Yogi: I have been unemployed for some time – I had to write lots of applications and received lots of rejections. At the same time, I had to look for a new flat; and it was the same thing.
There’s a feeling of not being good about myself.
Sayadaw: Everybody has some difficulties in their lives, but when they start to pile up, and the mind hasn’t a way to deal with it, then it can really destabilize the mind and some people get depressed.
The main culprit is view – whether we have wrong view or right view. When a situation happens, do we identify with it – that view is important.
Everything in the world is based on conditions. We don’t get something because we want it, but only when the right conditions come together.
If you see that that is the nature of it – we don’t get a job because the conditions for that job don’t fit us, when we see that it is the conditions that are not right – it is easier not to identify with it and blame yourself.
We do what we just have to do. When there are a lot of difficulties in our life and we don’t see the reality of it, which is that the conditions are not right, it is easy to blame ourselves because we don’t know what to blame anymore.
There is actually no need to blame anything; it is just conditions that need to come together. It is useful if we already understand that conditions are needed for something to happen.
If we understand that principle, we can also not be so identified with it.