Question on Buddhism
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Below is my short understanding of buddism, followed by a question I have. Hope the experts can give me more clarity in this area.
1st noble truth, life is suffering.
2nd noble truth, life is suffering because we desire or crave for something we do not have, etc.
We become attached to the "thing" we desire. We are happy when we have it, we suffer when we lose it.
So to be truthly happy, we must not be attached to whatever things in life.
My question: Happiness and suffering are two extremes on the same scale. If one had never experience suffering, one would not know what happiness is. It is relative. So according to buddha's teaching, we have to understand the noble truths, and follow the path to enlightment in order to be eternally happy. But if you had never desire, crave or have attachment to something you want, how do you know what is happiness?
People who follow buddism from the day they''re born, how do they know what's happiness?
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The an old chinese saying that roughly goes "you must have had endured hunger, before you appreciate delicious food." -
I dunno what you are saying, because you are not asking a question.
you are asking and explaining all by urself dude
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Originally posted by airgrinder:
in an existence, you have birth, sickness, old age and finally death.
[b]Below is my short understanding of buddism, followed by a question I have. Hope the experts can give me more clarity in this area.
1st noble truth, life is suffering.
2nd noble truth, life is suffering because we desire or crave for something we do not have, etc.
We become attached to the "thing" we desire. We are happy when we have it, we suffer when we lose it.
So to be truthly happy, we must not be attached to whatever things in life.
My question: Happiness and suffering are two extremes on the same scale. If one had never experience suffering, one would not know what happiness is. It is relative. So according to buddha's teaching, we have to understand the noble truths, and follow the path to enlightment in order to be eternally happy. But if you had never desire, crave or have attachment to something you want, how do you know what is happiness?
People who follow buddism from the day they''re born, how do they know what's happiness?
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The an old chinese saying that roughly goes "you must have had endured hunger, before you appreciate delicious food."
[/b]
when you are born, you are brought up and be educated, then find a good career and then marry and start a family. along the way, you are struck by cancer and have 1 year to live. you and your wife are estranged, and you have a very fussy boss in office.
happiness and sufferings 2 of the are the 8 conditions of life. when you die, where will you go, do you know? knowing the vissisitudes of life, will you not seek a light? -
Originally posted by airgrinder:
What is Suffering in the Buddhist context? Is the Suffering a Universal Suffering that everyone experiences or individual experiences of suffering?
[b]Below is my short understanding of buddism, followed by a question I have. Hope the experts can give me more clarity in this area.
1st noble truth, life is suffering.
2nd noble truth, life is suffering because we desire or crave for something we do not have, etc.
We become attached to the "thing" we desire. We are happy when we have it, we suffer when we lose it.
So to be truthly happy, we must not be attached to whatever things in life.
My question: Happiness and suffering are two extremes on the same scale. If one had never experience suffering, one would not know what happiness is. It is relative. So according to buddha's teaching, we have to understand the noble truths, and follow the path to enlightment in order to be eternally happy. But if you had never desire, crave or have attachment to something you want, how do you know what is happiness?
People who follow buddism from the day they''re born, how do they know what's happiness?
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The an old chinese saying that roughly goes "you must have had endured hunger, before you appreciate delicious food."
[/b]
Where does the Buddhist's Suffering comes from? -
I thought you should be very well verse in this?Originally posted by casino_king:What is Suffering in the Buddhist context? Is the Suffering a Universal Suffering that everyone experiences or individual experiences of suffering?
Where does the Buddhist's Suffering comes from? -
Suffering is one of the characteristics of existence. But it is more subtle than people usually think. Suffering even has to do with compassion (coupled with confusion).
Again I am in China and have no time to elaborate. I will paste this for everyone's reading:
The Three Characteristics of Existence (Must read!)Originally posted by An Eternal Now:
[b]SUFFERING
The next characteristic is suffering or unsatisfactoriness. Sounds grim or pessimistic at first, and perhaps deservedly so in one sense, but it is also a powerful statement that our moment-to-moment experience will not permanently satisfy ever. It will never happen. Why? Because everything is impermanent, that's one reason why! I just said that nothing lasts, meaning that you can actually experience everything that you normally think of as a solid world arising and passing instant to instant. So what could last for even the blink of an eye to satisfy? Nothing!
