One way or the other, the path of Buddhism is to bring something to an end -- and that something is our suffering, the ways in which we suffer because we hold on, we cling, we resist. That there's some kind of inner compulsive behavior, a driven behavior, holding and clinging, that might have a lot of authority, might be there sometimes for good reasons, but with practice we see it limits us, it diminishes us, it constricts us, and it doesn't really allow for the full flowering and thriving of our hearts, of our minds, of our life.
And so part of mindfulness practice is not just being present for things and seeing and being mindful and calmer and a little less reactive, but it's really as a platform, as a means by which to have the deepest fullest letting go that is possible for a human being. And the path there is to learn something about all the different shades, or forms of letting go, that a person can have. Now, letting go is an ordinary activity. There is a tremendous amount of letting go that people do throughout the day, and it probably doesn't take much reflection to realize how much you're letting go of. Maybe sometimes it's so automatic and so easy that you don't even think of as letting go. ...
Or you're expecting to go for a walk with a friend outdoors, and here in California you wake up and nowadays sometimes the air is clean and sometimes it's not because of the smoke ... and maybe the letting go is not that easy because the desire is so strong ... the anticipation of a wonderful time with your friend and the ongoing continuity of the limitation of life because of the smoke and COVID-19 and all kinds of things, you don't let go of the desire. ... All because that desire was being held kind of strongly and it wasn't simply letting go of morning breakfast ... if you want to be free of all the secondary reactivity, maybe requires a deeper kind of, a more difficult kind of release of desire, maybe put in the context of finding our freedom even with that.
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