Daily Reflection Sit

The 4th Noble Truth isn’t a list but an invitation to live into freedom by developing the 8 strands of the Noble 8-fold path.

Highlighting the Eight Folds of the Eight Fold Path, Which is a thorough Treatment plan to address dissatisfaction and mental suffering.

Notice suffering and see if you can let go of or soften around it. Find ways to reduce its harmful impact.

Suffering ends when we let go of holding on. Feel the release into more ease.

It is possible to reduce suffering. There is hope; we are not completely hard wired!

Where does your inclination lie? What supports settling- body, breath, heart or mind?

When setting up the practice of mindfulness the instruction reads, “...set mindfulness to fore”, not your own perspective. Shift out of “your view” and into “a non-judgemental, non-self referential posture of caring attention to the experience of well benign right now, in the present moment”.

Look at causal links of suffering; cause and effect. See craving, see the self rise up and go after what it wants...in the name of a lot of things, with mixed results as an end. Feel it. The gift that mindfulness offers is a path that leads out of suffering, but, as with other spiritual traditions, the path necessarily leads us through suffering, through the “dark night of the soul”, to get to the promised land of peace.

Can you see YOU and your preferences and reactions? Can you FEEL the push-pull-holding on around Your Preferences and the YOU that is identified with them? Can you get the subject-object relationship and the “grip” of energy that keeps this attachment alive? This dynamic is the cause of suffering.

How we flee from dukkha and run toward the promise or enchantment of sense pleasure.

Recognizing “clinging” in all of its vicissitudes; it is a deep part of our wiring.

Whether physical, mental or emotional we need to NOTICE and FEEL the suffering that is here in order to DISCERN if it is leading to release or to more tension.

Moving from the hard-heartedness of reactivity to tender compassion through cultivating empathy grounded in the use of our moral imagination.

We’re wired to try to hold on to things that are inherently impermanent, which causes stress and suffering. Working with this Noble Truth, we hold suffering up to the light and look at it from different angles.

We have to SEE stress, suffering, unsatisfactoriness in its physical and mental manifestations before we can do anything about it.