Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

must look at it quite closely, which is all we are trying to do
in meditation practice.
When you observe experience objectively, you will see it
clearly for what it is. If, when you observe reality, you come
to see that it is truly, intrinsically worth something, then we
have to throw the four noble truths out the window. The
point is that when you do observe reality, you can't help but
see the truth of suffering - that experience is truly unstable,
unsatisfying and uncontrollable. This is what we see just by
recognizing simple experiences like "stepping right". It's just
a name for the movement, isn't it? The reality is the
movement, but if you say, "moving, "moving", it becomes
monotonous, so we break it up. Eventually we break the
step up into two, three, or more parts, as in, "lifting",
"placing" or "lifting", "moving", "placing"; they are just words
that reify the experience, instead of proliferating it, as in 'this
is good', 'this is bad', 'this is me', 'this is mine', 'this is right',
'this is wrong'. We say, instead, 'this is this'.
Once you see that it is what it is, then you see what it is.
You say, "lifting", and you know this as "lifting". You don't
see it as permanent, satisfying, or under your control. You
see it as lifting, then it's gone. You do the same with
feelings, the mind, the emotions and so on. This is the
accumulation of wisdom. It's very simple, so we call it
'simple wisdom'.
The pursuit of wisdom is not some complex intellectual
endeavour. We're just trying to know things fully, to
understand things completely. This means that everything in
our practice and in our lives is a fit and proper object of
meditation practice - we must, in fact, take the whole of our
experience as a meditation object. The real problem arises
when we compartmentalize reality, so our meditation
becomes only one part of our life, and during the rest of our
life we don't think of the meditation at all; we may even
compartmentalize the meditation practice itself, meditating
on some objects of experience and avoiding or indulging in
others.
When we have pain we immediately try to adjust our
position. When we have bad thoughts, we immediately try to
push them away, thinking, "no, no stop, I'm trying to
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