I.7 — Where It Hurts

Take one specific suffering — today's, if there is one. Not the whole of your life, only one sore place.

Follow it inward. Under the story about what happened is a wanting, and under the wanting is a hand closed on something: on how things should have gone, on a person's regard, on a self that should not have been seen like that. Keep following until you reach the clench. It is always there, and it is always more specific than the pain that led you to it.

This is the second thing to notice, after the friction itself: the friction has a location, and the location is a grip. The stone in the shoe is not the whole road. It is a stone, in one place, and it can be found.

Finding it does not remove it. That comes later, and comes by itself, in its own time. For now the test is only this: take the sore place and trace it down. If you reach the bottom and there is no holding-on there, this teaching has failed for you today, and you should say so. If there is one, you have found the place where the rest of the work happens.