Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
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will disappear and with them so will the stress and suffering.<br />
When we are brave enough to face our worst fears, we will<br />
come to see that there’s nothing to fear at all, that the most<br />
horrific experience is still just an experience. As a result,<br />
there will be no experience that can cause us any suffering<br />
whatsoever. Patience is thus another important part of our<br />
practice, especially in terms of understanding the nature of<br />
proper meditation practice.<br />
People often misunderstand meditation practice as being a<br />
pleasurable experience, wherein one is able to escape all of<br />
one’s problems. Meditation, it is thought, must be pleasant,<br />
stable, and calming at all times, free from difficulty and<br />
disturbance. When pain arises in meditation or when<br />
something comes to disturb one’s state of mind, a common<br />
assumption is that something is wrong and that one must<br />
find a way to “fix” the situation so it becomes pleasant and<br />
agreeable again.<br />
All physical ailments – heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and even<br />
the most excruciating physical discomfort – are simply<br />
physical realities. They don’t have any bearing on one’s<br />
state of mind, and so they need not necessarily cause<br />
suffering if one is clearly aware of them as they are. Often, it<br />
is by facing such difficulties that true insight can arise.<br />
A well-known Buddhist story is taught in the Satipaṭṭhana<br />
Sutta commentary about a monk named Tissa who left home<br />
as a rich man, relinquishing all of his wealth to his younger<br />
brother and ordaining under the Buddha to practice<br />
meditation in the forest. His younger brother’s wife,<br />
however, was so intoxicated by her new-found wealth that<br />
she became obsessed with the fear that the elder brother<br />
might return to reclaim it should he later find life as a monk<br />
unsatisfying.<br />
<strong>In</strong> order to prevent such an event from occurring, she<br />
resorted to hiring a group of mercenaries to seek out<br />
Venerable Tissa and murder him in the forest. The villains<br />
she hired found Tissa meditating under a tree and told him of<br />
their aim. Tissa asked them to return in the morning, since<br />
he was engaged in intensive meditation and hoped at least<br />
to be able to practice one more night before being forced to<br />
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