The point is not to be a radical, pessimistic, nihilistic cynic. The point is that it is not a thing that will help, but an understanding of something in the relationship to things. There is no thought, mind state or whatever which will do it. This is not to say that conventional day-to-day wisdom, such as taking care of ourselves and others, isn't also quite important: it very much is. Remember that awakening is not a thing or a mind state or a thought, it is an understanding of perspective without some separate thing that perceives.
There is a great relieving honesty in the truth of suffering. It can be very validating of the actual experience of our life and also give us the strength to look into the aspects of life that we typically try to ignore and run from. Even some deep and useful insights can be distinctly unpleasant, contrary to popular belief!
There is more to this truth, and it relates to the third characteristic, no-self. We are caught up in this bizarre habit of assuming that there is an “I.” Yet the definition of this seemingly permanent thing has to keep constantly changing to keep up the illusion in an impermanent world. This takes up a lot of mental time and is continually frustrating to the mind, as it takes so much constant work and effort. This process is called ignorance, i.e. the illusion of an “I” and thus that everything else is “not I.”
This is the illusion of duality, and the illusion of duality is inherently painful. There is just something disconcerting about the way the mind must hold itself and the information it must work to ignore in order to maintain the sense that there is a permanent and continuous self. Maintaining it is painful and its consequences for reactive mind states are also painful. It is a subtle, chronic pain, like a vague nausea. It is a distortion of perspective that we have grown so used to that we hardly notice it most of the time. The suffering caused by continually trying to prop up the illusion of duality is fundamental suffering. This definition of suffering is the one that is most useful for insight practices.
To actually feel moment to moment this quality of reality can be hard to do, not because suffering is so hard to find (it has actually been said to be the easiest of the three to tune into), but because it takes a certain amount of bravery. Yet, it is so well worth it. If we finally wake up to this quality of suffering we will effortlessly let it go, drop it like a hot coal that we have finally realized we were holding. It really works like that, and letting go in this way means being free.
Investigate your experience and see if you can be open to that fundamental, non-story based aspect of your bare experience that is somehow unsettling, unpleasant, or unsatisfactory. It can be found to some degree in every instant regardless of whether it is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Once you have some mental stability, you can even look into the bare experience of the sensations that make up the stories that spin in your mind and see how unsatisfactory and unsettling it is to try to pretend they are a self or the property of some imagined self. If we continue to habituate ourselves to this understanding moment to moment we may get it into our thick heads and finally awaken.
My favorite exercise for examining suffering is to sit in a quite place with my eyes closed and examine the physical sensations that make up any sort of desire, be it desire to get something, get away from something or just tune out and go to sleep. At a rate of one to ten times per second, I try to experience exactly how I know that I wish to do something other than simply face my current experience as it is. Moment to moment, I try to find those little uncomfortable urges and tensions that try to prod my mind into fantasizing about past or future or stopping my meditation entirely.
For that meditation period, they are my prey and nourishment, opportunities to understand something extraordinary about reality, and so I do my very best to let none of them arise and pass without the basic sense of dissatisfaction in them being clearly perceived as it is. I turn on sensations of the desire to get results, turn on the pains and unsettling sensations that make my mind contract, turn on the boredom that is usually aversion to suffering in disguise, turn on the sensations of restlessness that try to get me to stop meditating. Anything with fear or judgment in it is my bread and butter for that meditation period. Any sensation that smacks of grandiosity or self-loathing is welcomed as a source of wisdom.
A half hour to an hour of this sort of consistent investigation of suffering is also quite a workout, particularly as we spend most of our lives doing anything but looking to these sorts of sensations to gain insight from them. However, I have found that this sort of investigation pays off in ways I could never have imagined.
Looking into unsatisfactoriness may not sound as concrete as the thing about vibrations, but I assure you it is. Even the most pleasant sensations have a tinge of unsatisfactoriness to them, so look for it at the level of bare experience. Pain is a gold mine for this. I am absolutely not advocating cultivating pain, as there is already enough there. Just knowing in each precise instant how you actually know that pain is unsatisfactory can be profound practice. Don't settle for just the knee jerk answer that “of course pain is unsatisfactory.” Know exactly how you know this in each moment, but don't get lost in stories about it. This is bare reality, ultimate reality we're talking about. Just be with it, engage with it, and know it as it is at a very simple level. [/b] -
There is a detailed explaination on the four noble truth in this forum:Originally posted by neutral_onliner:Thus, the central Teaching of the Buddha, around which all other teachings revolve is the Four Noble Truths:
1. That all forms of being, human and otherwise, are afflicted with suffering.
2. That the cause of this suffering is Craving, born of the illusion of a soul
3. That this suffering has a lasting end in the Experience of Enlightenment (Nibbana) which is the complete letting go of the illusion of soul and all consequent desire and aversion.
