Right.
Absolutely, these are issues that, the first one is an issue that most people in the world have to deal with, except hermits living in caves.
And the second one is one of these difficult situations that is somewhat unique to the individual, so it's something that you have to deal with that many other people do not.
Which leads to its own extra layer of issues.
But that's how I would generally suggest to approach your issues.
Approach them layer by layer.
Focus on what is clearest in your mind.
And get it clear in your mind.
Get a clear understanding of the different layers to it.
So the first layer
with the vision problems is maybe well one layer will be maybe for some people feeling sorry for yourself because you have the problem and someone else doesn't have and normal people don't have the problem part of it might be the anxiety of being around other people who don't have this problem maybe having to wear special glasses that make you stand out or having to answer all sorts of questions or
having to be led around by a dog or carry a cane or so on or whatever.
So there will be these extra layers to the problem before you can actually get to your own acceptance of it, actually get to the problem.
Same would go with relationships.
So when the relationship ends,
you feel sad about the relationship, but that can lead to depression.
It can lead to self-loathing.
It can lead to even self-hatred when you can be angry at yourself.
You're angry at yourself for what you didn't do to maintain the relationship.
You can start obsessing over what you could have done to save the relationship.
You can start obsessing over how bad your life is now that you're not in the relationship.
And once you start to see how this affects you, you can even start getting upset about how your level of upset is affecting your life.
So you can see there's layer upon layer and it actually can become a feedback loop until it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and something that was simply a sadness can turn into a real neurosis.
so it's important first to take everything by layer by layer and second or maybe first thing is to separate it out into individual experiences so instead of looking at anything as an issue as a problem try to see what's going on right now right because we are not atomic
And the word atom means something that is indivisible.
So actually the atom isn't atomic.
But if you don't understand the word atomic, atomic means something that is indivisible.
But we are divisible.
And all of our experience, all of our situations, all the issues in our life are also divisible.
They're not atomic.
They can be broken up into individual parts.
So if you have a problem, say, with mourning or sadness, or if you have a problem with low self-esteem, and you say, so I have low self-esteem, you're talking about an atom, you're talking about an issue, something that is this, right?
And once it's this, you can't do anything with that, unless you've got a cure for this, which we don't have.
then you can't fix it.
And why we don't have a cure is because it actually is not real.
It's a concept in your mind that you create out of a series of things that do exist.
So if you want to come to an actual
solution in reality you have to focus on that which exists now what exists are experiences so right now you might have an experience of sadness right now you might have an experience of pain and of an experience of tension
You might have an experience of anger.
You might have an experience of happiness when you remember all the good things you did with the person.
Happiness and then sadness when you realize you can't have it or you can't actually go any further with it as far as indulging in the pleasure of being with the person who you love.
and so on.
You will also have simple experiences, like with the vision problem, it means you will have experiences where you realize that you can't see something, so you have to look at something, someone puts something in front of you, you can't see it, for example.
That is actually just an objective experience, there's nothing wrong with that until you say to yourself, that's bad, until you get upset by it.
So, there's individual sequences, there's individual experiences in sequence.
And once you can understand these, then you can put them into layers, and you can see what is in this layer, what is in this layer, and then you can slowly break up the layers.
Start with the top layer, you know, your guilt about whatever the situation is or whatever, how you feel about the situation.
And once you can break that apart, then actually look at the situation like the sadness or the frustration at having a business or the guilt or the low self-esteem.
That's really the essence of the Buddha's teaching.
You know, when they had this big debate about
I want to say 500 years after the Buddha passed away.
I can't, I don't, my history is not that good, but it's kind of shameful actually.
I should know all this.
But whenever they made the Kattawatu, this book in the Abhidhamma,
would have been the third Buddhist council, which would have been maybe 300 years after the Buddha passed away.
I can't remember now.
Anyway, the thing was, they had all these bogus monks who were saying the Buddha taught this, the Buddha taught that.
And finally, there was one monk who was able to say what the Buddha taught.
And he said, what sort of monk was the Buddha?
The Buddha was a Vibhajavadi.
one who claims or who teaches, who exhorts people to break things up.
Vibhajya means to dissect and to break into constituent parts.
So basically the five aggregates or the six senses or the elements or those
pieces the building blocks that make up reality because if you can do that then you can solve all of your problems because you come to see actually that they're not problems they're just experiences and you come to see how this react way of reacting is useless that way of reacting is useless so eventually you stop reacting in ways that bring suffering to you or to other people because you see that they're they're unbeneficial they're harmful
that's general and it's sort of relating to what you experience so hopefully that helps wishing you all the best obviously practicing meditation helps so one thing you might
try to look at is the attachment to self and the idea that this is me, this is mine.
You might say in the West, ego, the idea of something that's causing me pain.
And when you identify with the pain, instead of just experiencing it, now this is pain,
seeing it just as an experience, when you have that ego attached, it makes all your problems much worse.
Instead of pain, now it's my pain, it's something that's on me, something that I have to bear, which makes it much, much worse, instead of just saying, oh, this is pain.
It might be painful, but it will come and it will go.
Once it's your pain, then it's a problem because then you get angry about it and upset and frustrated as to why does my life have to be this way and so on and so on.
The whole ego, the I, if you can let that go, that's great.
Obviously, practicing meditation, best way to do it.
Try reading my booklet if you haven't already.
I recommend that as a resource.
How to Meditate by Yuta Damo.
Look it up.