You might say that the path of meditative progress consists largely of becoming aware of the causes impinging on you, aware of the way things manipulate you—and aware that a key link in that manipulation lies in the space where feelings can give rise to tanha, to a craving for pleasant feelings and an aversion to unpleasant feelings. This is the space where mindfulness can critically intervene. Maybe I should have put an asterisk after the word aware in the previous paragraph. I’m not talking about an abstract understanding—an academic awareness—of these chains of causality. I’m talking about
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