Don’t Go to the Thought Go to the Heart

Ajahn Viradhammo. Tisarana Non-Residential Retreat 2014 (Eighteenth talk). Ajahn gives an example of being criticized and then compulsively reacting. We try to see this sort of patterning and our craft is to work on this habit with the intention to observe arising phenomena rather than hating ourselves for having certain experiences. We can do this by seeing conditionality correctly: when there is this, there is that. When we do this, we are not getting lost in the history of losing the plot, nor carrying it around. We can therefore be available to our changing experience without judging it nor thinking of it as permanent.