The End of the World (extract)

"So have faith in what you’re doing and in the skills you’re developing here, because they can see you through, even when everything else starts collapsing and the mountains come moving in. And remember: The mind is not crushed by mountains. Your goodness is crushed only by your own discouragement, by your own lack of faith, your lack of conviction, lack of persistence. Those are the things that crush you, and yet those are also things you can do something about.

The mountains keep moving in, moving in. The world is swept away. It’s the nature of the world. If the north mountain doesn’t get you, the south mountain will. But they get just your body. So focus on your mind: That’s your important refuge. All the skills you develop as you practice: Those are your refuge. Those don’t get swept away.

Remember where the escape is. The escape is inside. You can’t escape the world, as the Buddha said, by going to the edge of the cosmos. He had that image of the skywalker — an interesting term that got picked up later by some moviemakers here — someone whose every stride could be measured in miles, and who could stride, stride, stride across the universe. And as he said, even if you were a skywalker and had a hundred-year lifespan, you wouldn’t come to the end of the universe.

But he also said that you can come to the end of the world inside. There’s a spot in the mind, there’s a dimension, as he calls it, where the world has no footing. That’s the end of the world. That’s here inside you.

Some people say that your quest for finding that end of the world is selfish, and that you should be out there trying to keep the mountains away for a little bit longer. But you have to remember that to find that spot inside, generosity is one of the prerequisites, one of your inner treasures. We don’t leave the world by trashing it. We develop generosity, we develop virtue, all the things that make human life good. But we do it in such a way that gets us out, because outside the world is a lot better than in."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The End of the World" (Meditations9)

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