4. That this peaceful and blissful Enlightenment is achieved through a gradual training, a Path which is called the Middle Way or the Eightfold Path.
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http://www.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=185275 -
Originally posted by airgrinder:
Eh.. i find it werid that you asked: pple who is buddhist from the day they are born ( assuming you are refering to people who are born in buddhist family ), how do "they" know what is happiness?
[b]Below is my short understanding of buddism, followed by a question I have. Hope the experts can give me more clarity in this area.
1st noble truth, life is suffering.
2nd noble truth, life is suffering because we desire or crave for something we do not have, etc.
We become attached to the "thing" we desire. We are happy when we have it, we suffer when we lose it.
So to be truthly happy, we must not be attached to whatever things in life.
My question: Happiness and suffering are two extremes on the same scale. If one had never experience suffering, one would not know what happiness is. It is relative. So according to buddha's teaching, we have to understand the noble truths, and follow the path to enlightment in order to be eternally happy. But if you had never desire, crave or have attachment to something you want, how do you know what is happiness?
People who follow buddism from the day they''re born, how do they know what's happiness?
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The an old chinese saying that roughly goes "you must have had endured hunger, before you appreciate delicious food."
[/b]
what do u really mean here? A normal human being could feel pain, sad, happiness, joy feelings.
It's a simple question that applies to everyone, regardless whether are you are a buddhist. Life is impermanent and ever-changing, and any happiness that we enjoy is unstable. So what if one day you lose there source of happiness (loved one, money, status,gf or bf etc ?)
Will u feel grief, saddness, anger, regret, ill-willness and other emotions ?
Where does happiness, sad, grief sprung from?
Refer to the link i have sent to you and the four noble truths. -
guess i was not clear in my initial post.
One have to experience sadness before they can appreciate happiness. One have to be poor before knowing what is to be rich. For someone who is born, and start practising buddhism immediately, how will he know if he had achieve eternal happiness if, in the first place he did not experience suffering?
So are you saying to be eternally happy, one must not have desire, must not have attachment to things he want, people like? I thought life is more interesting only if there are ups and downs. -
happiness is also a form of insatisfactory.Originally posted by airgrinder:guess i was not clear in my initial post.
One have to experience sadness before they can appreciate happiness. One have to be poor before knowing what is to be rich. For someone who is born, and start practising buddhism immediately, how will he know if he had achieve eternal happiness if, in the first place he did not experience suffering?
So are you saying to be eternally happy, one must not have desire, must not have attachment to things he want, people like? I thought life is more interesting only if there are ups and downs.
you know those old people who keep talking to themselves in public? thats the result of too much ups and downs in their life. -
Originally posted by airgrinder:
You have raised a very important question.
My question: Happiness and suffering are two extremes on the same scale. If one had never experience suffering, one would not know what happiness is. It is relative. So according to buddha's teaching, we have to understand the noble truths, and follow the path to enlightment in order to be eternally happy. But if you had never desire, crave or have attachment to something you want, how do you know what is happiness?
People who follow buddism from the day they''re born, how do they know what's happiness?
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The an old chinese saying that roughly goes "you must have had endured hunger, before you appreciate delicious food."
[/b]
If happiness/pleasure and sadness/suffering are relative to each other, then without suffering, there can't be happiness. Then what are Buddhists really aiming for?
Here this is perhaps some confusion over the meaning of "suffering" in Buddhism. The actual term used in the Four Noble Truths is "dukkha". Dukkha is a Pali word, which is commonly translated as Suffering. However, the real meaning of Dukkha, has more to do with Dissatisfactoriness.
When we understand Dukkha as Dissatisfactoriness, there is a deeper appreciation of its meaning.
1st truth: Life is Dukkha.
Not just because there is sickness, death, separation from your loved ones, presence of your enemies, sadness, pain, unrequited love, unmet expectations, disappointments, setbacks, anger, etc.
