The following is a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Desire Blocks Happiness”
I don’t know how many times people have come to me and said, “Gosh, I’m so excited about this path! I would love to practice this path. It seems so wonderful! I’m so excited about this path. But you know, that’s like me. I always get really excited about things, and I jump into them; and I get really on fire, and then I burn out real quick. But maybe this one is different! This could be it!” Well, you know, that’s the example that I can give you that I see again and again and again and again. But people are like that about everything! Whenever we get a new object, we get real excited about it, or we become attached to it; and we think this is the thing that is going to make us happy. But it isn’t. Or we get a new relationship, and we just get all in love, and in friendship, and whatever it is, enamored. And then we think, “Oh, this is going to be the one that makes a difference!” And then, well it does, but it isn’t. It really isn’t.
What are we actually seeing? First of all, we’re actually seeing the faults of cyclic existence. What begins must end. What goes up must come down. What causes us to be supremely elated must also cause disappointment. What comes together must result in separation. That is the fault of cyclic existence. That is its quality. We’re seeing the reflection of the condition of cyclic existence. More than that, we are seeing the reflection of our own mind. Our own mind. Our own mind has within it the karma, or cause and effect set-up, if you will, to be able to experience that kind of thing again and again and again. That is our habitual tendency. We are suffering from a kind of inflammation of the mind. The mind is inflamed. Interestingly, the very thing that causes us to be so inflamed by some new toy, you know, some new relationship, some new thing that comes into our life, some new event, some new job, some new spiritual path, some new idea… Something that comes into our mind that causes us to be so oh, gosh! everything’s going to be different now! So breathlessly excited. Everything that comes into our mind like that, that quality of inflammation. And it is like an inflammation, isn’t it? We become all puffed up and red like inflammations. That quality of inflammation is the same quality that will actually lead to the downfall of that particular circumstance to satisfy us, because that very inflammation is an indication of the instability of our minds.
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