Page 31 - Dhamma Practice

25 immediately extinguish it. Do this until we gain expertise
(wasi).
Note that what we are doing is not to neglect suffering. What we are doing is to be fully aware of how suffering emerges and how to extinguish it. If we simply neglect the issues that cause suffering, the issues would accumulate and become more complicated, until we do not know how to resolve them. How do we resolve the problem? Extinguish the feeling of “self” and step back to perceive the problem. Now, try it. Think of the issue that causes suffering—then move it in front of our physical body. Next, expand our mind to be bigger than the issue and act as the “observer”. Do we feel that the issue is big or small? It is tiny. We are the one who expand the issue so that it becomes so big that it encompasses us. That is why it becomes heavy and important.
What I am teaching here, if you could do it, it would be for your own benefits—the practitioners’ benefit, not mine. Therefore, I would like you to use it often, to practice until you gain expertise and can extinguish suffering. This is because we practice vipassana in order to extinguish suffering, even for a brief moment called “dta-tang-kha”. Even this brief moment of suffering extinguishment is already very good. The next step is to consistently cultivate mindfulness in order to permanently extinguish suffering. In order to do that, we must practice intensely—to be mindful all the