Suffering. Day 4. By Christopher Titmus Light on Enlightenment.

Transcription

1 Suffering By Christopher Titmus Light on Enlightenment. Day 4 Why is there all this emphasis on suffering in Buddhism? Many thoughtful people will look at their own lives and the lives of people close to them and wonder why Buddhists make such a fuss about it. Of course there is suffering. Unimaginable suffering. We only have to watch the television news to hear horrifying accounts of the kinds of suffering taking place in this world. Happy news items do get broadcast, but they are infrequent a royal wedding, a big lottery winner, a successful manned flight into space. To dwell on all the suffering and the depths of inhumanity and depravity that people express towards each other seems both morbid and depressing. We might rightly conclude that there is enough despair and cynicism in the world already. So what are the Buddhists going on about? The reference point for Buddhists hangs on a Pali (the language that records the Buddha s teachings) word, dukkha. It means suffering but also includes the entire range of unsatisfactory experiences. These forms of experience can relentlessly haunt our lives. Success and failure, hopes and fears, ups and downs, upset the balance of our lives. We would love to be able to resolve this situation, but we don t know how. The Dharma, namely that which sheds light on enlightenment, offers the practical resources possible to resolve the problems of existence. Every one of them. There are plenty of people who live well-adjusted lives. Their emotional life is in good order, they have a good home life, good job, and good friends. Ask such people How s life? Their immediate response, Life is good. So it might be. Yet many people, even with success in the world, do not feel satisfied. They have everything emotional and physical health, financial security and yet, they continue to feel dissatisfied. The fact that others say they would give an arm and a leg to be in their position doesn t stop them from feeling that ultimately nothing is really satisfying. Even though they have nothing to complain about, they know in their heart of hearts, that they remain unfulfilled. This is dukkha. The practice and the teachings aim to resolve this dukkha completely. It is no idle claim. In the East and West, too many Buddhists view life as suffering. They take a rather depressed view of existence. Rather than admit that, they ll claim that the Buddha declared, Life is suffering. He didn t. Such a phrase never appears in the volumes of teachings attributed to the Buddha. But that has never stopped certain Buddhists from claiming that he did. He refutes

2 Suffering Page 2 stridently such nihilistic views. It is hardly surprising that Buddhists who cling to these views are attracted to personal extinction which they claim is Nirvana. The Buddha states that the Second Noble Truth (the cause of suffering) arises when the conditions are there for it to arise. Suffering cannot arise when the conditions are not there for its dependent arising. He urges us to give attention to this, to meditate and reflect on it for direct insight into the way things are. His view is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but realistic. He would consider it crude to proclaim such a grossly generalized statement as Life is suffering. Any feature of life can become associated with suffering. A royal wedding can become a bitter divorce, a lottery win can become a nightmare for a whole family, a flight into space can become filled with terror or worse. In trying to make sense of this, we can blame God, chance, destiny, others or ourselves. But this rarely brings relief. Birth, aging, pain and death commonly mean exposure to some degree of suffering and can bring anguish to our loved ones. It seems we often forget that birth invites aging, pain and death, whether we live a day, or a hundred years. In some Buddhist countries, people recite, Birth, aging, pain and death with mantra-like regularity so that they never forget that existence includes all four. Immortality of the body belongs to fanciful thinking. Why must we die? Because we are born. It s that basic. Mercifully, it is not the whole truth, as will become apparent. The worst form of suffering is hell. Famines, wars, forces of destruction, torture chambers, experiments on animals, desecration of nature all reveal hell on earth. We have no need to look any further. Yet hell also resides in the human psyche in its tortured and fragmented state. Hell is the terror of the unknown and the tyranny of the known. For some, there is no escape from hell, owing to the impersonal forces that sentient creatures endure from within and without. Hell can be known in this life or in other planes of existence. Hell manifests as a severe mental disorder. It is being trapped in the realm of suffering without knowing a way out. Besieged with torment, the individual knows of neither the means nor possibility of escape from his or her circumstances, inner or outer. There seems to be nobody around who understands, or who can help, except to offer platitudes and medication. This is hell. Fortunately, heaven also exists on earth and heaven is discoverable from within. Bliss, joy and sublime happiness reveal heaven. Heaven shows itself in love and the intimacy of human contact, in the ecstatic feeling of connection and fulfillment. Heaven shows itself in the wonders of nature, from the vastness of the night sky to the unfolding of a flower on a magical day. Heaven is in the mystical experience and the sense of wonder.

