When don't get what we expect

No! We don't want to ever suffer! - Calm down, crybabies. Here's the solution: NIRVANA.

(Buddhism Podcast) Live with what we can't change? No, there's much to do beyond that

Accept what we cannot change? No

Why do we fall into the trap of our expectations? The Truth is much better.

Cry, Homer. But it's okay. It'll all be alright.

(Buddhism Podcast) When life, which is full of disappointment (dukkha), is not what we expected.

There are Four Ennobling Truths, four realizations that lead to enlightenment here and now and awakening in this very life, with spiritual liberation and freedom for all time. What are they?

1. This is disappointing, incapable of ever fulfilling us.
2. This is how pain/disappointment/suffering originates.
3. This is the cessation of all suffering (nirvana).
4. This is the Path to the cessation of all suffering.

• Craving, grasping, lust, longing, "thirst": taṇhā
• The Three Marks (Characteristics) of Existence
• Things keep changing, hurtling towards destruction
• The Eight Worldly Conditions: praise and blame...

Wait, remind me. What is "suffering"?

Many people misunderstand Buddhism because the word "suffering" comes up so much that it seems that's all there is -- depressing talk about pain. This is very misleading. Buddhism is ALL about bringing about the END of all suffering.

I'm not like this. I'm just having a bad day, k?

That is nirvana, attainable here and now, no having to wait till death, which is actually a lot late to be starting to do anything about all the suffering that awaits us for remaining ignorant and asleep. So since we don't suffer, we dismiss anything they Buddha said, thinking it doesn't apply to us. But do we suffer? Well, that depends on, What is "suffering"? The Buddha defines what he is calling suffering (dukkha):

Various sutras sum up what unpleasant things and experiences in countless rebirths we undergo. It is not just the pain that touches us in this life; the process rolls on and on in the "continued wandering on" of saṃsāra.

Oh, the Buddha found the end to all pain?

This process itself (the Five Aggregates clung to as self) is suffering, is unsatisfactory, is disappointing, is liable to great pain, is utterly incapable of ever fulfilling us. Rebirth is suffering (unsatisfactory, disappointing, painful, unfulfilling) as are growth (maturation), aging (slowly breaking down), illness, death, loss, sorrow, crying (lamentation), physical pains, grief, and despair.

Contact with unpleasant (hateful, unloved, unwanted, repulsive) things suffering, as are being separated from the pleasant (wished for, loved, wanted, attractive). Not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, never being satisfied with anything we get, always longing and craving for more...all of it is unsatisfactory, disappointing, painful, suffering.

Things we can control

US killer survives torture with slave philosophy

Stoic philosopher/pilot James Bond Stockdale

And it all comes back to a more fundamental disappointment beneath it all -- the Five Aggregates clung to as self: body (form); feelings (sensations), perceptions, formations, and consciousness clung to as "self."

Emphasis in Buddhism is NOT on belief. That's nearly useless and only preliminary. The emphasis is gnostic like the ancient Gnostics, for whom direct personal experience of the Truth is everything. Part of that is cultivating insight (vipassana, lit. "clear seeing") into the nature of this "suffering" along with the other two marks of existence.

List: Seven Stages of Insight

The process of craving, grasping, and clinging starts with sense-contact, part of the Five Aggregates clung to as self, and how this corruption, this misapprehension, this forming of wrong view, this distorted seeing can be overcome by progressive training of the heart/mind, culminating in progressive insight, which can be remembered as the Seven Stages of Insight.

This begins by moral restraint (virtuous conduct, sila), which makes meditation (the absorptions, jhanas) possible, which makes mindfulness into the four foundations (body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects) possible.

This brings us back to the basics, the foundational summary, of what we need to penetrate -- not memorize, recite, "believe," argue about), the Teaching of the Four Ennobling Truths. What's "noble" about them or about suffering? They are not noble in the English sense of the word. The Buddhist sense of noble is arya or Aryan, which means "enlightened" or "enlightening."

