Directing Change Towards Positive Growth

There's this wonderful aspect to it that sati itself is transformative.

So if you're really in a rage, and then you notice, "I'm really in a rage," you're no longer lost in the rage.

So as soon as you bring awareness to any mental or emotional state, you're no longer lost in it, and the Buddha's saying that in itself is really transformative.

And I really love that, um, aspect of this way of practicing within the Satipatthana Sutta.

So we're never taking a crowbar to our experience.

I'm sure some of...

many of you will know what it, what it's like to take a crowbar.

You know, you sort of have a difficult state, and you try and e-excavate it by force.

It's never gonna work.

You're just gonna create more contraction.

But it's like the light of awareness itself in the context of our broad going for refuge to the Three Jewels.

You know, that's our compass.

We're, we're moving the direction of the Buddha's teaching, and then we notice we're really holding against that.

As soon as we bring awareness to that, there will be, um, a shift.

It's very beautiful, that, isn't it? Like, we don't really need to do anything more than be aware with kindness of whatever we're experiencing.

So, um, Sangharakshita says something very lovely to, uh, echo this, um, simplicity approach, simple approach.

He says, "The essence of the Buddha's teaching is quite simple.

Consciousness is not fixed, but subject to change.

And if we can learn to trace the way it changes, we can direct that change towards positive growth." The essence of the Buddha's teaching is quite simple.

Consciousness is not fixed, but subject to change.

And if we can learn to trace the way it changes, we can direct that change towards positive growth.

So that's the idea that we're living in this fluid, open universe, in the world outside and in the world inside, and that we can learn to direct that flow towards the direction that we want to go in with awareness.