Siebe wrote:
“In the end there are no bad or evil and good persons, only ignorant and wise persons.”
I don’t know why I missed this yesterday. Very well said! Couldn’t agree more! That is the great message that one can get from reading the background stories of the Dhammapada verses or other suttas.
So the following will be long. I apologize. It is for Siebe and others who are in similar situations. In case it could help you or anyone else, I thought I’d give more time/effort into describing on what helped me.
Siebe, in your posts you have hinted a few times your circumstances aren’t the best. I read them as a calling out for help. And now that I know that you suffer from something like PTSS, it makes sense. I’m so sorry you have to suffer this.
From this older forum topic: Painful and pleasant practice forum topic , you brought up the sutta on the 4 modes of practise. Where the difficulty and speed of one’s practise of the Path is listed.
1) Hard and slow
2) Hard but fast
3) Easy but slow
4) Easy and fast
You said you think that 1 probably applies to you. I probably belong to either 1 or 2. Kind of like hard mode in videogames. But regardless of which mode it is, no matter how hard it is, no matter how many times we fall or mess up(not being perfect in our sila), or how far away our moment of magga phala is, the main thing to do is to continue striving. If it is indeed hard mode, attaining magga phala will feel that much better.
I have no idea of exactly knowing what you’ve been through or what your daily struggles are like, and it would be wrong of me to do so. We really have no idea what others could be going through. But I can sort of relate to the phenomena of having harmless everyday insignificant sense inputs causing stress on one’s mind, in your case a loud slamming door, in my case silly things like hearing someone sneezing/picking or blowing their nose/or not washing their hands long enough in the bathroom is enough to ruin my day sometimes, to the point that it will become the recurrent topic I’ll keep thinking about for the rest of the day, come back when I’m trying to contemplate. Fearing that I’ll encounter more similar inputs, I lock myself in my room for most of the day so my mind does not max out on stress. This has been going on for the past 6 years and continuing.
On my practise, it has impacted me the following ways:
1) My momentary focus on everyday things was bad. Example: when wearing my socks, brushing my teeth, brushing my hair, opening fridge door, I would not focus on that task at hand, I’d do all these activities while thinking about numerous other topics, jumping from one topic to another.
2) Even formal breath meditation(which is recommended for those with ocd/anxiety disorders) is difficult. I can’t successfully focus on consecutive breaths.
3) My body is always clenched/tense, especially in abdomen area. As if always on flight or fight setting.
Thus tapa(heat/agitation of the mind) is quite high and recurrent for most of my day, especially when I leave my room or house.