The list is not a formula but a very general outline of the reflections that bring about what the historical Buddha called "enlightenment" (bodhi, "awakening"). We would rather stay asleep and perchance dream a pleasant fantasy full of pleasure and sensual experiences, delights, happiness in all its forms, of which there are many.

But this dreaming is very prone to nightmares, for in pursuit of pleasure, we ill-conduct ourselves and those karmic deeds come to fruition and ripen in great suffering, unimaginable suffering. We already taste that now, when we would dream and be full of pleasure and happiness all the time or, at least, at will. But that doesn't happen. We can't make that happen. We think we can so, like a donkey after that carrot, which is just right there in front of us, we keep going, pulling a heavy load of a cart laden with more and more karma (all our actions).

Buddhist sutras, or discourses, show the broad meaning of "suffering," from the slightest agitation to the greatest agony, coming in three categories:

• dukkha-dukkha, aversion to physical pain – which includes physical and mental suffering, such as rebirth, aging, illness, dying, distress due to the undesirable.
• viparinama-dukkha, the frustration of disappearing happiness – which is the suffering of pleasurable, pleasant, and happy experiences changing to painful, unpleasant, and miserable ones when the causes and conditions that produced the pleasurable are exhausted or lost.
• sankhara-dukkha, the disappointment and unsatisfactoriness of transient, changing, impermanent "things" – the inability of [conditioned] things to give us constant, lasting pleasure and happiness.

So there is an END to all this suffering, now?

This includes a fundamental, inescapable unsatisfactoriness that pervades all things in and states of existence, all situations and future lives in any world (of which there are countless), any plane (of which there are 31), and any sphere (of which there are three), because all things all the time are incapable of fulfilling us and are always changing, hurtling towards destruction, and are ultimately impersonal, not ours, not under our absolute control.

At this level, the term dukkha, "suffering," indicates a lack of any lasting satisfaction, any ultimate fulfillment, any that things can ever measure up to our expectations. More

What is the point of all this talking about or even mentioning "suffering"? Yeah, yeah, we get it; we know we suffer, duh! Can't we just talk about nice things -- bliss, lights, expanded meditative states, magical powers, insights into all physical and mental phenomena, joy unending, nirvana-fication, quenching thirst, dousing the flames of greed, hatred, and smoldering delusion, stuff like that? Suffering is the problem that pleads for a final solution, a state and trait, a condition in need of a cure, an unbearable thing that we at some point have to deal with and bring to a final end.

Four truths to freedom

There's much to do to be free.

The first ennobling truth is the recognition that there is suffering, not because there is but because we don't even recognize it. We think we do. As soon as it pops up, we turn away, move on to something else, jump for distractions. We have next to no idea what it really is or what is causing it.

That is the second ennobling truth: What is causing it? The ROOT cause, the fundamental cause, the ultimate cause is? It is not craving (desire, wanting). It is ignorance (avijja), manifesting as wrong views (miccha-ditthi) and delusion (moha), confusion about reality.

The solution is? Awakening to the Truth, the ultimate truth (paramattha), enlightenment right now -- through realizing the causal links of Dependent Origination, the process by which this suffering is arising. Among those 12 links, of which ignorance is the ultimate cause, is one the Buddha singled as the one we can actually do something about right here and right now directly, and that is craving (tanha). Why do we crave? Ignorance, which is the same reason we have aversion and why we are deluded. The Buddha singles out craving to work on undoing the causes and conditions bringing about suffering. Why?

That is the third ennobling truth: What is not-suffering? Nirvana. Nirvana is the end of all suffering. How do we realize nirvana, directly perceive and experience it here and now?

That is the fourth ennobling truth: There is a Path to the end of suffering. What is it? It is outlined in general in the Ennobling Eightfold Path. However, to be more specific and less general, the Buddha spoke of 37 "things pertaining to enlightenment," the bodhipakkhiya-dhamma, for immediate development to know-and-see nirvana.

