We were all born with the capacity to be aware – this is the reflective mind. It has to be cultivated or it becomes distorted. Mindfulness of body and breathing helps slow the mind down so it can reflect, recognize that experience is conditioned, arising dependent upon circumstance. When mind awakens to the way things actually are, one touches the deathless.
Thought is an abstraction – we step back from experience and form an idea, opinion, judgment. This Path steers away from thought, and inclines towards direct, felt experienced. Enter experience and work from within the doubt, confusion, aggression with a clear, pure Buddha mind, not the thinking mind. With this unification of mind there is the end of suffering.
The phrase “the way it is” offers a snapshot of the changing experience of the mind as it considers basic questions of existence. Meditation offers a way to be with body feelings and reveals the steady and tranquil energy there. Meditation also reveals the compelling and default practice of the mind that is always identifying a “self” which creates anxiety, nervousness, trying too hard and judgements. Seeing this default mind process we see the Buddha’s concept of “suffering” and this leads in turn to comfort and confidence with understanding the statement “the way it is”. We can recall the Buddha said that nibanna is in fact realizable here and now, in this life.
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