The Buddha taught that, as a meditator, you should content yourself with outside conditions if they’re good enough for you to practice in. But as long as you’re still suffering, you should not content yourself with the level of skill in your own mind.

Question: Contentment is hard for me, the idea of accepting things just as they are. What should I do?

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: The Buddha didn’t teach you to accept things as they are in all cases. This is where it’s important to understand his teachings on kamma. Everything we experience in the present moment is a combination of three factors. The first factor consists of the results of past intentions. These could be intentions from just the moment before to lifetimes before, ripening now in the present moment. The second factor is your present intentions. The third is the result of your present intentions. You can’t do much about the results of your past intentions, but you can change your present intentions and their results.

So, the things you have to content yourself with are the things that come from past kamma. But even then, the simple fact that your past kamma up to now has, say, given bad results doesn’t mean that it has to keep on giving bad results. You can change your present intentions freely. This is why the Buddha said that we don’t have to suffer even from the results of past bad actions. If we master skillful intentions in the present moment, we can keep the mind from suffering even in bad situations. So, content yourself with things you cannot change, but don’t content yourself with things you can change and need to be improved. A lot of discernment will lie in figuring out which is which.

The Buddha taught that, as a meditator, you should content yourself with outside conditions if they’re good enough for you to practice in. But as long as you’re still suffering, you should not content yourself with the level of skill in your own mind. In fact, the Buddha said that was the secret to his awakening: As long as there was a further skill that he could still develop, he would not rest content.

~ Good Heart, Good Mind: The Practice of the Ten Perfections

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