Spiritual Growth Can Arise From All Life’s Circumstances?
“Taking all conditions as the path” means making a commitment to recognize the ebb and flow of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in our mind. It does not mean changing the object or event itself, or altering life’s conditions. We will not be able to suddenly change suffering into nonsuffering. We cannot rid ourselves of all suffering by numbing the pain or by anesthetizing ourselves. When we investigate how suffering comes about in the first place, we can sometimes identify certain habits and propensities we have that consistently give rise to unfavorable or unwholesome results. Living with the results of these habitual patterns—often learned from family or cultural dynamics—is what Buddhists consider to be the ripening of them. In Buddhist language, this is expressed as the ripening of karma or the product of the contingencies of unwholesome karmic causes and factors. No matter what we label it, we live with the effects of these patterns in our life, and we must address them. Similarly, we cannot simply demand happiness. On the contrary, when positive circumstances occur as a result of certain wholesome causes and factors coming together, they ripen into positive conditions and experience-positive karma. The key here is to stay present with the continual flow of experience, and pay attention to the tendency to label, freeze, or reject what occurs; do not become dominated by these habitual reactions. Residing in a state of equanimity, engaged with but not driven by the fluctuations of experience, constitutes the radical view that spiritual growth can arise from all life’s circumstances. We work with our perspective, recognizing how our mind perceives and experiences everything.
Excerpt From
Chakung Jigme Wangdrak