What Kondanna realised

Thus spoke the Blessed One, and the Group of Five bhikkhus were gladdened. Now while this discourse was being delivered, the untarnished and clear insight arose in Venerable Kondanna thus: “Whatever has the nature to arise, has the nature to cease.”

During this talk, there arose in Kondanna the clear seeing of the Dhamma “that whatever has the nature to arise, has the nature to cease.” He insightfully saw the holding onto the world wherein dukkha [suffering] is conditioned and is let go of. In order to recognize that everything – even the very thoughts and emotions that one has – just comes and goes means that there is dispassion and detachment, a clear seeing of how things work.

Attachment means that we give thoughts or feelings a significance that they would not have if they were seen as passing phenomena. With attachment there is no independence from the immediate circumstances, no space to see things objectively. So we go up with the ups and down with the downs, falling into despair about being depressed, and we then languish in that mood.

Ajahn Sucitto, The Dawn of the Dhamma: Illuminations from the Buddha’s First Discourse

A natural process

The intelligent way of working with emotions is to try to relate to their basic substance. The basic “isness” quality of the emotions, the fundamental nature of the emotions, is just energy. And if one is able to relate with the energy, then the energies have no conflict with you. They become a natural process.


Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

Healthy energies

The more you can free yourself from

your internalization of the gaze of others,

the more liberated you feel…[and]…the more you will unleash the healthy energies of the mind.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Under your Skin

Wasting time

If you say that getting money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time.

You’ll be doing things you don’t like in order to go on living, that is, to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.

Alan Watts

Where I am

Task: to be where I am.
Even when I’m in this solemn and absurd
role: I am still the place
where creation works on itself.

Tomas Tranströmer, 1931 – 2015, Swedish poet and psychologist, Guard Duty [extract]

Sunday Quote: Always setting out

Having no destination, I am never lost.

Ikkyuu, 1394-1481, Zen Buddhist monk and poet