How to finally let go of painful memories

(Lotus Dharma Path) As we get older, how to let go of painful memories we've carried our whole life | Buddhism

(LDP) As we age, stay away from these 7 people, even close relatives

How to let go according to Buddhism

(Buddhism in English)

(Thich Nhat Hanh) Our minds are lying to us. Observe instead of believing

Why do we try to control everything?

Why we try to control everything – and why it never works – The Buddha's answer

(Buddhism Podcast) April 9, 2025: Buddhism Explained. This podcast explores a quiet habit that many of us carry — the habit of trying to CONTROL everything in life.

Through simple language and gentle reflection, we look at why the mind/heart holds on, how this creates tension and stress, and what begins to change when we stop forcing things.

With stories from the Buddha’s life and clear examples, this talk offers a calm and thoughtful way to understand clinging, change, and the freedom that comes from letting go.

• 00:00 - Intro
• 01:47 - Why we try to control life
• 06:50 - Why control always fails
• 11:55 - What happens when we let go
• 17:01 - The Buddha’s real answer

#buddhismpodcast #buddhistteachings #donotcontroleverything

What is the purpose of living?

I won $10,000,000 and have never been happier. Oh, wait, I would have burned it if I'd known

Life is short. What’s the purpose of living? | Buddhist Wisdom

(Buddhism Podcast) Buddhism Explained. Life is short — but what is it really for? This video looks into the quiet question many of us carry: Why are we here, and what gives life meaning? Using simple Buddhist wisdom, it shows how our constant chasing and avoiding can lead to deep restlessness. Instead of trying to fix life, we can learn to be fully present with it [to see it for what it really is and, seeing it, letting go and thereby being liberated from it]. The answer may not be something we find, but something we live.

• 00:00 - The question beneath all questions — Why ask at all?
• 04:03 - The Endless Cycle — chasing happiness, fleeing from sorrow
• 08:07 - The ripple of our actions — Why death isn’t an escape
• 14:40 - The Middle Path — walking through life, not around it
• 18:14 - The point is presence — Living the answer in this moment

#LifeIsShort #BuddhistWisdom #PurposeOfLiving

Does Buddhism approve of sex?

Does Buddhism approve of sex?

Ego (Buddhism podcast) Does Buddhism approve of sex? "This is an age in which sexual matters are discussed with great openness. There are many who are puzzled to know what the Buddhist attitude towards sex is. It is therefore to be hoped that the following guidelines may be found helpful towards an understanding. It is, of course, true to say that Buddhism, in keeping with the principle of the Middle Way, would advocate neither extreme puritanism nor extreme permissiveness. But this, as a guiding principle without further specification, may not seem sufficiently helpful for most people. In the first place, we must distinguish between the rules undertaken by Buddhist monks [and nuns] for their own conduct and any guiding principles for lay people.

• Ego (Buddhism podcast), Dec. 3, 2024 [with appropriated text uncredited to Maurice O'Connell Walshe from Buddhism and Sex, 2006 (Wheel 225, BPS.lk), as this channel often does with Ven. Thanissaro texts]; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Ajahn Chah - Struggles - Sexual Desire

(dhammatube) Feb. 12, 2008: Battles to overcome sexual desire. All videos of this series are available at: ajahnchah.org/videos.htm

How to stop sexual thoughts in the mind | Buddhist story on how to control lust

(Words of Wisdom) April 13, 2024: Buddha Life Stories. If we keep thinking about sex all the time then we can become victims of hypersexuality. Hypersexuality can make us addicted to pornography and masturbation. But if we want to overcome excess sexual thoughts in our mind then here is advice.

This Buddhist story of a Zen master and a young boy can teach us how to overcome sexual thoughts in the mind. These wise tips of the Buddha can help us rid our minds and bodies of sexual addiction and masturbation.

#sexuality #lust #overcomeaddiction #howtocontrolmind #desire #controlemotions #buddhastory Twitter: wordsofwisdom_5 WOW Instagram: wordsofwisdom.motivation. Personal Instagram: shaill03 Facebook: words-of-wisdom-quotes-stories-11062425731... Explore the podcast 86 episodes Buddha Life Stories Words of Wisdom

Why do humans keep dying? (Solution)

Why are you always smiling, Buddha?

"Why must we die?" This question is slightly misguided because "we" don't really die. The Complicated Game, the Samsaric Carousel goes on turning.

