Awareness, enlightenment, Gassho, life, and attachments. What a chapter!
This is only the first week of reading "The Center Within" and this was a great chapter. I loved how simple it all was to understand. I am a big believer that the middle path is something that should be so simple to understand that people think it's anti-climatic. "Simple" should be an overstatement. The first thing that was talked about was awareness, but I prefer to use the word "understanding". Its the first part of the 8-fold path. Some say that its the most important one, because if we don't understand things, we can't move forward and learn from any of the others. We must become aware of what is happening around us. What are we feeling? Why? Is it connected to another feeling or event? Everything is interdependent, its just a matter of finding the connection. Some other crucial aspects of understanding include impermanence, acceptance, and appreciation. Enlightenment cannot be understood conceptually, it must be understood experient