I found this video very helpful and inspiring. Tolle has a slightly different way of talking about the quest for inner liberation from the way I'm used to hearing it. Nevertheless it strikes me as authentic and to the point. Eckhart Tolle doesn't describe himself as a "Buddhist" but, from what I can tell from his talks, what he realized is essentially what the Buddha was teaching: the gateway to liberation is through carefully examining the experience of dukkha (ie suffering or stress or dissatisfaction) in the only way that it can be known directly: in the here and now. Contemplating the dissatisfaction in any other mode necessarily involves memory and speculation, both of which are unstable and subject to doubt. Doubt, whatever its apparent cause, is a state in which the mind is in motion, shaking, agitated, unsettled. Relying on memory and conjecture as a reference point, one cannot possibly attain inner stillness. And without that stillness and the clarity that comes with it, how could one summon the courage to relinquish all one's attachments - the prerequisite for the realization of the so-called "Deathless", "Unconditioned", "Nibbana", "Nirvana", "God", "Jesus", "Allah", "Being", "Highest Good", "Highest Happiness", or [your label here]?
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