“In our meditation practice we look at life as it manifests inwardly. We can see situations that took place this morning, or yesterday, or ten years ago. We can see the feelings that remain from residues of the past, and from the present as well. We can learn a lot of information about the way we respond to life and the residues of our actions. The clearer the mirror, the clearer we are, the more we become aware of what manifests within.
And then we have the external world, our everyday life, our interaction with people and the situations of our daily life. This mirrors something else – or what seems to be something else, but actually, the more we practise, the more we realize that what manifests externally mirrors what’s going on internally.
Once you understand this it’s a lot easier to deal with life, because you see very clearly that the world which arises in ourselves is what manifests externally.
Until we see this we may feel we don’t have many choices, but the more clearly we see it, the easier it is to transform our life for the better, so that we can be a little kinder, a little bit more helpful to ourselves and other people, a little more readily generous.”
~Ajahn Sundara