But Life IS Dukkha, even when there is birth, happiness, presence of your loved ones, beauty, absence of your enemies, fulfilment, achievement etc.
Why? Simply because none of it is lasting. When we have attachment towards the pleasant, and resentment towards the unpleasant, we are not free. Because our moods and emotions are swayed according to the pleasant and unpleasant events that occur in our lives. Whenever something bad happens, we forget that it's impermanent and we are grossly upset by it. When something good happens, we forget that it's impermanent and while we're happy we're also so afraid of losing it.
That is why it is uttered that Life is Dukkha, the nature itself is Dukkha, Dissatisfactory. And the 2nd Truth utters that the cause of this Dukkha is our 3 poisons - attachment, aversion and ignorance (ignorance is the 'real' mastermind behind, sometimes also known as "dualistic mind" ).
The 3rd Truth, the Truth of Cessation, utters that there is an end to Dukkha. That is what we usually call "Nirvana". And Nirvana are sometimes described using various terminology, such as true bliss, eternal bliss, Enlightenment, LIberation, ultimate bliss etc. However, if Nirvana were merely happiness, then wouldn't it be Dukkha too?
Therefore, we should establish the right view and understanding that Nirvana is actually not our common understanding of happiness. It is a term that attempts to describe a state that is beyond happiness and sadness. In fact, Nirvana is free from happiness and sadness. It is no longer caught by these dualistic concepts of bliss and suffering. That is why sometimes it is also referred to as Liberation.
Using your old Chinese saying, you and I are both trapped by the duality of "hunger" and "good food". Therefore when we're hungry, we experience the fear of hunger and hope of good food. When we have good food, we experience the fear of losing the good food and hope of forever having unlimited supply good food.
On the other hand, a liberated being may (I'm saying 'may' because I myself am not liberated and cannot give an accurate representation of how the liberated state is like) be totally at ease whether one is experiencing "hunger" or eating "good food". Totally freed from the hopes and fears, because the liberated being have seen that these states are impermanent and do not need to be grasped, no need to be attached to them, or aversive towards them.... and of course the liberated beings have even deeper realizations/understanding of reality, therefore they are undisturbed by the temporal happenings.
Something like that. Hope this explanation helps to clarify some things for u. Best wishes for your search.
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Originally posted by airgrinder:
Amituofo!
People who follow buddism from the day they''re born, how do they know what's happiness?
right after a baby is born, they wouldn't have understood buddhism right away.
just a rough idea, at the beginning the baby mind is pure/innocent. only the outside ideas that were slowly inputed pollutes the 'baby' mind.
since eighth consciousness is the first to come, at age 1-10, their mind would be 'polluted' by false wandering thoughts.
at age 11-20, their mind would start to differentiate and have dualism/discriminate between right and wrong, big and small, pretty and ugly etcs.
at age 21 onward, is the age of attachment be it of belongings, ideas or self. it's also where happiness and suffering is most felt due to this clinging.
hence it doesn't matter if you study buddhism or not, happiness and suffering is a norm to us all. buddhism is just to teach seeing through things as they are and let it go, so as to control our suffering.
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Wow, very the chim, but thanks. Clarified some doubts....Originally posted by _wanderer_:You have raised a very important question.
If happiness/pleasure and sadness/suffering are relative to each other, then without suffering, there can't be happiness. Then what are Buddhists really aiming for?
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Something like that. Hope this explanation helps to clarify some things for u. Best wishes for your search. -
Hi,Originally posted by airgrinder:Wow, very the chim, but thanks. Clarified some doubts....
Perhaps u can read this post.Just click at it.
The Four Noble Truths -
Good explanation, young one.Originally posted by _wanderer_:You have raised a very important question.
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Something like that. Hope this explanation helps to clarify some things for u. Best wishes for your search.
I would like to add:
Life is like a passing cloud, when it comes to an end, a hundred years is like yesterday, like a snap of a finger. If it is only about one life, it really doesnÂ’t matter whether we are enlightened. The insight that the Blessed One has is not just about one life; countless lives we suffered, life after life, unendingÂ…Such is suffering.
It is not about logic or science and there is really no point arguing in this scientific age. Take steps in practice and experience the truth of Buddha’s words. Of the 3 dharma seals, the truth of ‘suffering’ to me is most difficult to experience in depth.
