Of course there can be no peace while we're struggling away to put it in the future - we are anxious. The anxiety is to be sure I will get it. I've got to manage to get all these teachings in my head. And then we're a bundle of anxiety trying to be peaceful, huh? Now look, if you want to be peaceful this moment, what does it take? - just quit trying to do something else. I can get along this moment just fine, but I haven't set up a condition, you see.
We talk about ourselves being conditioned, but the funny thing is that we set the condition every moment; and when we set up conditions before I will be pleased, before I will be happy, before I will be peaceful; obviously I am conditioned then. I set it up.
So we set our conditioning day after day. Now conditioning is not something that is going to hang us up forever if we but change one thing - conditioning is all concerned with a goal, is it not? The first one is the whole purpose of living is regain or set the goal of being non disturbed by gaining pleasure and escaping pain and then we add on the rest of the four dual basic urges as we go along. So if we don't like being conditioned is to quit setting conditions.
Suppose you disapprove of me. Well if I'm going to set here and think all the "What if's" and resisting what has been said, and then I'm setting up a condition that the only way I can be peaceful is that everybody will approve of me and like me - nobody will be howling, nobody will be complaining, everybody will be pleased. Then we have set up a condition and we are what, a full size bundle of anxiety. Then would the goal be set up, unconsciously, that "I have to do this", and, "I have to do that" and, "I have to do this over here" because if I don't, I won't gain this condition that I've set to be non disturbed or peaceful.
to be continued
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