Cattāri Brahmavihārā

It’s probably no surprise at all but despite all of my carrying on about the Dhamma I am almost completely unwilling to feel dukkha long enough to understand it let alone to know that it is truly painful. Rather than letting it in I immediately scramble to push it away or dress it up as something else. 

Obviously, this is not the teaching of the Lord Buddha but, if I’m honest with myself, this is how I practice. And, walking this path becomes even harder when you don’t let yourself feel the effects of unskillful actions of body, speech and mind. This morning though, during an abbreviated sit, the idea to just sit with it and to mentally recollect that “this is the result of unskillful behavior” while I felt the suffering in body and mind came to me as a revelation. Of course, with all of these chimera, once I opened up to let it in so I could get a better look at it, it evaporated. And yet I still have a sense of how this suffering manifests in the body and how it captivates and darkens the mind.

May I always put suffering to good  use.