May all take BuddhaÂ’s words seriously. -
Is that still me next life?Originally posted by Thusness:Good explanation, young one.
I would like to add:
Life is like a passing cloud, when it comes to an end, a hundred years is like yesterday, like a snap of a finger. If it is only about one life, it really doesnÂ’t matter whether we are enlightened. The insight that the Blessed One has is not just about one life; countless lives we suffered, life after life, unendingÂ…Such is suffering.
It is not about logic or science and there is really no point arguing in this scientific age. Take steps in practice and experience the truth of Buddha’s words. Of the 3 dharma seals, the truth of ‘suffering’ to me is most difficult to experience in depth.
May all take BuddhaÂ’s words seriously. -
Not sure why my previous posting not updated.Originally posted by airgrinder:guess i was not clear in my initial post.
One have to experience sadness before they can appreciate happiness. One have to be poor before knowing what is to be rich. For someone who is born, and start practising buddhism immediately, how will he know if he had achieve eternal happiness if, in the first place he did not experience suffering?
Anyway, assuming you are talking about wordly happiness.
Sadness is the opposite reflection of wordly happiness, meaning if you enjoy eating nice food and feel happy about it, then you will feel unhappy when eating substandard food, because your attachment to the food is there.
One achieve real happiness when he has destroy the attachment to worldly happiness. So for your question that if people who diligently practise since day one can enjoy eternal happiness, the answer is yes of coz.
Yes, that's right, but we must do it step by step, we need faith on triple gems, desire to start practising buddhism, desire to socialise and to learn from each other, desire to avoid suffering and have happiness.Originally posted by airgrinder:So are you saying to be eternally happy, one must not have desire, must not have attachment to things he want, people like? I thought life is more interesting only if there are ups and downs.
Life may be interesting with ups and downs, but what if the downs is not just bankrupt but born as animal to be slaughtered or tortured in hell. -
Thanks Wanderer for your beautiful explanation
Now I'm back from China but there is no need for me to elaborate (you have done so very well) but I will share an article which I posted in the forum earlier.
There are three kinds of sufferings:First, there is the form of suffering that the Buddha is most famous for talking about, ordinary suffering, the standard list including such things as birth, sickness, old age, death, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. These are ordinary forms of suffering that we can try to mitigate as best we can by ordinary methods, i.e. by working within the scope of the first training, i.e. the conventional world. I am a big fan of trying to find worldly happiness so long as we do not neglect the importance of the other two trainings. There is also the form of suffering relating to the scope of the second training that comes from being limited to our ordinary state of consciousness, with our only way out coming from sleep or the use of chemical substances. We yearn for bliss that is not so bound up in things like whether or not we get a good job, for experiences like those found in the concentration states. Our minds have this potential, and the failure to be able to access these states at times when doing so would be helpful and healthy is a source of bondage. I am a big fan of being able to attain these wonderful states so long as we do not neglect the other two trainings.
There is also the kind of suffering that comes from making artificial dualities out of non-dual sensations, and all of the unnecessary reactivity, misperceptions, distortions of perspective and proportion, and basic blindfulness that accompanies that process. This kind of suffering, relating to the scope of training in wisdom, is not touched by the first two trainings, and thus forms a background level of suffering in our life and also increases the potential for further suffering in the other two scopes. This form of suffering is gradually relieved by the stages of enlightenment, as fewer and fewer aspects of reality have the capacity to trick the mind in this way. I am a big fan of awakening and thus eliminating this pervasive form of suffering, just as long as we do not also neglect the other two trainings.
The suffering of the ordinary world can be extremely unpredictable, and working to relieve it is a very complex business, the work of a lifetime and perhaps an eternity. The suffering related to being unable to access refined altered states of consciousness is mitigated by simply taking the time to learn the skills necessary and then refining them until they are accessable to us when we wish. There are limits to these states, and so the basic states attainable by training in concentration can be very thoroughly mastered within a lifetime and even within a few years or perhaps months for those with talent and diligence. The stages of enlightenment are permanent, and once they are attained, that aspect of our suffering is forever eliminated and never arises again. This can be accomplished by those who take the time to learn the skills necessary to see individual sensations clearly and are willing to work on that level.
