Unexpected Freedom

More than our Feelingsdwelling on it. They find a sense of security in definingthemselves as unhappy or angry – at least some sense ofsafety-with-the-familiar can be found in it. We can even getaddicted to feeling afraid, if it gives us the sense of beingsomebody. Without any other perceivable way of establishingourselves in a feeling of safety we are unable to let go.In the absence of informed awareness, when weencounter pleasure we tend to define ourselves in terms ofthe pleasant feelings that arise. We become addicted simplyto being our feelings. Even having a bad feeling makes usfeel like we’re somebody. Not feeling anything can appearvery threatening.The Buddha-to-be’s own investigation into hisrelationship with his feelings eventually showed him thatindulging in painful feeling took him to the same place as hisyears of indulging in pleasurable feelings – unhappiness. Herealised this wasn’t a way to liberation either. Instead, hediscovered a Middle Way between a life identified withpleasure and one identified with pain, which involved thisquality of awareness he called Right Mindfulness – regardingall of experience with a presence of mind that meant that hewasn’t deterred from investigating experiences, mental,physical, emotional, subtle, coarse or anything else.On this Middle Way, we are encouraged to cultivatemindfulness so that we don’t misperceive things. Whenpleasure comes along there is ‘knowingness’ – ‘this ispleasure.’ We don’t get lost in that pleasure. When there’spain and misery, or disappointment and a sense of failure, orwe are visited by fear or anxiety, we feel it but we don’tidentify with it. In the short term we may wish to ‘escape’from the reality of that pain – feeling perhaps that we cannotbear it, that we don’t like it, we don’t want it, we don’t deserveit – yet the Buddha teaches us to experience the reality of that33