• Buddhism Podcast (videos); Dhr. Seven (text), Ashley Wells (ed.), Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Nazi's son rapes daughter, bears 7 children

You'd do it, too. I'm not the only one in the EU.

(Real Crime Archives) White father, a convicted rapist whose own father was a Nazi who fought for Hitler and was an alcoholic who abandoned his family, trapped his daughter in the basement for 24 years. He blamed cult for her disappearance, while leading a "normal" life above ground with his wife and family, as he began having 7 children with his daughter through incestuous rape, all to keep her under his patriarchal paternal power, he explains.

He says from prison that he is not the only man in Europe doing this. Look around.

The Joe Fritzl case emerged in 2008 when a 73-year-old man name Joe Fritzl named his daughter Elisabeth Fritzl (born 6 April 1966) as the mother of his daughter. Surely, sir, you mean your granddaughter? No, no, I know what I mean.

Joe informed investigators in the city of Amstetten, Lower Austria (Germany's neighboring country, where Adolf Hitler was born), that the mother was a runaway belonging to a cult. When she appeared at the hospital to explain her daughter's illness (never having seen sunshine), she explained that she had been held captive for 24 years by her own child molester, serial rapist father, Josef Fritzl (born 9 April 1935).

Joe Fritzl had sexually and physically assaulted, incestuously abused, and repeatedly raped and impregnated his daughter countless times during her 24-year imprisonment inside a small dungeon Joe built, concealing it an area of their suburban house cellar [1, 2].

The incestuous rapes resulted in the birth of seven children [3]. Three children remained in captivity with their mother, one died shortly after birth and was disposed of by cremation by Joe Fritzl [4], and the other three were brought up out of the dungeon to live with the family upstairs by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, claiming they were dropped off by their cult-member daughter Elisabeth, who was in fact still imprisoned just below her mother.

Joe Fritzl convinced his wife, her mother, and the authorities that they were foundlings each time, left at the doorstep by a daughter who could not care for them herself.

Haus familie de Europa ent incest perverted Papa Josef Fritzl case (wiki)

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Fritzl was finally arrested four decades later by Austrian police on various counts of rape, false imprisonment, murder by negligence, and incest, one week after Elisabeth's eldest daughter, Kerstin, fell ill in the cellar and had to be taken to the hospital by Joe Fritzl himself, against his better judgment.

In March 2009, when Elisabeth unexpectedly showed up to court, Joe Fritzl pleaded guilty to all counts and was sentenced to life imprisonment in a special mental facility, at one point having to change his name due to the notoriety of the case. More

Females watch internet pornography? 📈

(Married With Children) Sexist Al Bundy tells a wife about men | Neighbor Marcy asks Al Bundy how to please men 

(Underground Overground Comedy) I'm my Dad's type | Elle Orlando | stand up comedy

No, not just white girls, OK? Curiosity is normal, and tech serves it up to us on a platter.

Daria? - No, but my sister Quinn and her friends

(Dr. Rena Malik, M.D.) Why millions of women watch porn. (It's not what men think). That's impossible, Dr. Malik! Everyone knows women have no libido, interest, and sense of adventure. They're ashamed, prudes, introverted, afraid, cowards, totally not curious, pure, virginal, chaste, and completely content sitting on the sidelines watching men do sports. Surely, you're talking about another country, not the good old U.S. of A., which is all puritanical and uptight for our womenfolk. Next you'll be saying they enjoy sex or have orgasms.

