Our tendency in life is to focus on things that don’t really satisfy us. They just give us a temporary relief from our craving. But what would happen if we were to put our attention on to a technique that helped us to remove the craving all together? Then we wouldn’t need to work so hard to satisfy it all the time. When we put too much attention on external gratification we become narrow minded. We don’t see the big picture which is that there is a way to destroy craving from its root so that it doesn’t grow back again. Insight meditation helps us to gain perspective on our lives so that we can see that we already have everything that we need to be happy.
When I was a little boy, I used to dream about what life would be like when I got older. I would think about what kind of job would I be doing, what kind of toys I would be able to buy myself and what kinds of foods I would be able to eat whenever I wanted. Now that I’m an adult and and it’s time for those dreams to be a reality, I have accepted that things didn’t turn out the way I envisioned. I’m not a professional baseball player, I don’t like to play with toys or video games and I know now that, if I want to stay healthy, I can’t eat whatever I want. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the here and now. It just means that I need to change my perspective from that of a child to one of an adult. If we’re always focused on what tomorrow can bring or the way things were before, then there will never be alignment between what we want and what we have.
That’s where insight meditation comes to the rescue. By acknowledging and continually bringing the mind back into the present moment, we can remind ourselves of all of the things that we are able to enjoy without having to worry about the future or lament the past. When we are able to pull back and look at the bigger picture of the way things are now then we don’t have to be trapped in a fear about whether we are going to get that next great thing that we think we want. And that is the kind of happiness that we wish for you. It’s the kind of happiness that, once you’re trained, you don’t have to wait for. You can have it in the present moment.