Hurt me plenty

One way we can think about lay life is akin to a hardcore difficulty mode in a computer game. When we ratchet up the difficulty in a trial, it shows us our weaknesses. Each failure prunes the tree of our possible responses—if we are careful to keep track—until only the optimal paths remain, within the limitations of a situation. When the kids are screaming in the car, when there is strife at work, and loss, and exhaustion, and despair, then perhaps the hidden enemies of lobha, dosa, and moha (greed, hostility, and delusion) are goaded out into the open. After the test, if we don’t simply try to distract ourselves, if we're awake in the middle watch of the night and look within, we see these tendencies, these hostile urges, and by holding them in simple awareness they are gradually healed.

In Indian traditions, this is spoken of as an army within an impregnable fortress that rushes out in battalions to attack those without. Each time it does so, the battalion is surrounded and destroyed. Slowly, over time, the host within the garrison is diminished until none remain. In a way...

It is when we are weakest that the battle is won.

In computer science, solutions to problems are often judged on their worst-case performance rather than their best. Perhaps it is the same with us. Rather than our highest potential we should first look to raise our lowest. When we think of this in terms of the Buddha’s second noble truth—dukkhasamudayaariyasacca—on the arising of suffering. This states that when there is craving for pleasant experiences, craving not to have unpleasant experiences, and craving to become (to be a certain way, to have status for example), then there is suffering. But perhaps we can also reverse engineer this to see that when there is suffering that’s when the underlying problem—the vestiges of greed, hostility, and our unwillingness to acknowledge these—can finally be seen and healed.