teaching Feb 23, 2023

Our preference is always for the good feeling. If we have the good feeling, we feel like things are right. But if we have the bad feeling, we think things are wrong and we need to somehow fix it so it will be right. The problem with that is we are attached to one particular result and in the process, we amplify our suffering.

Because we want something, we suffer. Probably for all of us we hear that and think, well that’s a nice idea but that’s very difficult to live our lives without preferences. I think once we go there, we get stuck in an absolute “either/or” consciousness so we fall again back into duality.

The less we hold on to our preferences, the more freedom we have and the less we try to manipulate the world around us which really doesn’t work really well anyway. We can’t really control everything that happens to us. If we have a preference and we attach strongly to that preference, we are constantly trying to control our world. So we’ve made ourselves, in a way, separate from the world and made the world something to manipulate.

But if we can loosen the grip of those attachments and allow things to be as they are, it’s then possible to change our stance and to, in a sense, merge with it. We say become one. Then we can find our place in it, and we can be in it rather than trying to make it something.

By Zen Master Bon Soeng