The Freedeom To Suffer
...doctrines, beliefs and techniques in this Way, but none of them is an end in itself. All of them are included in an overall training which is called cittabhavana, or 'the training of the heart'. The word citta is variously rendered in translation as 'heart', 'awareness', and sometimes as 'consciousness'. Bhavana literally means 'to bring into being'. So cittabhavana can also be translated as 'cultivation of awareness'. This subject is obviously central both to what you are doing here as psychotherapists and to what we are doing in our monastic training, so I am glad that we have this opportunity to consider it together.
It is easy, as I said, for us to take quite some time before we get the core message that awareness itself is what we are working on. It is very important that we do come to see that all the different skilful means offered in Buddhism are in reference to this.
Back in the 1960s and '70s many of us were out in Asia looking for something that we hoped would fill up an emptiness we felt we had inside - an inner sense of lacking. In keeping with our expectations, we found a large variety of systems and substances, some more helpful than others. Buddhist monasteries and teachers were amongst what we came across. What we thought they were offering was this wonderful idea of enlightenment.
We were tremendously inspired and believed this meant that if at some time in the future we fully grasped this idea, then we would be free from any sense of lacking for ever more; we would be free from suffering altogether. We were tending to approach what we found there in the same way that we approached our everyday life, that is, as consumers: "How can I become enlightened? What must I do to get this freedom from suffering?"
I heard a story of a young Westerner traveling around Southeast Asia who was particularly concerned that he didn't...
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