You can try looking for a peaceful place and, maybe, you find your Shangri-La and live happily ever after … but it’s more likely you’ll discover the American Air Force has low-flying jet practice over Shangri-La or the people in Shangri-La are so high-minded they never clean the toilets! There’s always a snake in the garden, or a worm in the apple; there’s always going to be something un-peaceful about the conditioned realm.
It’s the same with the idea of finding Prince Charming or Cinderella: ‘Once I meet the right person, then I will live happily ever after.’ That’s an illusion too. So with no place to go, nobody to save you and fulfil you, and nothing you can do about it, you could end up creating a world all of your own – living in a kind of deranged mental state. It isn’t through any objective realm, through thought, perception or through the material realm that you’ll find the way out of suffering, but in transcending it. Transcendence doesn’t mean escaping or rejecting suffering, but moving to that still centre of being where there’s perspective and receptivity to the conditioned realm. There’s no longer any identification with the objective conditioned realm.
Ajahn Sumedho
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