Suffering is the demand that experience be different from what it is.
Interpretation
Suffering arises when we wish reality to be different from how it actually is.
This quote highlights the nature of suffering, suggesting that much of our pain comes from an internal struggle against the present moment. When we resist or reject the reality of our experiences, we create suffering for ourselves; acceptance can lead to peace.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and acceptance of life's challenges.
Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion--for myself as well as for everyone else--rather than contention. [p.61]
If you take a deep breath and look around, 'Look what's happening to me!' can become 'Look what's happening!' And what's happening? The incredible drama of life is happening. And we're in it!
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
The path of compassion leads to the development of insight. But it doesn't work to say, "Ready, set, go! Be compassionate!" Beginning any practice depends on intention. Intention depends on intuiting-at least a little bit-the suffering inherent in the human condition and the pain we feel, and cause, when we act out of confusion. It also depends on trusting-at least a little bit-in the possibility of a contented, satisfied mind.
Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What's happening right now and what's coming up in me in response to what's happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others.
If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.
There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone
All you can possibly need or desire is already yours.Call your desires into being by imagining and feeling your wish fulfilled.
The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.
Mingle some brief folly with wisdom now: To be foolish is sweet at times.
When you resolve to become pious, the devil in your nature cries out at you, "Tread not those paths, O confused one; distress and poverty will overcome you. You will be despised, let down by friends, you will regret it." Dread of the devil has bound their souls; the cries of the devil are the drover of the damned; the call of the Lord is a guardian of the saints.
Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own.
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