Dr. Victor Blane has just a one star rating on Yelp - Blaxploitation means Black Dynamite

💌🍆🍑😻😽🙀🐈🐈‍⬛🐕🐶🐩😲☠️🌈⛈️😈🙈🙉🙊

• 

  Protester for *litoris awareness

  WARNING: Not for those suffering irony deficiency or anyone under 22 years old, make that 25!
• Porn for women: rom-coms, romance novels?
• Female promiscuity: slut-shaming slam-hounds?
• Female reproductive system: the pipes' only purpose?
• Female education: Is it really necessary, and should public taxes fund it if they're just going to get pregnant and stay at home anyway?
• Female genital mutilation: Jewish hygiene for girls like they force child circumcision on helpless males who have the most sensitive part of the male body (the foreskin) removed in a ghoulish Jewish Christian blood ritual?
• Female toplessness in the USA: indecency that should be prosecuted and punished because it leads to nasty thoughts like humans are some kind of mammals (with mammary glands) or something?

It's called "Being Human" because temptation is a beast

The secret, unknown female "venus": pagina?

Renaissance Pleasure Faire (4/4-5/17)

Visit before the season ends: renfair.com/socal

Who doesn't love the cleavage-rich styles of the Renaissance when boobs were elevated to high fashion like a jiggling platter to behold? And there's feasting, jesting, jousting, and cosplay of all kinds...whatever the Faire means to attendants.

 

This is the only chance to experience it in SoCal until next year. And who knows if there'll be a next year, what with all those meteors, UFOs, Israeli nukes, Iranian retaliations, and Trump implosions coming. So join RenFaire for one last Huzzah!

Tickets at renfair.com/socal/tickets. BUY TICKETS NOW. IF ALREADY PURCHASED, USE THEM OR LOSE THEM! If there are still tickets for this season in pocket or purse, please plan to join in for some fun before the final day of this season. Tickets are non-refundable. Please click here to learn how to exchange them for any remaining 2026 Faire day.

NOTE: If a date is sold out, no one will be able to exchange tickets to that date. Make exchanges ASAP! As the Faire heads into its final weekend, a quick reminder to help keep things running smoothly for all: Tailgating, outside alcohol, and cannabis/marijuana are not permitted on the Faire grounds, inside the Faire, or in the parking lots of the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area. The Faire appreciates everyone's cooperation in creating a safe, welcoming experience for every guest. It can’t wait to celebrate one last magical season with all! For safety, everyone is encouraged to drive into the Santa Fe Dam. Climbing over the rock wall is not advised, as there is an increased number of biting rattlesnakes on the rock wall. Pedestrian traffic in the roadways impedes vehicle traffic, so please stay on sidewalks if walking the 1.5 miles into the Dam.

Pro Tips to Enter and Exit the Santa Fe Dam: Follow the directions of the traffic team, and please be patient. Bring $15 cash in exact change for the park entrance fee. Watch for bicyclists and please yield! When leaving, take the asphalt road to Peckham Gate, or take the dirt road closest to the dam wall. That road leads to Arrow Highway. Exit right to get to the 605 and 210 Freeways. Find all directions and parking tips here.

Machiavelli's understanding of sexual desire

(Psyphoria Echo) 7 hidden signs a woman wants you: she'll never say it | Machiavelli

The Polyamorous Professors Geoffrey Miller
and Diana Fleischman on Rebel Wisdom

(Wisdom Unleashed) After studying 500 prostitutes, modern evolutionary psychologist Dr. Geoffrey Miller] discovered this truth about women -- confirming what Niccolò "The Prince" Machiavelli had tried to teach centuries earlier in his book The Prince:

The Prince and what prostitutes can teach us about evolutionary biology

(Self Dark MirrorYT) What 400 prostitutes taught Machiavelli about male weakness

California dreaming: early San Francisco prostitutes cycle through money (wiki)

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Portrait of Machiavelli (by Santi di Tito)

The Prince (Italian Il Principe, Latin De Principatibus) is a 16th-century political treatise written by Machiavelli, an Italian diplomat, philosopher, and political theorist.

He wrote it in the form of a realistic instruction guide for new princes. Many commentators have viewed that one of the main themes of The Prince is that immoral acts are sometimes necessary to achieve political glory [1, 2].

