Conscious, Embodied, Direct Experience
“The Buddha came to the following realization: The path to happiness and a sense of well-being in this very life lies not in avoiding suffering but in using the conscious, embodied, direct experience of it as a vehicle to gain deep insight into the true nature of life and your own experience.
“Instead of being a reactionary slave to the inevitable pain, frustration, stress, and sorrow in your life, which the Buddha called dukkah, you can free your mind such that you have a sense of well-being even when dukkah is present, and you create the possibility of finding complete freedom…
“The Buddha discovered a path for finding freedom from dukkha or suffering, which he called the Four Noble Truths. This set of attitudes and practices he prescribed doesn’t require you to create some new and improved version of you — one that you can only hope will someday emerge. You can take these steps as the ‘you’ who exists right now — the one who gets lost, afraid, angry, and caught up in desire, despite good intentions.
“All that’s required is that you let go of your preconceived notions about suffering and open yourself to exploring the role that it plays in your life.
“If you are new to meditation practice, you may well think that you have no choice about how you experience suffering. You may have some problem from your past or in your current situation that seems as though it can be understood only as unrelenting pain — an abusive family history, a tortuous marriage, economic woes, a hideous wrong done to you, a disable child whose affliction breaks your heart.
“But if you give yourself a chance to investigate your suffering more deeply, you will discover that being ‘with’ your pain can lead to wisdom and happiness. The event or circumstance itself does not lose its unpleasant or unfortunate quality, but by going through it consciously you arrive at a peaceful and luminous state of mind. In this ‘enlightened’ state, your mind experiences difficulty in a very different manner.”
— from Dancing with Life, by Phillip Moffitt