Everything That Arises Passes Away

As long as you conceive of yourself as being somebody who has to do something in order to become something else, you still get caught in a trap, a condition of mind as being a self, and you never quite understand anything properly. No matter how many years you meditate, you never really understand the teaching; it will always be just off the mark. The direct way of seeing things now - that whatever arises passes away – doesn’t mean that you are throwing anything away. It means that you’re looking from a perspective of what’s here and now rather than looking for something that’s not here. So if you come into the Shrine Room thinking, ‘I’ve got to spend this hour looking for the Buddha, trying to become something, trying to get rid of these bad thoughts, to sit and practise hard, try to become what I should become – so I’ll sit here and try getting rid of things, try to get things, try to hold onto things’…with that attitude, meditation is a really strenuous effort and always a failure.

But if instead, you come into the Shrine Room and are just aware of the conditions of mind, you see in perspective the desire to become, to get rid of, to do something or the feeling that you can’t do it; or that you’re an expert, whatever – you begin to see that whatever you’re experiencing is a changing condition and not ‘self’. You’re seeing a perspective of being Buddha, rather than doing something in order to become Buddha. When we talk about sati, mindfulness, this is what we mean.

This reflection by Ajahn Sumedho is from the book, The Way It Is, pp. 23, 24.