~ Epilogue ~
The ‘chaotic’ element caught my attention, and also (in particular) the ‘contentment’ word of…
In my head ‘contentment’ and ‘gratitude’ are at least cousins; I’ve been deliberately practicing gratitude practice this year and found it very liberating. Long story short, my Buddhist baby steps for the last year focused on correct effort and it got interesting once I started paying attention to the 2 x proactive / preventative ones; again a thumbs up for this concept of nutriments, groundwork and cultivation instead of waiting for a crisis.
For what it’s worth, yesterday I searched SC for ‘Contentment’ and found AN6.114. Honestly, I assumed it was some kind of monk inhouse joke passed down for 2500 years and went to bed. This morning though eating brekky I put a brutally summarized version on my whiteboard…
I thought about it during the day but couldn’t figure out why they’d bother saying essentially “The solution to not being content is to be content” - there had to be something more to it. And why are they ‘the triads’ and not ‘the one-ads’? i.e. there are relationships implied here. Then I started thinking that with some poetic interpretation, development of any one mind state could perhaps be said to favor prevention of a lack (of the other two). I revised my attempted summary…
“Done” I said and began dinner. No, not done. Firstly, the diagram no longer accurately represents what the sutta actually says!! Second, if I want to live ‘minimalism’ (inc. thoughts) then this diagram is too complicated.
After dinner, I realized I was fundamentally approaching this the wrong way. Cultivate contentment, situational awareness and having few wants, that’s the take-home message shown here in ANarchy-friendly format:
