On 8/1/2012 12:19 PM, mike brown wrote:
> I guess the main insights I have discovered since I started Vipassana
> are that it is not in the nature of consciousness to suffer. We can't
> avoid pain (physical/emotional), but it's the resistance to pain which
> causes suffering along with the building of the self ("Why am 'I'
> suffering?"). The practice of equanimity gives us freedom from
> suffering and also helps breakdown the sense of an 'I' that
> experiences this suffering. This insight facilitates a sense of
> liberation and freedom that puts the capital 'H' in Happiness. Again,
> it goes back to the original teaching of Buddha when he said that he
> teaches one thing and one thing only - Suffering and the end of suffering.
Yes. The deceptively simple difference between 'suffering', and 'MY
suffering' that falsely assumes some position or difference - allowing
grasping and rejecting to arise.
The self, self-separates, and in doing so creates the distinctions it
grasps and rejects. Self IS grasping rejecting. Self IS suffering. MY
suffering. My karma. Expectations and intentions - 'desires' - for this
to be other than it presently appears (which has little or nothing to do
with simple likes and dislikes, with knowing or not knowing, with taking
action or being inactive based on such knowledge and preferences, with
planning this or that to live life. All that proceeds with or without
'MY suffering' - yet many obsess over these things - empowering self
with the job of bettering itself thereby strengthening self-delusion).
There is nothing simpler than cessation, nothing harder that realizing
this - Nothing harder than cessation, nothing simpler than realizing this.
Cessation/Realization each but an apparent side-effect of the other.
Same. Buddha/Dharma/Sangha - Enlightenment/Equanimity/Compassion - Same.
Rambling again, apologies. Time for a walk...
KG
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