3 Suffering Page 3 Heaven and hell share common characteristics: they are both subject to arising and passing away. We may feel overwhelming relief when hell ends, and a sense of loss and disappointment when we depart from heaven. There is nothing permanent about these experiences and the self cannot produce them at will. It seems our life moves between heaven and hell and the ordinariness of human activity. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction become associated with the realms of heaven, hell and in-between. Unless we truly understand our relationship to ourselves, others, places and things, and the cycle of events between birth and death, we will define life via pleasure and pain. Mr. Jones worked as an office manager in a multi-national firm. One day at work, he received a call telling him that his house was on fire. The caller said the firemen were struggling to keep the blaze under control. My home, my possessions, my books! he cried. With lightening speed, he raced downstairs, charged with the terror of losing what he had. The receptionist yelled to him to stop but he took no notice as he ran through the revolving doors to the car park below. He had one thought on his mind the desire to get home as quickly as possible. He drove recklessly through the streets towards his house. And then the receptionist called him on his mobile phone. I m sorry, Mr. Jones, there s been a mistake. Your house is not on fire. It s the house on the opposite side of the street. Thank God, replied Mr. Jones. Fear of losing what he had, his total identification with his possessions, had made Mr. Jones drive like a madman. He did not possess those items they possessed him. When we experience some level of dissatisfaction, it may be low-level unrest, or it may be a general sense that something is wrong with the way things are. We suffer through fear, selfish desire, and anger. Suffering over not getting what we want, and suffering over losing what we have can become the primary feature of our existence. We then define these states of mind as side effects of living in the real world. The Buddha makes it absolutely clear that the veil of suffering can dissolve, that we can pierce through the dramas of personal existence. We do not have to trap ourselves in the loop of struggle and recovery. Clinging, attachment and identification with changing conditions sow the seeds for suffering. In the mess of desires and projections, we block off our capacity to recognize the forces pushing and pulling our mind around. We may not even be aware of the processes that are operating within and without. It then becomes our lot to experience varying degrees of pleasure and pain, broken by bouts of ordinariness in between.

4 Suffering Page 4 When we are aware of ourselves and the conditions around us, we are able to see and work with every manifestation of suffering. In this respect, awareness is a key to the resolution of suffering. Awareness is the element that reveals inner and outer circumstances and thus is the starting point for change. Many people initially connect with the Dharma due to their awareness of the arising of suffering, gross or subtle, inward or outward. Some wish to develop a comprehensive and wise approach to their lives. Others wish to find practical signposts to realization, or they may be happy and successful in their respective fields of activity but do not delude themselves into thinking that they have reached genuine fulfillment. The Dharma points to the end of becoming, the completion of the evolutionary process, to Nirvana. It is no small claim. We have the opportunity in this life to discover the Unborn, the Unmade, and the Undecaying. There is nothing else that compares with this. (old text shortened)

5 Suffering Page 5 Between 1970 and 1976 I was an ordained Buddhist monk in Thailand and India. For the first three years, I stayed in one monastery, Wat Chai Na, in Nakorn-sri-dhamma-raj ( Wat Chai Na means Monastery at the End of the Rice Paddy, and Nakorn-sri-dhamma-raj means City of the Kings of Dharma ). The monastery was about fifteen hours by train south from Bangkok, in a province with many terrorists. For a long lime, I was the only Western monk within three or four hours of the monastery. Being English and somewhat slow to learn a foreign language meant that I spent much of this time in utter silence, living in a hut and meditating under the trees, day and night. During the first year, a kindly Indian monk, Bhikkhu Nagasena translated the evening talks to the monks and nuns of he teacher, Ajahn Dahmmadharo, and also my personal meetings with him. After Venerable Nagasena returned to Bangkok, I had to wait for the occasional English-speaking Asian monk or visiting Western monk to come to the monastery, so that I could speak with the teacher. It was a rather severe, disciplined way of life. The teacher rejected study, books, daily chanting and conversational life. There was a single message. Meditate. Face your existence. Look at your stuff. Awaken your heart. Realize liberation. By conventional standards, some would call such a way of life hell on earth, or at least purgatory. In the voluntary deprivation of life s comforts, I either had to go deep within myself to touch the mysterious and profound, or call it a day. Throughout the year, I engaged in standing meditation every day, under a tree, for three hours from noon to 3:00 p.m. Along with sitting and walking meditation, the standing mediation became a resource for insights. Some would regard such a daily routine as extreme, but I got into the rhythm and flow of using the postures of sitting, walking, standing and reclining. They contributed to a grounding in the depth of the immediacy of things, and the seeing into the nature of the here and now. The Buddha disputes the common view that the pursuit of pleasure makes life worthwhile. Instead, he says the depths of meditation, the joy of awareness, the opening of the heart and enlightening the mind, bring fulfillment. Our practice includes learning to stand steady and clear in the face of change since much suffering arises through: 1. Not getting what we want 2. Losing what we have 3. Being separated from what we love

6 Suffering Page 6 4. Clinging and attachment to material forms, feelings, perceptions, mental states including thoughts, and consciousness. In the habitual tendency to identify with our particular activities and roles, we gradually become dependent on the results of these two things. We can also let the determinations of others affect our peace of mind, our sleep, our happiness and our contentment. The desire to please, the wish to be accepted, the determination to gain prestige, to get what we want, can dominate our consciousness. We think our survival or security depends totally on the acknowledgement of others. Not getting what we want, or losing what we have throws us back on ourselves. If we do not fall back upon wisdom and clarity, then the pit of anxiety and fear beckons. In Pali, the word for happiness is sukkha. What is considered sukkha for some people, others consider dukkha. Some consider accumulation and attachment to property, wealth and position as sukka, but the Dharma practitioner considers personal selfishness as dukkha. Mindful living becomes an invaluable tool for freeing our life from dukkha. The ability to work with suffering and dissatisfaction shows true development of mind. To made this possible, we explore through experience, each link of the Noble Eight-fold Path in our lives.