Key insights
The most important insight of mindfulness is that the main source of human suffering is a distorted view of reality, which stems from something not "clean" in the lenses through which we view the world.
Mindfulness allows us to notice how our mind (thinking) deceives us. To notice the “stories in our head” – that we tell ourselves – that are not true – and that create the suffering we experience. Mindfulness trains our consciousness to change frequency, and move from distorted compulsive thinking, to clear, quiet and realistic observation.
What is important to understand here is that the disruptions in our perception of reality are not just the result of mistakes. This is not just about errors about the facts of life. This is not just about mistaken thinking. This is not just about incorrect understanding. CBT deals with all of these in an attempt to correct our thought processes. And this is necessary and helpful, but not sufficient.
But mindfulness goes beyond thinking errors, towards "delusion." Towards illusory vision. Towards a view of life that is colored by our conditioning: lust, greed, fears, hatreds, addictions, and various identifications that lead us to seek our identity and value in places where they could not found.
The correction for this distorted vision cannot be found only through the correction of specific thoughts, but mainly through extinguishing the "fire" of excessively strong desires, lusts, and hatreds that create the disruptions within our perception of reality.
"We cannot solve problems using the same level of thinking we used when we created them." (Einstein)
Human life is full of emotional difficulties: illness, separation from loved ones, old age, poverty, violence, wars, loneliness, and so on. We have very little control over what life throws at us. But we have a lot of control over how we meet what life throws at us. Most human suffering is created – not by what happens to us – but by how we respond to what happens to our lives.
Much of the suffering within us stems from the clinging some of us have to desires that we see as necessary for our satisfaction, as something we cannot live without. We insist that reality be different and distinct from what it is. This also includes insisting that we ourselves be different from what we are, that we look better, that we be healthier, more talented, more successful. Without being able to internalize and accept the reality of our lives and be happy with what we have.
Buddhist mindfulness does not have the character of beliefs and opinions that we are called to adopt – it is not a religion – but rather a method of consciousness training. Training that has the ability to transform our worldview.
In Buddhist wisdom, we are not satisfied with a suggestion for dealing with anxiety or depression or any other psychological difficulty. Rather, we aim for a complete and final solution to any type of emotional difficulty. The view is that all of us – even the healthiest in our souls – have an existential problem that requires treatment/practice.
Dukkha (unsatisfaction) is a fundamental and universal existential problem, because the human mind has a general basic tendency not to be satisfied with what we have and to focus on the “half-empty glass”. We tend to repress emotional pain, try not to think about challenging aspects of life, learn all kinds of strategies of numbing and distraction, but this is not an effective solution. There will always come a time when these strategies will not work for us – even if we are doing well now – the dukkha will someday increase – due to losses in our lives/aging/illness/and approaching death.
The Buddhist option of existing without arguing with life/without resistance, with a complete cessation of excessive desires, anger, hatred, arrogance and other unwholesome tendencies – seems completely unreasonable to us. But this is exactly what the practice of meditation allows: weakening attachment, stopping the feeding of desires, and creating silence/clarity and peace with joy and pleasure that do not depend on objects. Satisfaction with simple existence – with the fact that we are alive.
The most important practice is meditation. Meditation contributes greatly to calming ourselves down, but that is not the goal of meditation. The goal is to stabilize the mind, in a way that will allow us to see the reality of our lives clearly. Because when we look at reality in our normal state of consciousness – we see the world through a vail of our desires/passions/hatreds and anxieties. And this is not clear-sightedness.
The main cause of human suffering
The most important insight, in my opinion, is that disruptions in our perception of reality are the main cause of human suffering.
What determines and is important in our life experience is not so much what we have/what we have managed to achieve/accumulate, and how much we have become rich, but rather whether a beneficial way of observing has developed within us that produces beauty, joy, love, and gratitude, or whether our mind goes wild and creates hell for us.
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Suffering is created mainly due to an illusion/misperception/incorrect view of reality, such as when we think we have a choice/influence over reality, in ways that are actually not in our hands.
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Suffering is not caused primarily by the circumstances of our lives but by our clinging to things : by desires that are excessively strong, and by resistance to what life brings to our development.
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Lack of understanding/incorrect view of what makes us valuable . It is important that we know and remember this all the time: We are not just body and soul. Not just flesh and blood with a certain personality and given behavior patterns. We are much more than that. There is a mysterious dimension within us that produces in us all the experiences of beauty/love/and understanding that we experience. Including the ability to connect to everything that is sublime. And how can we name the value of this dimension?
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And we have a lack of understanding/incorrect view of what is required of us – what we need to have in our lives – in order for us to be good. The culture we live in – brainwashes us about how important it is to be beautiful/rich/successful – and that only then will we become valuable and happy, and that the path to happiness passes through material abundance and achievements, which are both a condition for the joy of life, and also evidence of our worth and value.
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Wherever we encounter a suffering person, we find a person who attacks himself and empties himself of value , or we find a person who argues with life/reality, demanding that they be different than they are.
What's the secret?
The secret lies in correctly understanding the sources of our suffering and its elimination, and by extinguishing the overpowering desires that come with a desperate addiction to what we think will save us. And instead, lovingly accepting what is: wonder and miracle, by connecting to the silence within us.
