Right understanding conditions more wholesomeness in our life


The Buddha said that we should often contemplate old age, sickness and
 
death, the variableness of things, kamma and vipka. We should
 
realize the impermanence of all conditioned realities. Seeing at this moment
 
is conditioned. There can only be seeing if there are eyesense and visible
 
object. What arises because of conditions has to fall away again, it does not
 
last. Everything in life is very temporary. When people pay us compliments
 
and say nice things to us we are pleased. When they are unkind to us we
 
are sad. When we look at a beautiful sunset we are pleased, when we watch
 
an accident we have aversion. The realities of life are beyond control, they
 
cannot be all the time as we would like them to be. We are so taken in by
 
the world of conventional truth that we do not know what is really there when
 
we listen to what people say, when we look at nature or watch an accident.
 
There are only realities which appear through the six doorways. There are
 
hearing, sound, aversion, or attachment, but there are no people there.
 
Realities arise because of their appropriate conditions and then fall away
 
immediately. When we see something pleasant, it is the result of a deed
 
committed in the past, it is conditioned by kamma. We cannot avoid
 
unpleasant results, they are conditioned already. There is no “I” who
 
experiences an unpleasant result, and there are no other people who cause
 
that unpleasant result. There is no me, no he, only different namas and
 
rupas which arise because of their own conditions and then fall away again.
 
When we develop right understanding we shall be more patient when
 
unpleasant things happen to us and we shall be more tolerant towards other
 
people. 
 
 
How can we develop loving kindness and compassion when there are in
 
reality no people? We can still think of people as usual, but right
 
understanding of realities conditions more wholesomeness in our
 
life. If right understanding is not developed we are absorbed in the world of
 
conventional truth and this is not beneficial. We often look at people with
 
attachment, with aversion, with ignorance and wrong view. When people are
 
objects of clinging we think only of our own happiness. We are expecting
 
pleasant things from others and at such moments there is no opportunity for
 
loving kindness and compassion. When we cling to others we actually cling
 
to ourselves. When we develop right understanding it does not prevent us
 
from thinking of people, but we realize that there is at that moment thinking
 
of concepts. At such moments we are not absorbed in concepts with
 
akusala citta. Right understanding can condition thinking with loving
 
kindness or compassion.
 
 

Topic 223