After the level of thoughts follows the level of emotions.
Just as we are identified with our thoughts, we are also identified with our emotions. We experience them as if we are our emotions. Letting go of this identification is the next, deeper step.
Our natural tendency is to constantly seek to feel good - this is how our body and brain are conditioned.
Our original mind also enjoys feeling good, but not at any cost.
It places love above everything else.
In human life, it is impossible to feel good permanently. Like the weather, our circumstances - and thus our emotional states - constantly change. Although we know this, we tend to make our feelings the measure of all things.
Many of our actions are aimed at feeling better. While this never works permanently, we still cling to this idea.
If we were able to let it go, we would probably feel good more often.
Buddha taught that two of the five main hindrances on the path to enlightenment are aversion and craving.
- Aversion means the rejection of anything unpleasant. We want to free ourselves from negative states in life and harbor resistance against discomfort.
- On the other hand, there is the desire for something we want to get. This leads to greed. When we have something, the fear of losing it arises. So we try to hold on to it.
The ego is driven by aversion and desire:
"I like this, I don’t like that."
Its entire life revolves around this axis. The goal of this game is to constantly feel good.
But life and reality care little about our ego.
Pleasant things come and go, unpleasant things come and go - and we cannot fundamentally change that. Life means change; it encompasses joy and pain, gain and loss.
By rejecting the unpleasant and trying to cling to the pleasant, we create additional suffering.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
The ego creates conflict, suffering, and ultimately even war and self-destruction.
However, if we were able to accept the cycle of coming and going - the changing of conditions - we would be free.
This can be directly experienced in meditation.
Liberation through surrender to the moment
A pain in the knee that we reject becomes a major problem that consumes us entirely. Our whole mind is tormented by resistance.
But if we manage to accept the pain as the reality of the moment, the suffering it causes dissolves.
The entire body can relax, energy begins to flow again - and often the pain even disappears on its own. The same principle applies to unpleasant emotions.
Of course, this does not mean that we should not take good care of our health and emotional well-being.
Rather, it is about recognizing how strongly we are controlled and captured by these mechanisms.
This recognition within ourselves is already the first and most important step toward liberation.