If we don't really die, what happens? The problem is in how we define "we." Who dies, what dies? This illusory sense of self separate from its causes and conditions that are the basis of the "self" (the Five Aggregates clung to as self).

How can we say they die if they go on beyond this life. (There is life after life, which is the whole problem, endless cycling through samsara. Why do we cycle? It is because we do not see Dependent Origination. If we do, when we, the problem resolves. In a sense, there never was a problem -- except that in a conventional sense, it was a giant problem. It's hard to give an example, parallel, or analogy, but it is possible that by giving one, a wise person may see the problem.)

First, can two seemingly contradictory things be true? Yes. Look: Is there absolute up and down? Yes, where gravity pulls hardest is "down," and where it doesn't is "up." And it matters. Keeping our orientation is important, even in a pool where the pull of gravity is lessened for our semi-floating bodies. But what about space (in the ether)?

I never asked to be born. - Did you want to stay
where you were? - No, that's not what I meant!

Suddenly, there is no absolute up or down; it doesn't matter. We just float and spin and can't right oursevles because there is no "right" only, maybe, a consensus agreement of this will be up and that will be down like when we're on earth. Now, here's the trick: Are they both true, or is only one true, or are neither true? We see that on earth, it's true. We see that deep in space, it's not true (there is no absolute up or down). How can they both be true, given that they're opposites? Here's the kicker: Where's earth? Earth is in space. So, in a sense, in space it is both true and not true that there is an absolute up and down.

• (The resolution is that it depends, as with most things in life). In the micro it matter, in the macro it doesn't, but they're not separate).

There are two dimensions within one reality (one with up and down, one without them) both at the same time. What we wear matters to others because of looks, except in the dark.

So imagine yourself in prison. It sucks. You don't want to be there. But further imagine that all the time you've been inside, the door to the outside has be "open" in the sense that it hasn't been locked. No one inside knows it's unlocked, so are you locked up or not?

Devas learned more than humans did.

Literally, technically, no. But conventionally, in every important sense, yes. You both are and are not at the same time. There's no confusion. You could explain and explain, but we on the outside already understand. We, unlike you all inside, can see that it's unlocked, so we don't understand the problem. But there is a problem, a big problem, and that is that you don't know. You live in an illusion, and because of it you never even test the door. You dream of getting out, but the easiest exit goes untested. (This is just an example. But isn't life this way?) There is an escape, there is a way out, there is a solution, but we on the inside don't know it.

And if someone who slipped out comes back in to tell us, "Hey, you'll never guess, there's a way out. Follow me, and I'll show you." Will people follow? No way. Only very few with faith in that person would even dream of suspending disbelief and investigating. It is exactly like The Allegory of the Cave by Plato.

It is exactly like the predicament of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni (a Scythian prince who let go, found a way out, came back to save everyone with that wisdom, and found out that "no good deed goes unpunished").

So here we at Wisdom Quarterly are doing the same thing, suffering the same punishment, wondering why we don't shut and just go find that door.

See, as in The Cave, so in the Illusory Prison of Life, there are pleasures here, safety in the familiar, a lack of recognition of what bad is coming our way -- old age, sickness, disappointments of all kinds, death, loss, separation, misery, and big troubles -- all that is going to happen if we stay here.

In The Cave, the beings cling to their chains and aren't going to have some "madman" unchain them and lead them out of the only world and safety and familiarity they've ever known. Though the Buddha comes by banging a pot in the street, announcing that there is a way out of this Illusory Prison of Life, do humans and devas run to him in joy? Or do they hide under their covers or beds, fearing that he is threatening to take away their good times, their petty pleasures and joys to exchange them for hardships and austerities?

Many completely misunderstand that he is offering slightly bitter medicine and stay suckling at the teat of sugary white goo, growing fat and further addicted.

So who will die, what will die?

It's all right to let go now.

We could say that the Five Aggregates clung to as self (form, feelings, perceptions, mental formation, and consciousness) will disintegrate and fall apart. But this can't be death because (a) they reform and (b) they are dying at every moment.

They are not "things" in the sense of compacts, but are "processes" in the sense of being nothing more than constituent parts. It's like thinking that a segment of hose water is ours.

