We believe that it is the other person, the outside event or the circumstances of our life that are causing our misery or our happiness. In reality it is our mind that is creating our experience and our internal experience is mostly a conditioned response.
Pleasure and pain are appearances and momentary. Outside experiences are transitory, fleeting. The happiness or sadness we feel in our mind rises and falls, comes and goes, often in a flash. Even while we are enjoying a pleasure, it is fading away. The object of pleasure or pain isn’t experienced – and then it is experienced – and then it again isn’t experienced. Pleasure and pain are conditional. This makes them momentary. Even while it is happening, it is disappearing. To put our hopes and faith in pleasure, in a false happiness that arises from a fleeting source, is always disappointing. To become overly attached to pleasure and averse to pain is futile.
Bliss is self-generated. It is eternal, Self-existent. It is the essential constituent of the true Self. Bliss is absolute, unconditional. Bliss is independent of the senses contact with their objects. We are absolute bliss consciousness and any happiness we experience from outside is a small reflection of that bliss. When we meditate, we still the mind and in that supreme stillness we experience of our true Self; unbounded bliss consciousness. Bit by bit, that bliss seeps into our experience to become permanent, no matter the outside circumstances.
Blessings,
