Forest Path - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

keep it simple 37
appeasement of suffering. We put off really dealing with it to a
distant future, or an immediate future. The Buddha said that the
way it should be dealt with is by understanding the causes because
we can understand something only when we understand its cause.
The Buddha pointed out that often our misapprehension of the
truth, of reality is because of avijjà, non-knowledge.
Avijjà is often translated as ignorance but it is really the lack of true
knowledge. Through this lack of true knowledge, different kinds of
desire are created: the desire to seek out sensual gratification, the
desire for the affirmation of self, for becoming, the desire for
self-negation, for annihilation, the pushing away of experience; not
wanting to experience things is also a desire. So this pushing and
pulling, the grasping after experience is the real cause of our
suffering. And so it is the relinquishing of desire that brings about
the cessation of suffering.
We do not relinquish suffering but we try to push away the immediate
cause of it and try to find something more satisfactory. This is not
dealing with the real causes, which have to be seen for what they are
and relinquished. Letting go is something that one needs to feel, feel