Melania Trump is/was a whore escort

(Keith Edwards) Leaked audio confirms Melania was an escort [who "dated" and may have had a baby with pimp, Israeli spy, and professional child molester Jeffrey Trump before marrying Donny Trump]

From Machiavelli's correspondence, a version was apparently being written in 1513, using the Latin title De Principatibus ("Of Principalities") [3].

However, the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after the death of Machiavelli. This was carried out with the permission of the Medici Pope Clement VII.

But "long before then, in fact since the first appearance of The Prince in manuscript, controversy had swirled about his writings" [4].

Japanese women rent middle aged men? Rental Family

Although The Prince was written as if it were a traditional work in the mirrors for princes style, it was generally agreed as being especially innovative.

This is partly because it was written in the vernacular Italian rather than formal Latin. More

American Evolutionary Psychologist Miller's sex research

The Mating Mind: Sexual Choice

Dr. Miller's 2003 book The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature proposes that human mate choices, courtship behavior, behavior genetics, psychometrics, and life cycle patterns support the survival value of traits related to sexual selection, such as art, morality, language, and creativity.

According to Dr. Miller, the adaptive design features of these traits suggest that they evolved through mutual mate choice by both sexes to advertise [in]heritable fitness [13].

• WHO IS DR. MILLER? Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Miller graduated from Columbia University in 1987 [5], where he earned a BA in biology and psychology. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University in 1993, with Roger N. Shepard as his principal adviser [1].

Behavior

Dr. Miller's clinical interests are the application of fitness indicator theory to understand the symptoms, demographics, and behavior genetics of schizophrenia and mood disorders.

His other interests include the origins of human preferences, aesthetics, utility functions, human strategic behavior, game theory, experiment-based economics, the ovulatory effects on female mate preferences, and the intellectual legacies of Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Thorstein Veblen.

 

In 2007, Dr. Miller (with Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan) published an article in Evolution and Human Behavior, concluding, based on a sample size of 18 strippers at a club in Albuquerque, New Mexico, over a two-month period, that lap dancers make more money during ovulation [14, 15].

Spent: Sex, Evolution [and Shopping]

For this paper, Dr. Miller won the 2008 Ig Nobel Award in Economics [16].

 

In his 2009 book Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism, Dr. Miller attempts to apply Darwinism to consumerism, arguing that marketing has exploited our inherited instincts to display social status for reproductive advantage [17].

He makes the claim that marketing persuades people—particularly the young—that the most effective way to display social status is through consumption choices over than conveying traits such as intelligence and personality through direct communication [18]. More

• Wisdom Unleashed; Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

World Smile Day: A Path to Happiness

Buddhism's Seinfeld: funny Ajahn Brahm

The first Friday of October is World Smile Day (Oct. 3, 2025), a relatively new holiday with a fascinating story. Created by a commercial artist named Harvey Ball, this day came about as a response to his creation of the smiley face. Harvey worried that the commercialization of the symbol would lessen its impact. We can hardly blame him for his estimation; the symbol has been used in many different ways including clothing, comic books, coffee mugs, pins, and more. These little yellow faces are more than just a symbol, they’re a statement about the power of smiling.

History of World Smile Day

Has this symbol always existed?

In 1963, Harvey Ball, a graphic artist and ad man from Worcester, Massachusetts, created the smiley face symbol [the yellow emoji icon] we’ve all come to know.

Popularity for this symbol exploded into the world of popular culture. It’s every artists’ dream for their work to be respected and recreated and few symbols have had quite the legacy that Harvey’s creation has had. More: nationaltoday.com

Smiling animals brighten our day

If looking for something to brighten an otherwise dreary winter day, look no further than these adorable animals. Looking at their cheery grins will no doubt put a smile on the face that watches them, too. These smiling animals will brighten the day

Buddhism: There is no way to happiness. Why? Happiness is the way

I let go, surrendered, and blissed out on the mat.

This is a tricky truth no one talks about, at least not in the West. We are forever searching and seeking, scheming and striving to get happy, to FIND a way to happiness. But this message turns that sort of thinking on its head.

