Examine Your Happiness (extract)
"The bliss of concentration is an acquired taste. It’s a specific kind of happiness, which the Thais call santi-sukha,
which literally means the happiness of peace. This is a basic level of
well-being that we tend to overlook because it carries no excitement, no
thrills. It’s just a basic sense of ease that’s steady, like the flame
of an oil lamp. For most of us, we notice pleasure and pain because of
the back-and-forth, the ups and the downs. When things are steady and on
an even keel, we tend to lose interest and not notice them. But that’s
precisely the kind of well-being we’re working on here: the kind of
happiness that’s steady, that doesn’t go up and down. We have to learn
how to appreciate that. As we stick with it more and more, we begin to
realize that we wouldn’t want to be without this kind of happiness,
without this kind of well-being.
But then the next question is, is it really steady?
As
you examine it, you find that it, too, involves a certain level of
feeding. You’re feeding off of the breath, the ease you can create with
the breath. You’re also feeding off of the steadiness of the intentions
that keep you here. But over time, you get more and more sensitive to
the fact that even the steadiness of concentration is not totally
steady. It involves a very subtle kind of movement, back and forth —
sometimes more intense, sometimes less, but there’s always a slight
inconstancy to it. You want to get sensitive to that, because that’s
what motivates you to look for something better.
But in the
beginning of your concentration practice, you want to focus on the
steadiness. That’s what motivates you to get into the concentration to
begin with and to try to stay there."
~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Examine Your Happiness" (Meditations8)
Comments
Post a Comment