The things we’ve been contenting ourselves with for so long are not really worth contentment, but there is something better — and that “something better” can be found through our actions.

"There’s that paradox that we so often encounter when we chant before the meditation: First are the contemplations of aging, illness and death, inconstancy, stress, not-self; thinking about how the things that we tend to identify with as us or ours, really aren’t us or ours, and ultimately, lie beyond our control. And we live in a world that’s swept away, with no protection. Whatever we have we will have to leave behind, and yet we’re still a slave to craving: All of that on the one hand. Then on the other hand, the chant: “May I be happy.” It sounds so wistful in face of all those other contemplations of how things are. It sounds pretty hopeless, but the Buddha didn’t teach us to be hopeless.

When he pointed out the negative side of the world, it wasn’t just to say, “Okay, give up hope all ye who have been born here.” It was to help us realize that the things we’ve been contenting ourselves with for so long are not really worth contentment, but there is something better — and that “something better” can be found through our actions.

There’s that other contemplation that we have: We’re subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, to being separated from what is dear and appealing to me. Those are contemplations to give rise to a sense of samvega. But then they’re followed by the contemplation for pasada, which is a sense of confidence: “I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, whatever I do for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.” So we do have the power of our actions.

This was so important in the Buddha’s teachings that even though he wasn’t the sort of person who would go out and start arguments with people, there were times when he would go to argue with people who were teaching that what you’re doing right now didn’t have an impact right now."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Defilements at the Door"

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