Burgs Podcast Burgs

The Buddha was not interested in teaching the momentary cessation of suffering but finding a pathway to cut off at the root the habit of bringing ourselves to suffering. When he was a prince twenty-five centuries ago, he came to the conclusion that there is no happiness to be found in the pursuit of pleasure alone. After he renounced his worldly life and went forth, he also found that practicing austerity practices alone does not cut off the causes of suffering. When he became enlightened, he...

We may not have recognised it but somewhere inside us is a longing for a sense of deep connection to what we are part of. We try to do meet this through ideas but this is not the same as being totally present. We need to turn up fully to our experience rather than get lost in thinking about it all and meditation is a process of gradually bringing to an end our sense of separation.

With more mindfulness, you can see what you are bringing to this moment from the past. When you witness this without a sense of self, you see things much for how they really are rather than what you think they are. We can bring a more objective perspective and open the door to some of the charge we are carrying.

The goal of meditation is to free ourselves from suffering of the affliction we experience in our life. To see clearly what life is, we have to polish the lens that we look through. Understanding comes from insight rather than studying or intellectual reflection. The eightfold noble path leads to liberation through insight. As soon as you see what this is, you free yourself. The liberation is in the seeing. In order to see, we have to pay wise attention

What did the Buddha say was the cause of suffering? You might think that attachment is the cause of our suffering, but attachment itself is caused by ignorance. If we saw what life truly is, we would not suffer. Our ignorance is the illusion of self. When we are absorbed in what we are doing, our sense of self fades. The arising of the sense of me in the middle of my experience is what creates the sense of separation.

You don’t know what you are going to get in life – good luck or bad luck, who knows? Sometimes life goes your way and sometimes it does not. It does not matter what you get, it matters how you meet each experience with a clear mind. Burgs goes onto to discuss karma and consciousness and asks what do you know to be true? The views we cling to are highly predictable on account of the way our mind works and our conditioning. The “wisdom of the idiot” acknowledges th...