• (Imagine an 11-foot green hose with a one-foot segment in the middle that is clear, and saying that clear portion we can see through, that water is ours. Is it? Sure, let's say we've been deeded it and have enforceable water rights with written documentation that it "belongs" to us. We own no other water, but that water is ours. What is ours? It's never ours really, except in the way an NFT belongs to someone: in name only. If we insist, like that NFT owner, that it is ours, okay, what is ours? That water we "own" is always moving. Do we own the H20 molecules? If so, which ones? The ones now, the ones now, the ones later, the ones that already passed? We don't control the spigot or anything else, but cling to the ones we can see passing right now as "ours.")

What is the water passing in this example? If we wanted to get symbolic, we could say it represents the moisture passing through this body we cling to. Do we cling to the urine the body makes and refuse to relinquish it? No, we understand it's a process and more water is coming. Do we cling to the remainder (poop) of the food we ate? No, not most of us. We gladly relinquish it and get as far away from it as possible.

As for all that is watery, what do we do? Thirst (tanha, the Buddha called it by analogy).

But before it prepares to pass, we cling to it, love it, fear losing "self" (in the sense of the first aggregate, form).

The Buddha has been trying to tell the world of humans and devas this since the first sermon, the Dhammacakkapavatana Sutta. Quick witted Anna Kondanna got it. We have been much slower.

All that is (re)born is born to die

(Lana Del Rey) "Born to Die" - "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." What all? The Five Aggregates clung to as self.

ANSWER

So in answer to the question, "Why must we die?" (or "Why do humans keep dying?") It is because what we call "we" (we humans and other kinds of beings like angelic devas) are actually compounds of constituent parts called khandha, the Five Aggregates clung to as self. This self is a composite, and each element, each component is ultimately impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal. It true nature, which is not apparent to us in normal mundane consciousness (but can be brought into consciousness by heightening our attention and purifying mind/heart of distractions, hindrances, and obstructions to vision). When we know and see its true nature, we see that things are not at all like they seem. What appears solid, stable, alluring and able to satisfy desires, and personal is actually many streams of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousnesses (all processes, not things). We keep dying from moment to moment, every moment, because like moving water, there is nothing stable or permanent about this process of changing elements, guided along by our karma (deeds) and their many faceted results. Knowing and seeing this firsthand, the heart turns away and we can easily let go of clinging. By letting go, no longer seeing any appeal in this dangerous game of clinging to the painful, the mind is freed. We awaken to the first stage of enlightenment called stream entry. (But it's of no use trying to tell this to anyone because the ego will not stand for it, will not listen, will not be convinced, will not accept. It is only by practice that knowledge and vision arise. Then knowing and seeing, there is no doubt, and letting go is as easy as falling down. Look, the prison is open. Look, all the forms, feelings...and all things clung to are not "self." Let go of what is not me or mine. Be set free.

• Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

Primordial love/sex drive (Helen Fisher)

There are many kinds of attachment (upadana). The pursuit and clinging to sensual pleasures is very strong (although the strongest is probably attachment to views). It can be as strong as thirst (tanha). It serves a function, not for us who suffer it so much as the species or genes that perpetuate themselves into the future. (See The Selfish Gene on the scientific view of the impersonal nature of biology).

Love (the affection for clinging) is a drive, sex (the affection for pleasure) is a drive, and they are very powerful. What hope is there to overcome or undo them should they start to spread all out of control like fire and ruin our lives, bringing waves of torment and suffering? Things are all well and good when they are working out, but when they are not?

When things sour, then what? These are not conscious processes we have very much insight on. We live on autopilot, and they "happen" to us. Maybe that's okay for most people. But for those who would be free and make an end of all suffering in this very life?

A drug that removes desire and craving?

Brian Resnick (@B_resnickbrian@vox.com), Vox.com, March 7, 2024; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Is Buddhism (or Jainism because this is Mahavira) about hallucinatory drugs? NO! Wake up.

.

WWJD? Smoke ganja between healings? No.

People say all "desire" (tanha) is bad in Buddhism. This is inaccurate. Desiring liberation, enlightenment, nirvana, or to be free of desire are desires. Who would knock those ambitions? Can Buddhism be explained in a single post to explain why desire is not all bad yet has a central role to pay in our liberation? Probably not but here's a try.

Brian Resnick introduces findings of a new scientific study that show why we crave and what can be done about it. Hint, it's has a lot to do with the neurotransmitter dopamine has a lot to do with it, and the class of drugs to which Ozempic belongs may be a cure (or for-profit "treatment") for addiction.

