Location 50:

May all beings be happy!



Location 330:

But over a period of time, to sit in a particular posture and direct the attention in a certain way is a form of conditioning. If you do it as a game or mechanical ritual, then yes—you condition the mind. But that is a misuse of Vipassana. When it is practised correctly, it enables you to experience truth directly, for yourself. And from this experience, naturally understanding develops, which destroys all previous conditioning.



Location 337:

To remain happy and peaceful even when confronted by the suffering of others—isn’t that sheer insensitivity? Being sensitive to the suffering of others does not mean that you must become sad yourself. Instead you should remain calm and balanced, so that you can act to alleviate their suffering. If you also become sad, you increase the unhappiness around you; you do not help others, you do not help yourself.



Location 358:

You speak of being overpowered by negativity. How about being overpowered by positivity, for example, by love? What you call “positivity” is the real nature of the mind. When the mind is free of conditioning, it is always full of love—pure love—and you feel peaceful and happy. If you remove the negativity, then positivity remains, purity remains. Let the entire world be overwhelmed by this positivity!



Location 432:

As he examined the body, the Buddha also examined the mind and found that in broad, overall terms it consisted of four processes: consciousness (viññāṇa), perception (saññā), sensation (vedanā), and reaction (saṅkhāra). The first process, consciousness, is the receiving part of the mind, the act of undifferentiated awareness or cognition. It simply registers the occurrence of any phenomenon, the reception of any input, physical or mental. It notes the raw data of experience without assigning labels or making value judgments. The second mental process is perception, the act of recognition. This part of the mind identifies whatever has been noted by the consciousness. It distinguishes, labels, and categorizes the incoming raw data and makes evaluations, positive or negative. The next part of the mind is sensation. Actually as soon as any input is received, sensation arises, a signal that something is happening. So long as the input is not evaluated, the sensation remains neutral. But once a value is attached to the incoming data, the sensation becomes pleasant or unpleasant, depending on the evaluation given.



Location 441:

If the sensation is pleasant, a wish forms to prolong and intensify the experience. If it is an unpleasant sensation, the wish is to stop it, to push it away. The mind reacts with liking or disliking.1 For example, when the ear is functioning normally and one hears a sound, cognition is at work. When the sound is recognized as words, with positive or negative connotations, perception has started to function. Next sensation comes into play. If the words are praise, a pleasant sensation arises. If they are abuse, an unpleasant sensation arises. At once reaction takes place. If the sensation is pleasant, one starts liking it, wanting more words of praise. If the sensation is unpleasant, one starts disliking it, wanting to stop the abuse. The same steps occur whenever any of the other senses receives an input: consciousness, perception, sensation, reaction. These four mental functions are even more fleeting than the ephemeral particles composing the material reality. Each moment that the senses come into contact with any object, the four mental processes occur with lightning-like rapidity and repeat themselves with each subsequent moment of contact. So rapidly does this occur, however, that one is unaware of what is happening. It is only when a particular reaction has been repeated over a longer period of time and has taken a pronounced, intensified form that awareness of it develops at the conscious level.



Location 483:

You speak of the experience of “I” only in negative terms. Hasn’t it a positive side? Isn’t there an experience of “I” which fills a person with joy, peace, and rapture? By meditation you will find that all such sensual pleasures are im-permanent; they come and pass away. If this “I” really enjoys them, if they are “my” pleasures, then “I” must have some mastery over them. But they just arise and pass away without my control. What “I” is there?



Location 489:

Well, instead of “I,” let us say the experience of a person. Feeling feels; there is no one to feel it. Things are just happening, that’s all. Now it seems to you that there must be an “I” who feels, but if you practice, you will reach the stage where ego dissolves. Then your question will disappear!



Location 491:

I came here because I felt “I” needed to come here. Yes! Quite true. For conventional purposes, we cannot run away from “I” or “mine.” But clinging to them, taking them as real in an ultimate sense will bring only suffering.



Location 574:

Mind precedes all phenomena, mind matters most, everything is mind-made. If with an impure mind you speak or act, then suffering follows you as the cartwheel follows the foot of the draft animal. If with a pure mind you speak or act, then happiness follows you as a shadow that never departs.3



Location 589:

Whatever suffering arises has a reaction as its cause. If all reactions cease to be then there is no more suffering.



Location 592:

The real kamma, the real cause of suffering is the reaction of the mind. One fleeting reaction of liking or disliking may not be very strong and may not give much result, but it can have a cumulative effect. The reaction is repeated moment after moment, intensifying with each repetition, and developing into craving or aversion. This is what in his first sermon the Buddha called taṇhā, literally “thirst”: the mental habit of insatiable longing for what is not, which implies an equal and irremediable dissatisfaction with what is.5 And the stronger longing and dissatisfaction become, the deeper their influence on our thinking, our speech, and our actions—and the more suffering they will cause.



Location 598:

Some reactions, the Buddha said, are like lines drawn on the surface of a pool of water: as soon as they are drawn they are erased. Others are like lines traced on a sandy beach: if drawn in the morning they are gone by night, wiped away by the tide or the wind. Others are like lines cut deeply into rock with chisel and hammer. They too will be obliterated as the rock erodes, but it will take ages for them to disappear.6



Location 609:

QUESTION: Isn’t suffering a natural part of life? Why should we try to escape from it? S. N. GOENKA: We have become so involved in suffering that to be free from it seems unnatural. But when you experience the real happiness of mental purity, you will know that this is the natural state of the mind.



