Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

horrible state of affairs, don’t settle for any suffering at all.
There is a way to become totally free from suffering.”
For most people, however, ordinary life seems like a
wonderful state of affairs, just like pigs in the mud, or dung
beatles in a dung pile; they are very content in their filth, but
humans who see them will think, “what a horrible way to
live!” In the same way, though ordinary people take great
delight in lives filled with suffering, those who have practiced
meditation come to realize that this state of affairs is truly
horrible, because they have begun to actually pay attention
to how much needless suffering there is.
The Buddha said there is a way out. We don’t have to put up
with this. We can be free. We can be happy. We can be
totally free from suffering. pahānasaññā means giving up
the causes of suffering, seeing clearly the suffering in
clinging, seeing the truly undesirable nature of those things
we cling to. When you have pain, just looking at it, teaching
your mind, this baby of a mind, that it is impermanent,
unsatisfying and uncontrollable – that clinging to it can only
bring suffering; until the mind says, “Oh, I understand now,
let’s let it go!” This is pahānasaññā. The practice of
vipassanā is pahāna. When you see the impermanence,
suffering, and non-self in all things, the mind abandons the
desire for them. The pinnacle of vipassanā is this
abandoning.
virāgasaññā & nirodhasaññā
With abandoning, there is dispassion, the mind released.
There is the mind without greed, virāgasaññā. With the
dispassion, then there is cessation. So these ones go
actually quite quickly. They go together. Giving up brings
dispassion, and from dispassion comes freedom, nirodha.
This is the standard description of the process of
enlightenment:
nibbindaṃ virajjati; virāgā vimuccati. vimuttasmiṃ
vimuttamiti ñāṇaṃ hoti.
With weariness, one becomes dispassionate. With
dispassion, one is freed. In one who is free, there is the
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