It is very important for us to know the source of our pain, to be in its company – to observe it / and know it. Only in this way does the pain dissolve. And this also happens with our attitude towards the suffering of people around us. Then compassion develops within us, and the great loneliness that we all encounter in human existence disappears from our lives.
To internalize that everything happens by itself – including what we ourselves do. Therefore, there is no reason to be angry/no room for feelings of guilt/to be offended/and to take things personally. Nothing says anything about us! That's how it is!
Because it is very important to understand: Perhaps this is the most important thing in our lives to see and understand: There is no one in us/our lives who is "me"/"center" – the one we thought decides/controls events! Everything happens by itself! We have the illusion that we do/decide/initiate/manage! It is an illusion! And we just need to observe again and again what is happening and say: "That's how it is!"It is important to silence the thinking within us . Stop believing what our "mind" tells us. Thinking always focuses - being part of a survival instinct - on what we don't have. On negative stories/excessive desires/comparisons/envy of those who have/resistance/argument with life/struggle/defense, and is operated by cultural conditioning that we have adopted. Which seem like absolute truths/natural laws. But they are not.
What is good for us and creates peace/peace within us is saying "Yes!" When desired objects come to us, we say: "Yes!" and experience joy. Joy comes from "yes" – and we mistakenly think that it came from the objects we received. Because the most important secret to peace of mind and the joy of our lives is that we need very little to live well. The key lies in cultivating beneficial states of mind (seeing beauty and abundance, love, generosity and compassion) and not in obtaining objects.
Keren Arbel expresses the essence of things in a very refined way in her book: "The Words of the Buddha" (with minor editorial changes): The Buddha showed us the possibility of a complete cessation of discontent by a penetrating vision of the nature of phenomena. A combination of philosophy - deep insights with practice. Liberation through the practice of non-attachment. Instead of holding on to things as a source of stability/security/and satisfaction, instead let go of them and find absolute freedom that is not conditioned by anything.
Our identification (which is a movement to find our identity) seeking security in the body/in pleasures/habits/people/objects - provides false security.
The heart of the Dharma: Meditation practice – the liberating nature of observing the mind, which allows for discernment of the psychological sources of suffering and restlessness: which are craving/clinging/and resistance to what is. And this leads to their weakening. In these moments there is a presence of silence/clarity and peace, from which joy and pleasure that do not depend on objects can arise. As in contact with nature/art/music/and a loved one.
All of these lead to: the weakening of delusion and a glimpse/taste of "nibbana" (liberation) – and this is a spiral process. Because staying in meditative states purifies the mind, then the intimate exposure to the possibility of staying in a free and peaceful mental state (a kind of "next world") – with the weakening of the fundamental human experience of a sense of lack/and imperfections, allows for the abandonment of the harmful mental states of attachment/and addiction, and the complete liberation from them.
Samadhi (the deep concentration experienced in meditation) is a profound encounter with the taste of freedom from the mental movement of resistance/craving and clinging.
The Buddha's main insights, which are the principles of right view and insight:
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There is no separate and permanent independent "I". There is observation without an observer. Thinking without a thinker, meaning there is liberation from the need to seek and maintain a permanent self of any kind. There is no separate and permanent "I" - but a constant becoming within an interrelationship. The sense of self is not created by the "I", but on the contrary, the sense of "I" is created by attachment. Our self is something that is constantly changing in dependence on everything that happens around us.
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Everything happens in a way that is derived from everything that happens around us and everything that has happened in the world since the Big Bang. Nothing that happens could not have happened otherwise. All developments and events within us and around us are the history of conditioning, circumstances, and external events. Because everything is connected to everything.
What does this mean in practical and emotional terms? The meaning is that the one/thing behind every development in our lives is the entire universe. And this also applies to our personal initiatives and choices. The entire universe, with all its components, is connected to everything we encounter and motivates us – through desires that the universe arouses in us – to act in a way that we ourselves identify as desires/passions/longings/urges to move where it is right for us.
Therefore: we deserve to experience more peace and less internal struggle, more acceptance of ourselves and our lives, without self-criticism and internal struggle. Our personal movements are also not really personal – even if they are experienced as such. Therefore, as one of my teachers – Frances Lucille – says: All praise and all blame go to God
Another teacher of mine: Ajahn Sumedo says: Don't take yourself personally! - That is, don't identify too strongly with your opinions and your choices. Because they are not really yours - and not really who you are. When we meet people around us with choices and ways of being that make us think: "I wish I could experience life like that too!" - it will be useful for us to remind ourselves that the same universe motivates one person to act and express themselves in one way, and another person is motivated by the universe to act in a different way or vice versa. That's how it is! There is no place here for pride or shame or guilt. That's how it is! Nothing here is "personal"!
The "choices" of the universe bring some of us pleasure, joy and happiness, and some of us pain and sadness. But no more than that: there is no room for shame/pride/or guilt. Because if we look at human suffering, we can see that it does not come primarily from what has befallen us (or not) but from our reaction to it with the thought of "what does it say about us."