The change of outside circumstances

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Pleasure depends very much on circumstances, what triggers it. Then it’s a sensation, in a way. So sensations change from pleasurable to neutral and to unpleasurable. I mean even the most pleasurable thing – you eat something very delicious. Once, it’s delicious. Two, three times, OK. And then ten times, you get nauseous…. The most beautiful music, you hear it five times, 24 hours, it’s a nightmare. And also, it’s something that basically doesn’t radiate to others. You can experience pleasure at the cost of others’ suffering. So it’s very vulnerable to the change of outer circumstances. It doesn’t help you to face the outer circumstances better.

Now if we think of happiness as a way of being, a way of being that gives you the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life, that pervades all the emotional states, including sadness.

So we have to distinguish mental factors which contribute to that way of being, the cluster of qualities like altruistic love, inner freedom, and so forth from those who undermine that, which is like jealousy, obsessive desire, hatred, arrogance. We call that “mental toxins,” because they poison our happiness and also make us relate to others in a poisonous way. So happiness is something that you can cultivate, unlike pleasure. You don’t cultivate pleasure, but happiness in that sense is a skill. 

Matthieu RIcard, On Being interview

Sunday Quote: Whole

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There’s a place in your soul

where you’ve never been wounded.

Meister Eckhart

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enduring strength

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Springtime. We trust the grass to rise again; Trust your own returning.

Let us not forget to be quietly powerful,

growing like a blade of grass.

Omid Safi

The stories we tell ourselves

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What holds us back is rarely life itself, but the narrative which we cling to. When the story falls silent, movement returns.

One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself;

the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation.

One can admit practically anything, yet somewhere one retains the idea that one is nevertheless so and so and this is always a sort of final argument which counts apparently as a plus ; yet it functions as an influence against true individuation.

Jung

Watch the add-ons

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In life, a first wound is often unavoidable – hurt, grief, disappointment, or physical suffering. But then the mind often fires a second arrow: “This shouldn’t be happening.” “My life is ruined.” The second arrow is the suffering created by resistance, over-thinking and making the pain a story about your life

Suppose they shot a person with an arrow, and then struck him immediately afterward with a second arrow – that person would feel the pain of two arrows.

So too, when someone without inner training is touched by a painful feeling, they feel two pains, the physical feeling and the mental.

But when someone is more aware, and is touched by a painful feeling, they feel the one pain, physical but not mental.

The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya, Sallatha Sutta (The Arrow), SN 36.6,

Going through a tough time

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A strong emotion is like a storm. If you look at a tree in a storm, the top of the tree seems fragile, like it might break at any moment. You are afraid the storm might uproot the tree. But if you turn your attention to the trunk of the tree, you realize that its roots are deeply anchored in the ground, and you see that the tree will be able to hold.


You too are a tree. During the storm of emotion, you should not stay at the level of the head or heart, which are like the top of the tree. You have to leave the heart, the eye of the storm, and come back to the trunk of the tree. Your trunk is one centimetre below your navel. Focus there, paying attention only to the movement of your abdomen, and continue to breathe.

Then you will survive the storm of strong emotion.

You should not wait for emotion to appear before you begin practicing. Otherwise, you will be carried away by the storm. You should train now, while the emotion is not there. So sit or lay down and practice mindfulness of the breath, using the movement of your abdomen as the object of your attention. After ten or twenty minutes, the emotion will go away, and you will be saved from the storm.


Thich Nhat Hanh