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[Alexandr Korol]

And that lack of conviction and trust — that’s doubt. So you can do anything for a person: bring them apples, paint their fence — and instead of thanking you, they’ll still doubt you and think maybe you’re a bad person. Can you imagine? And you’re left wondering how that can be. After all, unlike other people, you didn’t do anything bad to them — but those who did treat them badly, they don’t doubt them. Yet you, the one who painted the fence and gave them apples, they start suspecting and doubting you, and thinking that you’re the bad one. And that’s how people suffer their whole lives — I would now say, from life to life. From life to life people suffer, they are born and they die, traveling through all these simulations — these multiverses, these virtual realities. And the computer adjusts everything again so they might somehow, let’s say, extract a lesson and then behave differently going forward.

“Etymology. According to Gil Fronsdal, in Pali the term nīvaraṇa means covering. Fronsdal states that these hindrances obscure the clarity of our mind and our ability to be attentive, wise, focused, and purposeful. In the Rhys Davids dictionary, the Pali term nīvaraṇa refers to a hindrance or obstacle only in the ethical sense.” But also, if we’re talking about these hindrances, about concentration — back when I was awakened, at 19, and for several years after that, I remember clearly that when I first appeared like that, I could see how so many people had such strange fluctuations in their moods and internal feelings and thoughts. A person could start something and abandon it an hour later, or drop it the next day. They could become disappointed in their friend, or their partner, or in a hobby they had chosen — all in a single day. And each time it was one illusion, then another, then a third. They’d start something, then quit something, and couldn’t concentrate on anything. And it’s as if, just as illusions pull a person away from something, that person is also dependent on those illusions — because only through them can they concentrate or focus on anything. That is, just as illusions scatter a person, they also gather and center them. I saw how a person could get fascinated — fall under the influence of an illusion and become enchanted by something. And in that moment of temporary illusion, of enchantment, of being spellbound, the person might do something for a day or two or a week. But then the spell would fade — the illusion would lift — and that was it, the person would