.

What's with Buddhism and desire (craving)?

Westerners are taught that the Buddha and, therefore, Buddhism oppose desire -- as if, just by wanting not to want we could get our wish. What's wrong with wanting?

As humans we rarely get what we want, and we often get what we don't want. So wanting can't be the key.

The reason for this teaching is that the Buddha discovered Dependent Origination in answer to his quest to answer the question, Why do we suffer?

He found that like all things, "suffering" (dukkha = disappointment, pain, woe, ill, distress, unsatisfactoriness) arises dependent on conditions and not without them.

Dependent Origination is that answer, 12 causal links: This leads to that; when this is, that comes to be; when that is not, that does not come to be. The suffering of this moment is based on causes and conditions rooted in the past.

As he reviewed each of these factors, the links of this causal chain, he asked a key question: How can this be put to an end so that it (suffering) doesn't arise again?

Its antecedents (things that came before) are rooted in the past, and its results come to fruition fortuitously when they meet with the opportunity in subsequent lives. He saw actions (karma) in past lives bearing fruit at a later time, sometimes much later, and in this present moment.

It is because there was this (karma in the past) that that (present results) came to be, and it is because of ignorance that that kind of action (unskillful karma) was produced. What kind? The kind that produces painful results.

Ignorance is the fundamental basis of attraction (craving and clinging, desire and attachment) and aversion (manifesting as hate or fear).

And these three -- attraction, aversion, and ignorance, lobha, dosa, and moha, popularly translated as "greed, hatred, and delusion" -- are the roots of ALL bad karma.

It's only called "bad," not as a moral judgment but because the Buddha -- and anyone who gains the power of knowing-and-seeing -- could see beings meeting the result of their previous and present actions. Edgar Cayce could see it, too. Any rishi can, and anyone who successfully strives can become a seer of such things, directly, independently, not based on anyone else.

One can see these things in this Doctrine and Discipline (Dhamma-Vinaya) because Buddhism is not a faith, and this is not a belief system but a verifiable practice.

In fact, if one does not practice it, one will not be able to know-and-see, to penetrate the Truth and be set free by it. The whole point of Buddhism is the gaining of enlightenment (bodhi, spiritual awakening) and reaching the safety of nirvana (amata, nirodha, moksha, nibbana -- the deathless state, cessation, liberation, complete freedom from all substrates of rebirth and suffering of every kind).

We are here on this side, beset by darkness (ignorance) and in great danger (of old age, sickness, death, desire/thirst/craving, not getting what we want, and getting what we don't want, losing what we love, and being paired with what we hate), to use a simile, and we can see across the water a further shore.

That shore is free of these things, free of danger. But we are here, on this dangerous side, so how do we get to that side?

A Buddha (a supremely enlightened teacher capable of teaching the path to that enlightenment) comes into being, makes known the Teaching (Dhamma/Dharma), establishes the practice and a community of practitioners (Sangha). These are the Three Jewels.

One hears the Dharma from the Buddha or a member of the Sangha who heard it from the Buddha, applies what is heard (puts it into practice rather than making a theory, faith, or belief of it), and comes to know-and-see for oneself.

This knowledge and vision has to do with the true nature of reality. One can be told it, and it can be grasped conceptually, but it won't do much good. What's worse, it may just lead to a lot of thinking or believing, debating and conceptualizing, rationalizing and endless questioning.

At some point the questions have to stop, and with confidence that this path holds promise and is verifiable, the practice of it has to start. There's no other way.

The wandering ascetic Siddhartha was not sitting under a bodhi tree when a bo fruit (tiny fig) fell, hit him on the head, and he instantly became Newton. How then did it happen?

He tried many things, in this life and in many previous lives. And, as in the past, he practiced the absorptions or levels of samadhi (stillness), which temporarily purified the mind, and he attained bliss then peace, but he realized that this was not it, not the highest, not liberation (moksha), not enlightenment, not nirvana (the ultimate).

So he practiced something more that we call vipassana or "insight meditation" on top of that stillness. He practiced the systematic pondering of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (body, feelings, mind, and mental phenomena), still asking the question, "Why is there suffering?"

