If you see any suffering coming up in your experience, try to trace it back. “What action is this related to? What kind of attitude is this related to?” If you can trace it back to an action — physical, verbal, or mental — then you’ve got a handle on things.

"If you don’t have any mindfulness — i.e., if you can’t remember what you did — you’re not going to be able to figure out how this feeling of pain or this feeling of pleasure is related to actions you did a while back and have forgotten about. So you try to keep in mind what you’ve been doing. If you see any suffering coming up in your experience, try to trace it back. “What action is this related to? What kind of attitude is this related to?” The fact that there’s pain in the body is a normal part of life, but the fact that there’s a pain in the mind is unnecessary. It doesn’t have to be there. So what’s causing the pain in the mind? If you can trace it back to an action — physical, verbal, or mental — then you’ve got a handle on things."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Virtue Contains the Practice" (Meditations6)

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