Insights of the Middle Path

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In both situations you should be acting to try to minimize the suffering of everybody. This can involve:

  1. Giving one person worldly pleasure because it is a temporary relief from suffering
  2. Giving yourself worldly pleasure instead of somebody else because you are in greater need of a temporary relief
  3. Giving someone else worldly pleasure instead of yourself so that you can observe your suffering and learn to overcome it
  4. Giving somebody worldly displeasure to open their eyes to reality and avoid later suffering (e.g. exposing a difficult truth)

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When there’s interaction with other people, and as you focus more carefully in that present moment, you begin to realize that you choose where to focus and how you want to shape the situation. You could let yourself suffer, fall victim to these things, or you could make a change. But if for instance when you’re being mindful, say, of feelings, you just watch whatever feeling comes up and don’t make any changes. Don’t meddle with it. Just be non-reactive, allowing whatever’s happening to happen. What this attitude does, though, is to drive underground some really important sources for insight: the ability to see to what extent you’re shaping your feelings of pleasure and pain right now. This applies to physical pleasure and mental pleasure, to physical pain and mental pain. So the way you think, the way you interpret, filter, make choices about how to shape the present moment is a purely internal matter. Mindfulness is to remind you that you can make choices, and that you want to learn to make them skillfully. You can learn how to think in a comfortable way, to fashion your thoughts and your perceptions so as to shape a greater sense of wellbeing. Just take time and use your powers of observation.

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