He then realized suffering (and everything else, too) was dependently-originated, that is, it was born of causes and conditions. "What were they?" he asked. And he saw that this present suffering depended on, for example, having been born. Why was he born? The karma of the past? Why was there karma in the past? And so on... CONTINUED ON FOLLOWING POST

Is Ozempic an anti-desire drug? Scientists are realizing GLP-1 drugs have the potential to turn down cravings — for more than just food

We look at what we like, fixate on what will stimulate dopamine and/or serotonins, slaves to pleasure, bug-eyed for sugar, fat, and starch (Tim Lahan/Vox).

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Brian Resnick is Vox’s science and health editor and is the co-creator of Unexplainable, Vox's podcast about unanswered questions in science. Previously, Resnick was a reporter at Vox and at National Journal.

Dr. Marco Leyton, Ph.D., assures me the cocaine he purchased was legal. [Likely story, but the Coca Cola company has the legal right, granted by the US government, to see cocaine from processed coca leaves it imports into the US because coke used to be an actual addictive ingredient of Coca-Cola.]

Plus, it wasn’t for him, definitely not. It was for recreational cocaine users who had answered Dr. Leyton’s ad in a local newspaper to do drugs and collect 500 Canadian dollars — risking their nasal passages for science.

Dr. Leyton had jumped through many hoops to get to this point — getting an okay from the Canadian equivalent of the FDA, exempting him from criminal prosecution, and clearing his own university’s ethics approval.

“I wasn’t asking people to bring in their own [illegal] cocaine,” Dr. Leyton, an addiction neurobiologist at McGill University in Canada, tells me. Now that could be unethical. It was all in pursuit of one of the deepest questions that haunts us as individuals:

“Why do we really care about some things and not too much about others?” as Dr. Leyton says.

Really: Why do we want what we want? With the drugs in hand, Dr. Leyton ran a small study for some insight [and valuable medical knowledge].

It involved just eight participants, but it’s noteworthy because it’s a relatively rare human experiment in a field that more commonly tests rodents (which have found similar results as the human studies).

Plus, it’s just wild. I have never read these words in an academic journal before: Participants “were presented with cocaine paraphernalia consisting of a mirror, a razor, [a credit card,] a straw, and a bag with 3.0 mg/kg of cocaine hydrochloride.”

The study took place over four days. And while the cocaine is the eyebrow-raising component of the study, a special protein shake was the actual key.

On any given day, half the participants were randomly assigned to ingest a shake that was missing a key ingredient called phenylalanine, an important amino acid that helps our body manufacture the neurotransmitter dopamine. That’s the chemical released when our brain is expecting, or sometimes demanding, a reward, like a sweet treat or, as here, cocaine.

So if one is like these study participants, fasting before this experiment, and were then only given a food source without phenylalanine, our body chemistry would subtly change.

Dr. Leyton thought the participants who consumed this weird breakfast would have less dopamine available in their brains. After their shake, the participants were then invited to do blow [sugar, snot rocket, Columbian dandruff, the Devil's ashes].

Or as the study plainly states, the participants “used the razor to divide the powder into three equal lines.”

“TOO MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN PUT IN AN UNFAIR BATTLE AGAINST THEIR WANTS. THEY’VE BEEN TOLD TO SOMEHOW EXERT WILLPOWER OVER A SYSTEM THEY HAVE LITTLE CONSCIOUS AWARENESS OF AND CONTROL OVER.”

They snorted it. But remarkably, on the phenylalanine-free shake days, Dr. Leyton says, “they decreased their craving for cocaine.”

They said they were less interested in snorting it. But it was more than that: The special shake “decreased the ability of the cocaine itself to produce more desire for the drug,” he says.

And strangely, “it had no effect on the drug-induced euphoria,” Dr. Leyton claims. In other words, they still liked cocaine. They just didn’t want it as much.

While talking to Dr. Leyton about his cocaine study, I wondered, Why isn’t the phenylalanine-free shake The Answer to addiction, to overeating, to similar problems of compulsive consumption?

Well, for one thing, because it’s impractical. Phenylalanine is in just about all protein food sources. So unless someone wants to solely eat specially lab-generated shakes their whole lives, that’s not going to work. More

How I knew this relationship was over

Joy Canoy, May 28, 2023; Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Unfortunately, the quest to find our one true love, often referred to simply as “The One,” is a universal aspiration shared by everyone.

It is, however, disheartening to acknowledge that simply desiring this connection does not guarantee its attainment, as many individuals have learned through great personal experiences of suffering and turmoil.

