“I teach dukkha and the ending of
dukkha.”
–The Buddha
The most important and fundamental aspect of our spiritual
practice must start with an understanding of what the Buddha taught, what the
aim of his teaching was, and that must start with an understanding of the one
word that was the cornerstone of his teaching: dukkha.
Defining the Undefinable but Ever Present
No single English word adequately captures the full depth,
range, and subtlety of the crucial Pali term dukkha. Over the years, many translations of the word have been
used ("stress," "unsatisfactoriness,"
"suffering," etc.). Each has its own merits in a given context. There
is value in not letting oneself get too comfortable with any one particular
translation of the word, since the entire thrust of Buddhist practice is the
broadening and deepening of one's understanding of dukkha until its roots are finally exposed and eradicated once and
for all. One helpful rule of thumb: as soon as you think you've found the
single best translation for the word, think again: for no matter how you
describe dukkha, it's always deeper,
subtler, and more unsatisfactory than that.
Dukkha is, from a definition by Buddhist scholar Francis Story:
Disturbance, irritation, dejection, worry, despair, fear, dread, anguish,
anxiety; vulnerability, injury, inability, inferiority; sickness, aging, decay
of body and faculties, senility; pain/pleasure; excitement/boredom;
deprivation/excess; desire/frustration, suppression; longing/aimlessness;
hope/hopelessness; effort, activity, striving/repression; loss, want, insufficiency/satiety;
love/lovelessness, friendlessness; dislike, aversion/attraction;
parenthood/childlessness; submission/rebellion; decision/indecisiveness,
vacillation, uncertainty.
Three Roots of Dukkha
(The Three Poisons: Greed, Anger, and Delusion)
What we notice from meditation is that we only do things, when
all is said and done, to get more of what we want, what we like, what we think
we should have or should be, or inversely, to get less of the things we don’t
want, don’t like, and don’t think we should have.
We notice, as we watch our body and breath, that this
constant desire for more is unending. We always need and want something more.
This is the operant model we use for processing information. We filter all our
experiences through this “greed” lens, storing all our memories in stories
about whether we want more of this type of event or less.
We do this because of our delusion that the world should be
other than what it is, and that if we can only get it to be our way, everything
will be fine and we will be happy. This is nonsense. For it to work, everyone
in the world would have to want things to be my way.
Because of this way of processing our lives, we are never
able to be satisfied. And to make things worst, when we don’t get what we want,
we become angry (everything from mild irritation to wrath arises from our greed
and delusion).
This anger shadows our lives, an anger that arises from
never getting enough, always having to protect and defend, never being satisfied.
Simply put, we must overcome our greed and anger and delusion if we are to end
our suffering. That is what the Buddha taught: life must be all about purifying
ourselves and ending our suffering. Why would we choose anything else?
Observing Dukkha
If you pay attention (to your body and
breath) for just five minutes, you learn that pleasant sensations lead to the
desire that these sensations will stay and that unpleasant sensations lead to
the hope that they will go away. And both the attraction and the aversion
amount to tension in the mind. Both are uncomfortable. So in the first minutes,
you get a big lesson about suffering: wanting things to be other than what they
are. Such a tremendous amount of truth to be learned just closing your eyes and
paying attention to [your breath and] bodily sensations. –Sylvia
Boorstein.
Try This Five Minute Meditation Now
Arrange yourself in a comfortable, upright position, in a
chair or cross-legged on a sofa or the floor. Bring your attention to the
sensation of breathing. Take a few deep breaths, observing the breaths at your
abdomen. Find a spot in your abdomen where you can easily track your breath,
allow yourself to breath normally, and focus there. Stay with that spot,
noticing how it feels as you breathe in and out. Don't force the breath, or
bear down too heavily with your focus. Let the breath flow naturally, and
simply keep track of how it feels.
If your mind wanders off, simply bring it back.
Observe the breathe in that spot for a minute or so, then
shift to a spot two-inches to the right of the original location. Notice how it
feels in this new spot. Observe it there for a minute or so, then shift to a
spot two-inches to the left of the original location. Again, notice how it
feels in this new location. Observe it for a minute or so, then shift to a spot about
two-inches above the original location. Again, observe it for a minute, then
shift to a spot two-inches below the original location.
Finally, take a few noticeable, deep breaths and then gently
open your eyes and consider how each spot felt different, how your created
affinities and aversions, how you made your dukkha.
The Causes of
Suffering
If we really want to end our suffering, we need some idea of what
causes it. On the most basic level, the cause of suffering is our story-telling.
As we experienced in the five-minute meditation above, we create our own
suffering, we codify it into stories about what is good and fair, comfortable
and satisfying, rather than allowing ourselves to just be present with what is.
To end our suffering, therefore, we have to eliminate the story-telling.
This is best done methodically. It cannot be accomplished simply by an act of
will, by wanting them to go away. The work must be guided by investigation.
Start by noticing the depth and breath of your stories.
Observe that all stories are fabrications, fictions, not
real.
Next, notice the general structure of all story: they desire
things to be other than what they are.
Then, observe how we attach to our stories, believe them to
be true and accurate, protect and defend these foolish fictions.
Finally, stop believing your stories, stop believe that
anything your mind tells you is true.
While you are practicing this, study hard the Two Truths, which will be the subject of a future blog.