When at a Buddhist monastery or on a Buddhist retreat, it's not uncommon to ask, "How do I attain meditative absorption (jhana)?" Another word for it is "zen" or dhyana and dharana on a yoga retreat. But there's no answer. One is taught a technique but no way to achieve the thing one strives for. Why?

I have a theory. - What is it? - Do the GOOD.

It is reached by letting go, dropping the striving, surrendering up the muscling, giving up the go-getter attitude. It just happens. And teachers will say, "There's no way to [scheme and use force to] do it. Meditators just do it."

I went to the room of the greatest jhana teacher in the world, and I pressed him, "What's the secret?"

He didn't know what I meant, he said. He didn't even know what I was talking about, he claimed. Then I thought, he's given me an opening. Here's my chance. I better ask very carefully:

"How does one meditate...successfully? What I mean is, how does one attain absorption? How does one get to..." He looked at me like I was kidding and when he saw that I was not, as if by rote, he gave me the basic instructions:

• Sit up straight, but not too straight, relax, bring your attention under your nose to the breath, remain aware of each and every in-breath and out-breath that is happening. Don't do anything but give your undivided attention to that breath (composed of an in-portion and out-portion). Just that. [Then what? - Then nothing, just that. - No, but there has to be something more; it can't be just that. - Just do that (in addition to keeping silent, following the Eight Precepts, and always keeping the breath in mind except when asleep) and then report to me what happens during the daily interview sessions. Try it. It's very simple, but there's nothing easy about it. So keep at it.]

Bare awareness (mindfulness/sati) is a start.

"No," I said, "not how does one sit; how does one succeed? How does one get to that state of one-pointedness, samadhi, stillness, rapture, unbroken focus...?"

"Oh, that," he said. "I don't know that." I thought he was joking, a real effort to make an American-style joke, and I didn't know why he wasn't telling me. He knew I was sincere. He knew I had been striving all month long. Then I applied more pressure than probably anyone would ever dare to apply.

I wasn't leaving without an answer: "What do you mean you don't know? Who better than you? If you don't know, who could possibly know?"

Then he stunned me, as he often did with the directness of his insight and his willingness to share his knowledge with me? "I don't know because I do not read minds. People come to me. I give them the instructions. And some of them come tell me what is happening, and I guide them from there."

You asked him what?! Did he throw you out?

"But WHY do some of them have something start happening since not everyone does?"

"That I do not know. I just know they do. And when they do, I can help them, guide them to go deeper. But how they get to it in the first place, that I do not know." [These aren't exact quotes, just the gist of the conversation, which only lasted a few desperate minutes as I pushed and pushed.]

As he said this, I realized I had asked him this before, after sitting with him in Asia at his massive monastery, where it seemed everyone was succeeding and attaining. I asked him and pushed him a little on the matter with someone sitting by me to catch what I might be missing, two Americans sincerely wanting to experience what Buddhist texts write about, what the Buddha taught, what sutras say happens.

At that time he looked at us and perceiving our sincerity said one strange word, his guess as to what it was distilled down to ONE thing as if it could ever be just one thing distinguishing success from just sitting. That word was parami. She smiled next to me, but I grimaced, perplexed. "'Parami?' The Sanskrit word paramita?"

"Yes," he answered, but he was actually talking about the Pali (and therefore Theravada Buddhist) form of the word parami. In either case, it means "perfection," but the Sanskrit is a diluted Mahayana term of six factors, whereas the historical Buddha always taught TEN intentional actions (deeds, karma).

My teacher clarified. What he imagined (from what he heard from many of his successful students reporting to him) was that they remembered doing skillful deeds in the past, and he concluded that those past skillful deeds were coming to fruition as they sat. And that's why some succeeded and not others.

What kinds of questions are these? You are silly.