Time and time again, hopeful romantics invest their utmost efforts into relationships, only to witness them crumble. Similarly, there are unfortunate individuals who gradually come to the realization that their relationship is not progressing in the most favorable direction, to put it mildly.

Here we find anecdotes shared by individuals recounting the extraordinary moments that led them to understand that their partners were not “The One.”

• Relationships aren’t meant to make us feel whole | Elephant Journal | Mindful Love, Loss, Lust | Medium
• Why are guys so sweet in the beginning, and as the relationship progresses, they are not as sweet anymore? How do I change this? | Quora
• Why did you stop putting effort into your relationship? : r/AskMen (reddit.com)
• Harvard psychologist: If you use any of these 9 phrases, ‘your relationship is more successful' than most (cnbc.com)
• Finland psychologist, happiness researcher: Phrases we use every day (cnbc.com)

• Nothing Higher to Live For: A Buddhist View of Romantic Love
• manifestinglifedaily.com
• The Lost Ways (lost-ways.net)
• Maybe I should fix my diet so my stomach will stop hurting: GundryMD (thehealthiestfat.com)
• For some it's a pain in the neck, for others the back; for me, I have a lower opinion of it (iron-neck.com)
• 10 boys vs 10 girls were left unsupervised in a house for 5 days and the results were wildly different

"Greed" is bad? Yes, very bad (cartoon)

Do you approve of greed? - No, not at all.
"The love of money is the root of all evil."

"Greed is good," we read Wisdom Quarterly say. How could this publication possibly defend "greed" of all things?

• "Greed is good"? Yes

That's what the lengthy explanation was for. Is greed good or bad? Actually, it depends how one defines "greed/" Sure, in English it's bad. That's why early British translators of Buddhist sutras into English chose it.

The Buddhist term lobha is meant to connote the bad parts of craving, grasping, greediness, selfishness, possessiveness, clinginess, avarice, stinginess, the unwillingness to share, to help, to care for others. Of course, that's bad.

The enlightened self-interest to plant seeds of good that will only serve us later (unless the mental karma bears its results much sooner, that feeling of contentment, health, generosity, and the Four Divine Abidings or Brahmaviharas).

That is to say, giving, sharing, and sacrificing for others is SO good that, later, one will regret not doing it when one had a chance. Give. Help. Comfort others. We certainly will wish for comfort and kindness. Will we have set out the causes and conditions to receive it? This world is ruled by karma, the ability of deeds to give rise to a later result on a moral plane.

It is wholly wrong to think that someone is going to thank us, that a hungry dog is not going to bite the hand that attempts to feed it. "No good deed goes unpunished." But that is NOT karma. Karma is the fruiting, the ripening of a deed. That act has not yet ripened. So it may be that we have a dog bite, but it is not at all true that we have exhausted our well-intentioned act to provide a canine with sustenance when it was hungry.

King, let go as I let go. It's good.

If we learn nothing else about giving and power of giving, we should know a famous quote the Buddha uttered concerning nongreed (alobha).

“If one knew what I know about the power of giving, one would not let a single meal pass without sharing” – the Buddha (Iti. 1.26)

• Family Dharma: The Joy of Generosity (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)

So greed (a self-centered unwillingness to give) is bad.

What? Why? "You just said greed was good."

To be exact, Gordon Gekko said it was good. We just found a way in which that statement is self-evidently true. It's semantics. Is greed good? Well, it's good in a common way of speaking, using the meaning of the word "good" in the sense of meaning "what will work." 

