We all participate in this generated ‘me’ experience, which is of being ‘in here’ afflicted by the world ‘out there’. But we can come to understand this scenario as conditions with causes and effects. We can cultivate the basis for contentment, for love, tolerance, acceptance, gladness. There is a Path.

With mindfulness of breathing, subtle beneficial signs are picked up and suffused into the body. We can relinquish the signs we’ve picked up from the concrete jungle, the fear, the dread, the lack of heartfulness; we can purify the internal environment. Refer to what’s beautiful, uplifting, noble and generous. With mindfulness of breathing you’re taking in these messages.

There is the nutriment for ignorance and the nutriment for true knowledge and liberation. Both are dependently arising on other factors. What arises, whether skillful or unskillful, is based on how one places attention, moderates attitudes, and relinquishes self-view. This is a transpersonal process – keep filtering experience in these transpersonal terms.

With careful attention we pick up those qualities within experience that are most supportive for liberation. It means we notice how things affect us and the results that follow. Mindfulness of body gives you something to rest in as you breathe through the rocky areas of heart and mind. Citta comes out of its restricted state and there’s a widening, stepping back, letting go.

The process of cultivation is a pleasant one of cleaning away the dross and delusions that cause us suffering and stress. Drop by drop the bucket fills up with skillful actions and overflows into something more deep, steady, reliable. Be a stable presence rather than search for it, ‘out there’ – gradually the chaos will begin to still. There’s a process there, and the result is purification.

The cultivation of wisdom is not just a matter of intellectually knowing something, it’s a practice of handling, and staying in touch with what’s felt. Steadying citta so it can come out of its fixed gripped state, there’s a turning towards dispassion and right response. Stay in touch with the process, do the process and see where it goes – that’s how you learn.

Of all the things to be sensitive about, the most urgent and important, is to know how you’re activated and to calm the citta saṇkhāra. We get morphed by what we plug into, so unplug and let go of the unskillful, and plug into what’s necessary for calming and steadying. It takes time for citta to get it. Keep making an effort with friendliness, aligning everything in our lives to support this present awareness.