Monday, December 26, 2016

What Causes Suffering?

(from Ken Wilber's writings)

I thought this was a very thoughtful piece. It shows Buddhist influence.

"What causes suffering is the grasping and desiring of the separate self, and what ends it is the meditative path that transcends self and desire. The point is that suffering is inherent in the knot or contraction known as self, and the only way to end suffering is to end the self. It's not that after enlightenment, or after spiritual practice in general, you no longer feel pain or anguish or fear or hurt. You do. It's simply that they no longer threaten your existence, and so they cease to be problematic. You are no longer identified with them, dramatizing them, energizing them, threatened by them. On the one hand there is no longer any fragmented self to threaten, and on the other, the big Self can't be threatened since, being the All, there is nothing outside of it that could harm it. A profound relaxing and uncoiling occurs in the heart."
-Ken Wilber

The Pocket Ken Wilber, p. 157.
Original Source: CW 5: Grace and Grit, 103-104.

/jkk. Originally from 2017-12-07

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