Issue at Hand

When greed, hatred, ignorance, and wrong views arise, if we embrace them with Right Mindfulness, sooner or later they will lose their strength and return to our store consciousness.

We all come to practice with questions, perhaps the most basic of which is “Why am I suffering?” We also come to practice with our private answers to that question, answers that involve blaming ourselves or others, or which catch us in endless cycles of hope and disappointment. These answers lie buried within our minds as grim unconscious beliefs,

Buddhist teachings are skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, and anger, as well as our habit of seeking things outside and not having confidence in ourselves.

Or we could say that kensho is like taking off tight shoes—we feel an intense, immediate relief that is proportional to the constriction we had put on ourselves.