“We start the path to the end of suffering, not by trying to drop our clingings immediately, but by learning to cling more strategically. In terms of the feeding analogy, we don’t try to starve the mind. We simply change its diet, weaning it away from junk food in favor of health food, developing inner qualities that will make it so strong that it won’t need to feed ever again. The canon lists these qualities as five:
conviction in the principle of karma—that our happiness depends on our own actions;
persistence in abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones in their stead;
mindfulness;
concentration; and
discernment.
Of these, concentration—at the level of jhāna, or intense absorption— is the strength that the Buddhist tradition most often compares to good, healthy food”