OK, going to the breath, that's escape, that doesn't face it head on. You go to the physical aspects of the suffering, you see the tightening in the body, the jaw, shoulders, whatever, that's also not dealing with it straight on but that gives you some space. The person says "I get settled and the next thing I know is that I'm doing it again." What happened to the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation? It's the next step. What happened to the Five Reflections as further steps? The mindfulness work, the breath, the bodily sensations, that only stops things in the present. Which is good in itself, it is helpful, stopping the stuff in the present. But it doesn't stop it coming back in the future - unless you can stay mindful exactly 24 hours a day, every minute of every day, every day of the week. If you can stay perfectly mindful 24 hours a day you would stop things coming again in the future. But you can't, so at the best this practice of the breath and the physical aspects, that's only letting go. It enables you to let go of the Dukkha in that moment but it comes back again.
Keep in mind we have Four Great Efforts, we don't have only one. But a lot of people such as those who only do the mental noting by itself, they are doing a practice that only develops part of the Four Great Efforts. It's not going to develop Compassion, it has nothing to do with Compassion, it's just being mindful, just being mindful, just being mindful. Mindfulness has to be linked to clear comprehension to be able to understand Dukkha and where it comes from. So we need more than just mindfulness. We need to move into the reflections or Compassion/Lovingkindness when the body awareness is not strong enough to dissolve the hindrance.
The D/D method, in particular, is very good. D/D Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation is great for cutting at the roots of our hindrances. I'll say that again, it's great. The suffering you feel, open it up, see that everyone on the planet has the same sort of suffering whether big or little. We diffuse our situation with our Compassion/Lovingkindness, and we get out of the "me, me, I am the one suffering, me, me, me." Then the second half of the D/D method is to see how it can be so much worse for other people that they end up committing suicide and so on. We see that "Oh, my Dukkha is not so bad."
We have to let go of attachment to the stories, as it says at the beginning of the question, "the same painful story over and over in my head". We have to let go of the attachment to them by using wisdom. If we only let go of it by using mindfulness it's going to come back later, mindfulness is not enough. So we can open it up with the D/D method, we can open it up other things, such as other painful memories that pull us of balance. A lot of them are the old memories where "I did something that wasn't smart". That's one of the biggest painful stories that everybody has. Can we open to that old memory and realize that "I'm not that person any more." We talked about that earlier as well, 6 years old, 10 years old, 15 years old, yesterday, we're not the same person.
Now I can say to you right now I'm a person who has never gotten drunk in my life. But when I was 18 years old, 19, I got drunk a couple of times. So why is it that I can say to you I'm a person who's never gotten drunk in my life? Because that's the person who I am now, a person who has never gotten drunk. That person who I was 18, 19 years old, that's not me. I don't hold on to that being me. I came from that person but I'm not that person. If I look at my life and count back how many years it has been since I've had alcohol, I go "Oh yes, that's who I am." I can count back how many years it has been since I killed a mosquito, and so on. Then I see that, "This is the person I am today, I am a person who, doesn't kill, doesn't get drunk and so on, that's who I am today."
Now because I can say that, the memories of who I was when I wasn't that smart are not that painful anymore because I have done heaps and heaps of Compassion and Lovingkindness around that story. How many 18 years old right now are going to get drunk? How many are going to hit their best friend? I did that. I was a bit tipsy and down he went, he said something I didn't like. I'm not happy about the fact that I did it, but I'm happy about the fact that I don't do it now. That's who I was, that's were I came from, but I am a different person now. So I'm not going to feel regret now for who I was when I was 18, 19, whatever, because I've already had Compassion/Lovingkindness for him, me, and all the other 18 years old on the planet.
This resolves so many of our past stories, the past painful stories of when we were stupid, when we did something that was dumb, when we caused problems for ourselves and others. It's the Compassion/Lovingkindness that's going to open it up, soften around it, and see that we are a different human being now, that people all over the planet are doing the same thing and causing the same trouble for themselves and others. So you have to work with the Compassion/Lovingkindness and the other reflections as much as you can to resolve all these painful stories and memories we have.