• Will greed work? Will it make someone rich? It could in the short run. What the Buddha was talking about, what we are talking about, is the long run, the full course of the karma (action) playing out. Steal out of greed. What that act of stealing comes to fruition, will it be looked back on as having been a good deed? No way. The act of stealing is incapable of yielding (karmically resulting in) a welcome, pleasing, pleasant, wished for result. But what happens immediately (like being in possession of what was stolen) may indeed feel pleasant and may alleviate the painful desire when one did not have it. That good feeling is NOT the karmic result (vipaka or  phala) of stealing. What is? Deprivation, neediness, wanting, poverty, and so on -- the very things one did not want, was trying to avoid, wished to be rid of. IF one knew the results of bad karma, one would not do it. The results are too painful, too exponential (one single deed bearing many unwelcome results). One would do good deeds because of the pleasant results, which are also exponential. One act of giving leads to receiving many times over. It's a kind of thing of which one might say, "It's not fair. It's not right. It's not just." We know neither what we did in the past (in countless past lives) nor what others did in the past, so how could we begin to judge either ourselves or others or what's fair and what's not? We judge in utter ignorance, full of wrong view (miccha ditthi), and we become confused and confuse others. A Buddha emerges from the world, explains things, and we fail to learn that Teaching that would guide us to the good and be of such benefit. We needn't give up our favorite religion or cultural attachment to learn or practice the Dharma. But, indeed, this Dharma, this Teaching, this Path runs against the stream, counter to our customs. If we were already living in the right way to eventually make us happy and fulfilled, what need would there have been for a Buddha to teach anything? It would be superfluous. But exactly because we have been living for a long time in the wrong way, in a way that yields suffering after suffering (disappointment after disappointment, dukkha in all its forms), the Buddha had something to say, something vital, something of use to the many blind beings with no idea what reality is.

How is greed good? Let's say you're going out tonight because you want to meet someone, and you ask me, "Is this cologne good?" (It stinks! And you smell like a horny skunk!) So, yeah, it's good -- inasmuch as it will get you the attention you seek in the Meat Market you'll be visiting, where everyone's drinking and carousing, being deafened and blinded by drums and lights from a disco ball.

Greed is bad (avarice leads to ruin), which should be obvious but obviously isn't because we need an enlightened world teacher to tell us, "Hey, watch out for this motivation." Greed, in English, means going too far. "How much is enough?" Charlie Sheen asks the Gordon Gekko character. Gordon came up from the streets, so it's not a matter of enough. It's a matter of winning, of taking it all.

And that's the thing with money and sensuality and worldly things, "One thing is too much, and all of it is not enough." Alcohol, for example. One drink is too much, yet all the drinks is still not enough. Stealing one dollar is too much, yet stealing all the dollars would not be enough." That wouldn't fill the void, fulfill us, satisfy us, satiate us, bring us contentment. The same with coke, heroin, sex partners, cars, real estate, gold bars, flesh, fame, glory, and on and on.

What could possibly fill the void?

 

Sir, no cash is allowed in the safe deposit boxes.

But, wait, that's not all. That's not what's wrong with greed. There's something much worse. Not only will it never lead to satisfaction or contentment (whereas internal letting go would), it is going to lead to a lot of troubles.

The Sigala Sutta lists some of them, but karma (what goes around comes around, justice, getting back from the world what we give to others, crime and punishment, cause and effects, law of attraction, calling into our experience what we put other through, and so on) can be thought of as the results of our deed or deeds. Even one deed has many results. Many deeds have an exponential number of results.

Out of greed, I screw over my business partner. Not satisfied with my portion of the profits, I take that person's portion, too. That's greed, right? That's what the English term means. So so far we've been talking about the result of just going after and getting our portion, but now we see what greed is really like. Greed is bad because I can't get enough, and I start to steal more. Does stealing more get me what I want? No. Not good. Now, instead of a fat pension, a golden parachute, a mansion, and a gorgeous arm charm, I'm facing charges, fines, lawyer's bills, and ignominy. Greed has ruined everything. Far from getting me what I wanted, it got me exactly what I didn't want, what I tried so hard to avoid. How could it be? I thought Greed was my friend! Some friend. The Sigala Sutta could have taught us about bad friends and good ones.

Greed leads to ruin, to constant dissatisfaction, to a feeling of poverty and want even when we have plenty. American capitalism is like that.

Killing Osage Indians for cash

There's a better way English writers call "enlightened self-interest." That means creating win-win situations wherever we go. I take from a business, but I make sure that business keeps going, keeps producing, keeps making everyone rich. I keep them healthy to keep myself healthy. I make them healthy to make myself healthy. I, rather than only thinking of myself in a selfish and self-absorbed way, think of others as a means of preserving myself. That means that wherever I go, everyone is happy to see me, happy with me, praising my actions, and profiting me over the long term. Doesn't that sound much better than being greedy, being selfish, being all about Number One? Of course. It's probably harder to do, so people do the easy and come to ruin. Not all greedy people succeed, so greed is not good. Greed is bad. Greed is bad because even when it works (in getting us what we wanted), it screws us in also getting us exactly what we didn't want.