These basic facts can be used to help us plan our quest for happiness and the elimination of the various forms of suffering in our life. We can direct our studies, our training, and work on specific skills that lead to specific effects and abilities in the order we choose, within the limits of our life circumstances and the resources available to us. For instance, it might make sense to learn concentration skills early in our life, as they cultivate so many of the skills necessary for the other two trainings and can provide increased sense of ease and wellbeing. For example, rather than popping a cold beer at the end of a hard day, we could bathe our body and mind in as much bliss and peace as we can stand for as long as we wish. If we master concentration practices, we have the option to make such choices.
It might also make sense to work on insight practices early rather than later so as to reduce the amount of time during our life that we live with the fundamental suffering caused by the illusion of duality. There is only so much we can do to prevent ordinary suffering for ourselves and others, though it is always good to do what we can. Thus, it is also good to realize that we can also reduce and eliminate the other forms of suffering through learning the two basic styles of meditation more easily than we can eliminate much of our conventional suffering.We might conceive of this as compassion having gotten caught in a loop, the loop of the illusion of duality. This is sort of like a dog’s tail chasing itself. Pain and pleasure, suffering and satisfaction always seem to be “over there.” Thus, when pleasant sensations arise, there is a constant, compassionate, deluded attempt to get over there to the other side of the imagined split. This is fundamental attraction. You would think that we would just stop imagining there is a split, but somehow that is not what happens. We keep perpetuating the sense of a split even as we try to bridge it, and so we suffer. When unpleasant sensations arise, there is an attempt to get away from over there, to widen the imagined split. This will never work, because it doesn’t actually exist, but the way we hold our minds as we try to get away from that side is painful. When boring or unpleasant sensations arise, there is the attempt to tune out all together and forget the whole thing, to try to pretend that the sensations on the other side of the split are not there. This is fundamental ignorance and it perpetuates the process, as it is by ignoring aspects of our sensate reality that the illusion of a split is created in the first place.
- Dharma Dan
And so as long as the fundamental illusion of duality is there, there will be suffering.
Here's another article which I posted in the forum before and I find quite well written on the subject.http://web.ukonline.co.uk/buddhism/page4.htm
To understand the concept of dukkha is very important if you want to understand the central teachings of Buddhism. The word dukkha is not only keyword to the Four Noble Truths but to the other important teachings of the Buddha as well i.e. The Three Characteristics of the World (Ti-lakkana ) which is the Buddhist view of the this world and The Philosophy of Dependent Origination ( Paticca-samuppada ) which is the Buddhist understanding of how things work and relate to one another for their very existence.
So not understanding dukkha in its true sense means not understanding Buddhism itself. As a result, you could be cherishing a pessimistic attitude, not just towards Buddhism but probably towards your own life as well... -
(continued from the previous post)
Dukkha
Many translations of the word dukkha into English have now been around for almost a century and a half since Buddhism was introduced to Europe. dukkha has been translated into English as suffering , illness and unsatisfactoriness. I would like to say that none of these retains the true meaning of dukkha but instead the word dukkha covers all these meanings and more.
Actually, dukkha embraces the whole of existence, whether sentient or non-sentient, animate or inanimate; happiness, suffering, like, or dislike, a pleasant or unpleasant condition or a neutral one, all come under dukkha . Each of these is classified as dukkha not necessarily because it is a kind of suffering as it is understood but simply because it is changing constantly, all the time, at any moment. All those things, happy or unhappy, they come and go, begin and end. The whole process of this world just operates in this way. For this very reason, they are dukkha . The Buddha taught us in His First sermon in a very simple way: whatever is impermanent or changing, all that is dukkha . (Yad aniccam tam dukkham). Before he said so he observed the whole world and found nothing but a process of change. So changing means the world. The very characteristic of our existence that remains there all the time is but change whether for better or for worse.
We fall ill and we suffer. That is suffering and that suffering is dukkha . It comes and goes. We enjoy good fortune and that fortune is not everlasting but will one day go. Human beings are born and will definitely die. That is dukkha .