(What I was really getting at was, WHAT ACTIONS CAN SOMEONE DO NOW OR WHILE ONE IS SITTING IN MEDITATION, ANXIOUS FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN, TO MAKE IT HAPPEN?)

That he didn't know, so I had to undertake a lifelong journey of trying to figure it out. Of course, it will have something to do with the Factors of Absorption (jhananga, "limbs of jhana"). Leigh Brasington figured this much out, having had the insight that happiness is the way:

Right Concentration: Practical Guide to the Jhanas

Brasington teaches a technique of focusing on one of these factors, happiness (piti, joy, pleasure, rapture, bliss) as it arises in the body in serenity meditation. By focusing on it, it increases based on the principle that, "Where attention goes, energy flows." This is true enough, but how does one get the initial happiness/bliss to pay attention to and make increase?

Now it makes sense that what I had always been looking for was a carrot or apple in front of the horse (mule, donkey, jackass). I could only neigh in realizing it: THE GOAL is not this happiness because THIS HAPPINESS is the way to relaxing, letting go, unstriving, surrendering, unclutching, dropping hangups, persisting without grasping or clinging, shikantaza ("just sitting"), not setting up a goal and striving for it. Why? It's because those blissful states of meditation and their attendant stillness, mindfulness, and progress towards insight are NATURAL. They arise. We don't "do" them. We can't do them. We don't know how and do not have that power.

But if we relax and just watch with vigilance, stillness, steadiness, persistence, we are cultivating the Factors of Absorption and other factors of the 37 Requisites of Enlightenment, which are categorized into seven groupings.

• One is reminded of a very important thing the Buddha once explained to someone. When talking about the Bodhisatta, himself at the stage of still being a seeker of enlightenment, he once realized that he could neither strive too hard or be negligent. Doing either, he sank as if in a great ocean (samsara), but not striving and not being negligent, he made progress. What could this mean either than the Middle Way of avoiding extremes, of persisting but not pushing, of cultivating but not disturbing the peace or giving in to apathy, listlessness, or despair?
• Thai Forest Tradition arahant Ajahn Maha Boowa seems to be suggesting the same thing here (translated by the American intellect Ven. Thanissaro): "The tactics [techniques] given by each of the Buddhas to the world are called the Dhamma [Truth] of the doctrine. These aren't the genuine Dhamma. They're tactics [methods] — different offshoots — actions and modes displayed by the genuine Dhamma, means for letting go and striving, teaching us to let go, teaching us to strive using various methods, saying that the results will be like this or that. As for the genuine Dhamma of results in the principles of nature, that's something to be known exclusively in the heart of the person who practices. This Dhamma can't really be described correctly in line with its truth. We can only talk around it. And particularly with release [nirvana, liberation, freedom]: This can't be correctly described at all, because it's beyond all conventions and speculations. It can't be described. Even though we may know it with our full heart, we can't describe it. Like describing the flavor [of a soup using only words to someone who has yet to simply taste it]." From Things As They Are.

Smile, be happy. Don't overdo it; just let it be.

So happiness IS the way. Be happy. Right now. Choose it. It's a choice. Smile. After all, it's World Smile Day. Reflect, "Why is the Buddha ALWAYS smiling slightly?" There are no statues of him yelling or throwing things, losing his temper or his poise. Why? It's because once one uproots the defilements, there is nothing more tat can upset. One knows-and-sees directly.

Like that, Lisa, just like that. Hold it.

And to the extent that that knowing-and-seeing is the goal, one has reached it. Things have become clear, and nothing can any longer upset us. What was in the way, aside from the defilements (of which there are many subtle ones) and lack of parami-karma (ten skillful deeds performed with the ambition of nirvana being the result)? What is the direct path to bodhi (enlightenment, awakening, realization, liberating-insight)?

What is the way to bodhi? The Seven Factors of Enlightenment. What is the way to those factors? The preceding factors of the 37 Requisites of Enlightenment. How does one do any factor? It's probably a good idea to be happy. How does one even begin to dream to do that? Smile.