Sunday, May 12, 2013

Search->Possession->Loss

People are constantly trying to get beautiful things, animate or inanimate. If they do not get them, they go on searching for them until they succeed.

When they come to possess them, they to keep them and prevent them from being lost or destroyed. Thus, people are constantly striving, and constantly suffering. In the same way, they long to get other pleasant experiences, such as sweet sounds, delicious tastes, delightful touches, and they entertain fond hopes and thoughts. They strive to keep themselves healthy and long-lived so that they may enjoy these pleasures longer. In making these efforts, people have to feel anxious about themselves and others.

Though they try to obtain and maintain these pleasures, things do not happen as they wish. Pleasures go as quickly as they come. Decay soon sets in and destroys them. Then people suffer greatly, not only physically, but mentally too.

This affects not only human beings, but celestial beings too, who also try with similar purposes. Do not imagine that if one becomes a celestial being due to one’s good deeds that one gets to a place where every wish is fulfilled, and one becomes fully satisfied. No one is ever satisfied with what they have, and will always crave for more or better things.

To get more, further efforts must be made, and suffering will result from those efforts.

-Mahasi Sayadaw "A Discourse on the Hemavata Sutta"