Shaila Catherine

“You can save yourself a lot of anguish by investigating your response to the fundamental qualities of pleasure and pain. If you are unmindful of a pleasant feeling, the underlying tendency to greed gets activated. If you are unmindful of an unpleasant feeling, the underlying tendency to aversion gets activated. If you are unmindful of a neutral feeling, the underlying tendency to delusion gets activated.11 People commonly try to increase the pleasant, react against the unpleasant, and are dulled, confused, or inattentive to the neutral feelings. A skillful meditator will develop the flexibility to direct awareness to these subtler layers of experience and investigate the interaction of pleasure and greed, pain and aversion, neutrality and delusion.”
― Shaila Catherine, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity

“There are two kinds of happiness; the kind to be pursued and the kind to be avoided,” the Buddha said.“When I observed that in the pursuit of such happiness, unwholesome factors increased and wholesome factors decreased, then that happiness was to be avoided. When I observed that in the pursuit of such happiness unwholesome factors decreased and wholesome ones increased, then that happiness was to be sought after.”7 The Buddha asks us: What pursuits lead to wholesome forces developing? And what pursuits lead to unwholesome forces thriving? The Buddha was a proponent of an efficient, long-term, sustainable approach to happiness, never settling for resigned acceptance of limited conventional comforts.”
― Shaila Catherine, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity