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September 26 - October 2, 2020
The path to happiness and a sense of well-being in this very life lies not in avoiding suffering but in using the conscious, embodied, direct experience of it as a vehicle to gain deep insight into the true nature of life and your own existence.
What the Buddha is pointing to is that suffering is an experience of the mind. He’s not offering you relief from pain; he’s offering you relief from the extra mental reactivity that causes your misery.
The way out of suffering is the way through.
Grasping after desire and believing that your happiness depends on getting it is what imprisons the mind, not the desire itself.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestation.
Everything, O monks, is burning. And how, O monks, is everything burning? The eye, O monks, is burning; visible things are burning; the mental impressions based on the eye are burning; the contact of the eye with visible things is burning; the sensation produced by the contact of the eye with visible things, be it pleasant, be it painful, be it neither pleasant nor painful, that also is burning.17
