“Craving” describes all our habitual and instinctive reactions to the fleeting, tragic, unreliable, and impersonal conditions of life that confront us. If something is pleasant, we crave to possess it; if something is unpleasant, we crave to be rid of it. The practice of mindfulness trains us to notice how this reactive pattern arises from our felt encounter with the world in such a way that we cease to be in thrall to its imperatives and are thereby liberated to think and act otherwise.
