token of cessation.
You begin to see the value of the intellect, which in this case means sharpened clarity rather than theory. Instead of resorting to Jungian or Freudian styles of psychologizing everything, you are simply experiencing your life and understanding how it works.
“Because everything is impermanent, everything is always painful and subject to suffering.”
On the path of accumulation we are working with ourselves and we are inspired to make sacrifices. We accumulate good merit by developing a good attitude and performing good deeds. We cultivate simplicity and sacrifice.
There is a tremendous sense of humor and relaxation, and a sense of openness, gentleness, and goodness. You are beginning to feel the effect of your practice. It is beginning to work, and you feel positive. It is like coming out of a steam bath: your muscles have relaxed; you feel so healthy.