Mind, Suffering and Reality

Having read that book by Ven. Walpola I think an important understanding has emerged. Consider this:

Have you a memory of something that causes you distress, worry or suffering? OK remember it now and suffer a bit.

Doesn't the argument go like this: I have remembered something that has really happened, or is really happening. Because it is real, it means that is exists whether I remember it of forget it. Because the memory causes me suffering, it means that the thing causes me suffering; and because the thing is real then the suffering is real, well founded and should remain with me.

What this line of reasoning hides from us is a very, very, very important fact: we don't suffer when we forget about it. When we are asleep the memory stops and we don't suffer. If we were to die; the same. Even if we are distracted by something else, the mind is no longer on the object of suffering and it stops.

What this should point out to us (when we are correctly alerted to it as Walpola does) is that the suffering is not created by the thing but by the memory, and the suffering and the memory (like the thing) are temporary things which arise and decay. They are not eternal.

There are 2 profound points here. (1) That it is the mind, not the reality, where the suffering is created and happens. (2) That there is a higher reality which transcends the separate arising and decaying moments of our minds.

Switching for a second to the Abrahamic view this parallels the difference between God and devil. God is the higher reality which transcends the momentary arising and decayings and exists at all times and in all places, while any particular devil comes and goes and is only ever causing suffering at one place and time.

The problem of sin then is no longer the view of absolute evils that have been committed either in our personal hisories or in world histories, but rather the attachments that caused those evils which persist through history as long as we don't learn, and the attachments to memories which do the same.

Wisdom saves us from wrong doing. Most importantly humility and acknowledgement of wrong doing and suffering (both our own and others) . Repentence and forgiveness being the way of the wise. Denial and justification the way of the ignorant.