Pain Is Inevitable, Suffering Is Not.

We Usually Do Not Look Into What Is Really There In Front Of Us. We See Life Through A Screen Of Thoughts And Concepts, And We Mistake Those Mental Objects For Reality. We Get So Caught Up In This Endless Thought-stream That Reality Flows By Unnoticed. We Spend Our Time Engrossed In Activity, Caught Up In An Eternal Flight From Pain And Unpleasantness. We Spend Our Energies Trying To Make Ourselves Feel Better, Trying To Bury Our Fears. We Are Endlessly Seeking Security. Meanwhile, The World Of Real Experience Flows By Untouched And Untasted.

Meditation Changes Your Character.

Somewhere In This Process You Will Come Face-to-face With The Sudden And Shocking Realization That You Are Completely Crazy. Your Mind Is A Shrieking Gibbering Madhouse On Wheels Barreling Pell-mell Down The Hill Utterly Out Of Control And Hopeless. No Problem. You Are Not Crazier Than You Were Yesterday. It Has Always Been This Way And You Just Never Noticed. You Are Also No Crazier Than Everybody Else Around You. The Only Real Difference Is That You Have Confronted The Situation They Have Not.

But Look Within And Watch The Stuff Coming Up-restlessness, Anxiety, Impatience, Pain-just Watch It Come Up And Don't Get Involved. Much To Your Surprise, It Will Simply Go Away. It Rises, It Passes Away. As Simple As That. There Is Another Word For Self-discipline. It Is Patience.

The Present Moment Is Changing So Fast That We Often Do Not Notice Its Existence At All. Every Moment Of Mind Is Like A Series Of Pictures Passing Through A Projector. Some Of The Pictures Come From Sense Impressions. Others Come From Memories Of Past Experiences Or From Fantasies Of The Future.