It Gets Worse

Before it Gets Better

A word of warning. We’ve touched on this, but it bears repeating, emphatically. When you start a regular meditation practice, you may not be very happy with the results at the outset. There seems to be abroad in the land the belief that Buddhism is a route to happiness, and it is. But the route to happiness goes through some pretty scary territory. We discussed the forces of Mara attacking the Buddha as he was on the cusp of complete enlightenment. The traditional texts treat the forces of Mara as actual demons that beset Shakyamuni to deter him from achieving…