Location 612:

Can’t the experience of suffering ennoble people and help them to grow in character? Yes. In fact, this technique deliberately uses suffering as a tool to make one a noble person. But it will work only if you learn how to observe suffering objectively. If you are attached to your suffering, the experience will not ennoble you; you will always remain miserable.



Location 622:

What you call “free, spontaneous action” is really blind reaction, which is always harmful. By learning to observe yourself, you will find that whenever a difficult situation arises in life, you can keep the balance of your mind. With that balance you can choose freely how to act. You will take real action, which is always positive, always beneficial for you and for all others.



Location 638:

Our own mental actions have an influence on others. If we generate nothing but negativity in the mind, that negativity has a harmful effect on those who come into contact with us. If we fill the mind with positivity, with goodwill toward others, then it will have a helpful effect on those around us. You cannot control the actions, the kamma of others, but you can become master of yourself in order to have a positive influence on those around you.



Location 664:

Our difficulty, our ignorance is that we remain unheedful while planting seeds. We keep planting seeds of neem, but when the time comes for fruit we are suddenly alert, we want sweet mangoes. And we keep crying and praying and hoping for mangoes. This doesn’t work.7



Location 679:

He continued probing within himself to experience the real nature of suffering, and he found that “attachment to the five aggregates is suffering.”2 At a very deep level, suffering is the inordinate attachment that each one of us has developed toward this body and toward this mind, with its cognitions, perceptions, sensations, and reactions. People cling strongly to their identity—their mental and physical being—when actually there are only evolving processes. This clinging to an unreal idea of oneself, to something that in fact is constantly changing, is suffering.



Location 687:

The object is secondary; the fact is that we seek to maintain the state of craving continually, because this very craving produces in us a pleasurable sensation that we wish to prolong. Craving becomes a habit that we cannot break, an addiction.



Location 691:

Another great attachment is to the “I,” the ego, the image we have of ourselves. For each of us, the “I” is the most important person in the world. We behave like a magnet surrounded by iron filings: it will automatically arrange the filings in a pattern centered on itself, and with just as little reflection we all instinctively try to arrange the world according to our liking, seeking to attract the pleasant and to repel the unpleasant. But none of us is alone in the world; one “I” is bound to come into conflict with another. The pattern each seeks to create is disturbed by the magnetic fields of others, and we ourselves become subject to attraction or repulsion. The result can only be unhappiness, suffering.



Location 713:

What causes attachment? How does it arise? Analyzing his own nature, the future Buddha found that it develops because of the momentary mental reactions of liking and disliking. The brief, unconscious reactions of the mind are repeated and intensified moment after moment, growing into powerful attractions and repulsions, into all our attachments. Attachment is merely the developed form of the fleeting reaction. This is the immediate cause of suffering. What causes reactions of liking and disliking? Looking deeper he saw that they occur because of sensation. We feel a pleasant sensation and start liking it; we feel an unpleasant sensation and start disliking it.



Location 732:

Then what causes this flow of consciousness? He saw that it arises because of reaction. The mind is constantly reacting, and every reaction gives impetus to the flow of consciousness so that it continues to the next moment. The stronger a reaction, the greater the impetus that it gives. The slight reaction of one moment sustains the flow of consciousness only for a moment. But if that momentary reaction of liking and disliking intensifies into craving or aversion, it gains in strength and sustains the flow of consciousness for many moments, for minutes, for hours.



Location 739:

And what causes these reactions? Observing at the deepest level of reality, he understood that reaction occurs because of ignorance. We are unaware of the fact that we react, and unaware of the real nature of what we react to.



Location 757:

At last the truth was clear to him: suffering begins with ignorance about the reality of our true nature, about the phenomenon labelled “I”. And the next cause of suffering is saṅkhāra, the mental habit of reaction. Blinded by ignorance, we generate reactions of craving and aversion, which develop into attachment, leading to all types of unhappiness. The habit of reacting is the kamma, the shaper of our future. And the reaction arises only because of ignorance about our real nature. Ignorance, craving, and aversion are the three roots from which grow all our sufferings in life.



Location 764:

Nothing happens without a cause. If the cause is eradicated, there will be no effect. In this way, the process of the arising of suffering can be reversed: If ignorance is eradicated and completely ceases, reaction ceases; if reaction ceases, consciousness ceases; if consciousness ceases, mind-and-matter cease; if mind-and-matter ceases, the six senses cease; if the six senses cease, contact ceases; if contact ceases, sensation ceases; if sensation ceases, craving and aversion cease; if craving and aversion cease, attachment ceases; if attachment ceases, the process of becoming ceases; if the process of becoming ceases, birth ceases; if birth ceases, decay and death cease, together with sorrow, lamentation, physical and mental suffering and tribulations. Thus this entire mass of suffering ceases.5



Location 785:

We are each responsible for the reactions that cause our suffering. By accepting our responsibility we can learn how to eliminate suffering.



Location 796:

Saṃsāra is not the popular idea of the transmigration of a soul or self that maintains a fixed identity through repeated incarnations. This, the Buddha said, is precisely what does not happen. He insisted that there is no unchanging identity that passes from life to life: “It is just as from the cow comes milk; from milk, curds; from curds, butter; from fresh butter, clarified butter; from clarified butter, the creamy skimmings. When there is milk, it is not considered to be curds, or fresh butter, or clarified butter, or skimmings. Similarly at any time only the present state of existence is considered to be real, and not a past or future one.”7 The Buddha held neither that a fixed ego-principle is reincarnated in successive lives, nor that there is no past or future existence. Instead he realized and taught that only the process of becoming continues from one existence to another, so long as our actions give impetus to the process.