Oakville Zen Meditation
OUR MAIN AFFLICTION
The following is an adaptation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Dharma teaching.
Our main afflictions in this modern world are not suffering per se, or any kind of negative feelings.
Our main affliction is that we don’t know how to handle suffering, its causes, and consequences constructively to achieve equanimity.
So, what do we do instead?
We are trying to escape suffering, and its negativities that are affecting us by covering them up using
all kinds of behaviors, activities such as:
Overconsumption of all sorts i.e. getting more and more via spending, food, gaming, drugs, sex,
overworking, controlling, power, overachieving, even traveling all the time, etc…The list is endless.
Do they work?
In the short term yes they do because we are getting excited, distracted, and even happy.
In the long term not at all because these effects are, by definition, transient and superficial.
Therefore we need to repeat them over and over during our lives.
Don’t take me wrong:
There is nothing wrong in looking for pleasures, and distractions but this perpetual outside search for happiness, is, by itself, a source of unhappiness.
Besides, this ongoing quest will never deal effectively with the roots of our negativities.
Either we can fix them, or we cannot.
If you cannot, accept them, and let them go.
Things, events, and people are what they are, not what we want them to be.
Thanks. A
