No Life without Problems. No Problems Without Solutions.

“Hunger is the foremost illness; Determinations are the foremost dis-ease. For one knowing this, as it really is; Nibbāna is the foremost ease.” – Dhp 203

New essay on the seven perceptions of great fruit and benefit, by Ajahn Ñāṇamoli

Last October, Marcus scaled the UK's Queen Elizabeth II Bridge together with Morgan Trowland, creating a public debate about the government's continued investment in new oil.

As a result of their protest, Marcus was sentenced to 2 years and 7 months in prison.

But as if such a high prison sentence was not bad enough, Marcus, a German citizen, is now being threatened with deportation.

"As long as you conceive of yourself as being somebody who has to do something in order to become something else, you still get caught in a trap, a condition of mind as being a self, and you never quite understand anything properly. No matter how many years you meditate, you never really understand the teaching; it will always be just off the mark." – Ajahn Sumedho, 'Everything That Arises Passes Away' (from the book, 'The Way it is')

“The eye, bhikkhus, is the ocean for a person; its tide consists of forms. One who endures that tide consisting of forms is said to have crossed the ocean of the eye with its waves, whirlpools, sharks, and demons. Crossed over, gone beyond, the brahmin stands on high ground. The ear, bhikkhus, is the ocean for a person…. The mind is the ocean for a person; its tide consists of mental phenomena. One who endures that tide consisting of mental phenomena is said to have crossed the ocean of the mind with its waves, whirlpools, sharks, and demons. Crossed over, gone beyond, the brahmin stands on high ground.” - SN 35.228

"If you overcome all sensuality and subdue all of the patigha that you have towards your own senses and towards anything or anyone in the world, present, past or future, then you will be ready to follow the Buddha’s detailed instructions on anapanasati."

"As long as you're not finding contentment in wholesome phenomena it means you're still within the domain of sensuality, because one of the defining traits of sensuality is to expect things to provide you with pleasure or, rather, that pleasure is the result of things you're engaged with. But wholesome states don't work like that, which means you can stay with wholesome states all you want but they won't provide you with pleasure. You need to discern the contentment.

That's quite an important thing, but the practice of meditation usually revolves around replacing the pleasures you're used to with a new set of pleasures – more peaceful, more refined, but still expecting meditation to give you the pleasure back. You get the pleasure back only once you start discerning it on the basis of wholesome, and that pleasure is the pleasure that is not underlined by craving, which is the pleasure of sensuality, so having non-contentment in wholesome states means being still within the sensuality even if you're perfectly restrained.

It still belies the attitude of restrained in order to get more, the attitude of expecting things to do it to you.

You need to develop (contentment in wholesome phenomena) through that discernment of wholesome, the sensual seclusion, the sensual freedom – unless that's done it won't happen to you because whatever happens to you is going to be on account of sensuality."

Paraphrasing Ajahn Ñāṇamoli in 'Discussions From a Mountain Top #11':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg4X-jHR9cw