The Buddha pointed this out in terms of karma (actions that have the ability to produce their results much later), saying that because of stinginess one will fail to give, and by failing to give, one will not receive. One wants to receive. That's what we want. But it will not happen because we didn't give. We didn't have enlightened self-interest to think of the future beyond what we could see.

The very person who failed to protect others will not be protected, who deprived others will be deprived...will get what comes around. Is that what you wanted? Is that what you called "good"? No, no way. It's the exact opposite of what we wanted. It's unenlightened. It's ignorant. It's hateful and based on fear. Why? Because it's greedy, and greed is that way. Greed, ultimately, is bad. It gets us what we want at the moment, sure, but it gets us a bunch of trouble we never wanted.

Montaigne's French philosophy

The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (via Wiki) had something to say about it. Of greed he thought that

• "It is not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice."
• "All moneyed men I conclude to be covetous," and that:
• 'Tis the greatest folly imaginable to expect that Fortune [Fortuna or Lady Luck] should ever sufficiently arm us against herself;
• 'Tis with our own arms that we are to fight her;
• Accidental ones will betray us in the pinch of the business.
• If I lay up, 'tis for some near and contemplated purpose; not to purchase lands, of which I have no need, but to purchase pleasure:
• "Non esse cupidum, pecunia est; non esse emacem, vertigal est."
• [That is, "Not to be covetous is money; not to be acquisitive is revenue." — Cicero, Paradox, vi. 3.]
• "I neither am in any great apprehension of wanting, nor in desire of any more:
• "Divinarum fructus est in copia; copiam declarat satietas."
• [That is, "The fruit of riches is in abundance; satiety declares abundance." — Idem, ibid., vi. 2.]
• "And I am very well pleased that this reformation in me has fallen out in an age naturally inclined to avarice, and that I see myself cleared of a folly so common to old men, and the most ridiculous of all human follies" [40].
• Seth MacFarlane. American Dad, "Saga of the Golden Turd"; Pink Floyd; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Is it good to have a great meditation?

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

It was so unexpected. I didn't do anything.

Is it good to have a great meditation? No, it is great to have one.

A good session makes it all worthwhile as things are not only progressing, but they seem like they're progressing, too. Progress may always be being made, but it sure doesn't feel like it.

O, I see, attention: Just breathe while noticing.

Of course, there is potentially one bad thing about it, and it's not to do with the meditation itself.

If meditation is about letting go, completely letting go, let it be. But we know we have neither let go nor let it be if we ATTACH (cling) to the pleasant experience of:

• bliss (piti and sukha),
• light (aloka),
• sense of progress,
• calm (samatha),
• connection,
• effortlessness,
• freedom (vimutti),
• contentment (santutthitā),
• oneness/nonduality (advaita),
• unbroken mindfulness (sati), or
• stillness (samadhi).

Relax. Let go. We have been swimming upstream for a long time. "Abraham" (through channel Esther Hicks) assures us that everything we want is downstream. Let go. Go with the flow, which will go the way of the Tao (Taoist word for the Way, the path of least resistance).

So a great meditation can't be bad. But craving (tanha), grasping and clinging (upadana) can't be good; it will lead to tremendous suffering. And by setting up expectations about what it "should" be is likely to derail our practice altogether. If we have gotten up and are no longer returning to the mat, to the practice, that is defeat. Why have we stopped. Experience was not meeting our expectations.

Drop, abandon, release expectations and just be. Sit. Breathe. Let go. Let it be.

Just when we thought we were saying something new, suddenly we remember the startling advice of Western Buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho (formerly Robert Karr Jackman). Craving is unskillful (leads to suffering).

Let go of what? Three things

Zen Master Doggone thinks he's
going to muscle it to enlightenment.

But people neglect to realize there are THREE KINDS OF CRAVING.

• First, there's commonplace sensual craving (five sense strand pleasure).
• Second, there's the desire to become something (arhat, saint, enlightened, free, mindful, knowledgeable, a seer, etc.)
• Third, there's the craving to get rid of something (suffering, sadness, absentmindedness, craving, ignorance, spiritual blindness, bad habits, etc.) It's all a manifestation of misery-making greed (lobha), cupidity, affection, subtle clinging.

To "let go" is to let it be. Whatever it is, we just observe it dispassionately. There's little sense in establishing a goal, objective, marker. Doing so only sets us up for frustration. The way there is to let go. It does not come from wanting and squirming.