The Method for Eliminating Suffering

Practicing the white-bone contemplation and the contemplation of impurity can extinguish suffering. If one contemplates the thirty-six bodily components on one's own body, wherever the contemplation reaches, that place will relax. This is because the grasping toward the object contemplated grows fainter; when the mind does not grasp, it relaxes. So the problems of the body are, in the end, problems of the mind. Once the mind is dealt with—once the mind is emptied—many problems are resolved. If a Buddhist practitioner follows conditions in daily life without deliberately pursuing things, without being picky, without grasping (upādāna), life will be easy and at ease—anything goes, it doesn't matter. When everything is left to conditions and the mind is single-pointedly on the Path, what suffering can there still be to speak of? Why is it that a person who has attained the Way has no suffering in the mind no matter how life goes? It is precisely because such a person knows that the world of the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) is empty, does not grasp at it, and uses things according to conditions—if something is there, use it; if not, it doesn't matter. 

All the suffering felt by our body and mind arises from the grasping of the manas. If there is no grasping, there is no feeling of suffering. The knots and bonds in the mind are all produced by grasping; knots and bonds are like ropes—where there are knots and bonds, there is stagnation and blockage. Without grasping, the mind and its states are open, spacious, and unobstructed: ascending to heaven or entering the earth, all according to my wish. When you experience a feeling of suffering, you should reflect: what have I grasped at that brought about this suffering? All suffering has a cause. Only by finding the cause and resolving the cause is there a way to extinguish the fruit of suffering.