‘Rooted in desire, friends, are all things. Born of attention are all things. Arising on contact are all things. Converging on feelings are all things. Headed by concentration are all things. Dominated by mindfulness are all things. Surmounted by wisdom are all things. Yielding deliverance as essence are all things. Terminating in Nibbana are all things.’
In the Mula sutta, a beautiful teaching of the Buddha, a pathway is described from the agitation of desire to the peacefulness of letting go. We will take this rich teaching as a basis for exploring how the establishment of mindfulness and clarity shifts the dynamic of our experience from stress to spaciousness and release.
In the radical truth the Buddha illuminated, every experience has inherent within it freedom from stress, when enough skillfulness is established. This fact gives our hearts the confidence to meet with compassion whatever is arising so we can know this for ourselves. There is nothing we have to contend with, rather the path is to recognize that everything is of the same nature, and to experience the relief of knowing, ‘It’s like this.’ |