Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness (pp. 46-50)
The First Noble Truth establishes that suffering exists. As with a bodily disease, the Second Noble Truth addresses the cause, desire. The Third Noble truth reveals the cure, the cessation of all attachment.
Third Noble Truth
True happiness consists of what is not experienced. Happiness gained through experience (for example, sensual pleasures) is short lived and as a result, not satisfactory in the long run. Once all negative states of mind (greed, hatred, delusion) are eliminated, we can experience total happiness. Another word for this state is peace.
True happiness cannot be understood by the mind. The closest one may come is having brief glimpses when the mind totally lets go of everything. An example is deep (dreamless) sleep. Some may fear this state because in a direct knowing of pure awareness, there is no object of awareness, and no observer (witness) which means that there is no awareness of awareness. So some would say, “How can this be fun if I can’t experience it?” It is because this peace is beyond experience and it is what you really are: present awareness.
Another taste of this knowing can come from meditation when one practices choiceless awareness. As Phillip Moffitt notes in Dancing with Life, “Your mind is willing to be with what is true in the moment and isn’t disturbed by it.” p 156. This choiceless awareness can eventually become the essence of your being. “You are living the deathless; you are no longer defined by, living from, or identified with whatever is arising and passing.” P 156
True love is defined as the refusal to make distinctions, to separate. Can you see that when attachment is present, love is veiled?
An example:
“People seek safety and they believe that safety is in stability and absence of change. You return to a place you visited and you want it to be just as it was when you left. You come back to beloved friends and you want them to be just as they were when you last saw them. Such grasping after what would seem to be a stable or safe experience is a part of the voice of fear that believes that it will not be safe unless it has some kind of permanence. In that belief there is enormous suffering, because, try as hard as you will, you cannot hold things from changing. Can you be with this friend, this world, as it is in this moment, and not as you hold it in memory? It is new and wonderful!” –Thought for the Day, Deep Spring Center
Assignment
- Throughout the day, when dissatisfaction arises, can you discern attachment is present?
- If you can let go of the attachment, what happens to the dissatisfaction?
- Continue to work in this way with what life hands you.
Next: [next_page]
Previous: [previous_page]
