The mind doesn’t settle down? Well, you have to figure out what you’re doing, what you’re doing wrong, and be cheerful enough to admit when you’ve done wrong.

"As you’re engaging the whole mind, that’s when you get to know the whole mind. You have to take responsibility for what’s happening. There’s a quality of integrity underlying all of this. The mind doesn’t settle down? Well, you have to figure out what you’re doing, what you’re doing wrong, and be cheerful enough to admit when you’ve done wrong. A lot of people don’t like the idea of right and wrong. Sometimes they come to the Dhamma, thinking, well, you can get beyond right and wrong just by willing yourself to transcend them. But you can’t get beyond them that way. You get beyond right and wrong by figuring out what’s right and what’s wrong, dropping what’s wrong, working with what’s right until it’s completed the job. Then you can let go of that, too. Until you’ve completed the job, though, you have to be very much concerned with what’s right and wrong, what’s skillful and what’s not."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Engaging the Whole Mind"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

You Don't Have to Be Afraid of Missing Out on Your Karmic Legacy

Buddhism is not saying that if you have anger you’re a bad person and it’s all your fault. Rather, it’s saying that the anger is the unskillful element in the equation of sensing that something should be done — and that’s what you want to deal with.

A lot of people are embarrassed to think about the fact that they may have committed some pretty bad karma in the past. But we’re all in that boat, simply that some people’s karma is showing now and other people’s is going to show later.