…it may just be the greatest happiness, a well-being without conditions, and without limit.
How hard it is to be released from the rule of the self?
Yet… sense of self is like a reflection on water. It’s less than a molecule thick. A reflection actually has no thickness at all. It has no substance. It’s an imaginary overlay on a process that itself is transparent. Yet the image entrances us.
It’s actually the greatest hindrance of all, which underlies all the other hindrances. And yet it is also the great question, the great door, the intimate, infinite door that leads directly to the Dharma. What is this self? What is this experience? What is this very moment?
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You could say we’re learning to be happy with less. During long sitting, we have very little, and we do very little. We are learning how to develop an intrinsic happiness without activity or input. Or you could say we’re uncovering the fact that there is an intrinsic happiness to being. Simply to exist as a human being has an intrinsic happiness.
But it takes a bit of work for most of us to lay bare that happiness and feel it. And to have it become somewhat stable takes even more work. And the nature of that happiness is quite remarkable, in that it seems to be unconditional. In the end, perhaps we can become happy with literally nothing at all. And it may just be the greatest happiness, a well-being without conditions, and without limit.