In the Kalama Suta, the Buddha's path is said to be beautiful at the beginning, the

middle, and at the end.

I always interpret a way to mean in my own practice the beginning was and is and

continues to be the stress reduction of having in my life a meditation practice be having a source of

happiness that is coming from within a way to detach from the dramas and the busyness of life, a break in life.

Stress reduction is very important.

And then for me the middle was all that work I did and continued to do of opening up to dark,

shadowy passengers in my emotional life and to create a safe container to hold the woundings that have happened and continue to happen in life and have a way to process emotions safely rather than to run away from feeling life.

And so that for me was the middle.

And the end is nirvana and awakening.

It's good to know what the goal is and to understand a little bit about what the end product or the direction that we're heading in, the top of the mountains of speed.

So there's two words to first know.

Nirvana, which is in Polyneinibana that state that is free of needless suffering.

A Buddha said that in life we're all going to have inevitable forms of suffering.

The first noble truth, he says we're all going to know old age,

sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, grief to spare.

We're all going to know physical pain. We're going to know separation from people we love.

And we're going to be stuck sometimes with people we don't like so much.

Hate to break it to you.

So that's going to happen, but then we generally make it worse by taking it personally and thinking that all this stuff is our fault somehow and then we try to escape. And then we make it worse by trying to avoid the inevitable.

We try to avoid feeling the sadness that's inevitable in life.

We try to numb ourselves or use avoidance strategies and all those things

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