We get into a bus and sometimes we have to sit next to some one who appears to us very unpleasant. That is dukkha . If you react to the situation by thinking, "Today I am very unlucky to be meeting such people, I am stupid to be here on this bus", then you are creating dukkha . We meet someone somewhere in our life and at a certain point, we each have to go our own way. So we feel sad. That is dukkha. If you do not try to experience the meeting or the departing mindfully, as it is, but reacting - again, you are creating dukkha out of it. We want a Mercedes Benz car and we get it. We are happy but now people say a BMW, or a Rolls Royce is better, more luxurious. We are no longer content with our Mercedes Benz. This is dukkha. We feel frustrated at work. This is dukkha. We want a word of thanks from someone, from our boss, from our neighbours but we are criticised instead. Therefore, this is dukkha. To get it is all right. An appreciation is good. But if that makes us get caught up in that sort of esteem then we cling to it. We keep expecting to it more and more. This is dukkha .
We want our child to behave in a certain way but it turns out just the opposite. So we feel disappointed. Disappointment is again dukkha. All these bear the nature of arising and falling away. They come and go.
In this world, we feel anxious, despairing, frustrated, irritated, upset, disappointed, discomfort, anguish, painful and disgusted. Therefore, these are dukkha in their nature, not because the Buddha said they are dukkha .
Sometimes we have a success and feel very satisfied with our own performance. However, this satisfaction itself is again dukkha , simply because it does not stay forever. In a higher stage of meditation practice, you do not feel any mental annoyance at all. It is very calm and peaceful. It is called Sukha - happiness. Again, this happiness is dukkha, not because it causes unhappiness or suffering at that moment but because it does not stay forever. It changes. It starts and finishes. So it is dukkha . You see dukkha does not cover only the negative side of life but the positive one as well.
Actually dukkha , I emphasise again, means the world. I just cannot see anything, which is not dukkha . Alternatively, to put it in a very simple way, all we experience is dukkha - whether it is through eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or mind. To Buddhist analysis the world means only what we experience in our daily life through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. We experience the so-called world through these six sense doors. It is all dukkha because of its inability to be satisfactory.
What to do then? dukkha ! Suffering! Oh no, I do not want that, nobody wants to hear it, it attracts no one to listen to it. We want to end dukkha , which appears mostly in a painful manner in this world. Can we just ignore or run away to get rid of it? It will not work. The human habit is to ignore it because they do not want it. With the desire to end dukkha , you may form a serious idea of getting away from it. The idea itself is all right. Nevertheless, once you are caught in that idea, then that clinging again becomes dukkha . Without understanding, what we tend to do is to cling to that idea.
So what to do?
There are two things we can do; first is to recognise that there is dukkha and then to try to understand the nature of dukkha . It means to learn about it as it is, and try to experience it the way it is without reacting in a habitual way, without judging its value.
The Lord Buddha said there is dukkha instead of saying I am suffering or you are suffering. Notice this. Dukkha is there, not personal, it is common to Asians and Europeans, to Burmese, Sri Lankan, British, American and others. Dukkha is experienced in the same way by a homeless person and by Queen Elizabeth. Being with someone you do not really like is felt in just the same way by anybody whether it is to Princess Diana or a poor woman. Separation is painfully experienced by anybody ... be it the first lady of Peru or a wife of an Unknown Soldier. Death brings painful experience to any one related to it. Mr. Onassis, the then richest man in the world found no relief over the death of his son. This kind of painful experience spares no one, rich or poor. You do not want to become old; neither do I. But this experience is just there as a fact.
The human experience is there. And dukkha is there. It is the common bond that we all share.
What we have to do in this stage is, may I repeat again, to recognise that there is dukkha. Dukkha is there but it needs recognition. It requires an acknowledgment. This is a starting point. From this, we can go on. The Lord Buddha spoke in a very clear and precise way. dukkha must be understood, it must be penetrated (parinnyeya ).
To understand it we must first be aware of the facts on which our daily life is based. This awareness is called mindfulness or Sati. With mindfulness, your mind will become contemplative, receptive, and not impulsive, not rejecting. Then investigate the real nature of that fact. This is called investigation of nature=Dhamma vicaya. Both form factors of enlightenment ( Bojjhanga ). The remedy in Buddhism is the Noble Eightfold Path. Each of us has to walk on the Path on our own to get to our destination.(Paccattam veditabbo=the truth is understood individually , one of the six characteristics of the Buddha's teaching.)
To summarise my talk,the Lord Buddha said, "Look at the world as a pleasure, then as a danger and then there is liberation from that danger."( Assada , adinava , and nissarana ).With understanding of dukkha, compassion starts growing in our heart. Suffering is the object of compassion.
May you all be happy !!