The Truth about Suffering

wisdomeye SG

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Human beings always want something. We are always looking for pleasure. We are rarely satisfied with what we have. Even being able to afford a great vacation is not what we thought it was going to be, because when we arrive at our destination, we want a better room or better weather. We are unable to be content. This basic characteristic is related to impermanence and suffering.

The Buddha did not present suffering as a noble truth because he had figured out that everybody has a hard time. He said that there is something much deeper going on. We suffer because we are projecting the myth of permanence upon a situation that is conditioned, selfless, and constantly changing. Everything is interrelated and interdependent. There is nothing substantial and separate that we can lean upon. Samsara, “the cycle of suffering,” is a direct result of our desire for permanence.

In contemplating impermanence, we can see samsara for what it is. Its conditioned quality produces an unstable environment. Our response to that instability is grasping and solidification of a “self.” The result is suffering, because we are relating to appearances as if they are independent and permanent, when in fact they are exactly the opposite. We are habitually fooled by phenomena in this way.

For example, making a car is conditioned by having iron ore, technology, and workers. When these conditions come together, we have a new car. We are proud of the car. It is comfortable. It has air conditioning. The windows work and the color is nice. People think we are a better person because we have this car, which makes us feel good. The car brings us pleasure. However, because it is conditioned, it is, by nature, impermanent. It is not going to last. But even though we know it is going to rust and get old, somehow the car is real to us. Every time we get a scratch on the car, we get upset. If somebody says they don’t like the color of the car, we feel angry or hurt. This car that was a source of pleasure has become a source of pain.

The reason we contemplate impermanence is that we don’t quite believe it. Looking at our relationship with the car, the Buddha would say that we don’t understand how karma—causes and conditions—works. If we understood karma, we would realize that it’s the nature of things to come together and fall apart. Even if we are die-hard Buddhists, we are in the habit of looking at the world from the reference point of a solid and unchanging self. No matter how clear impermanence may be to our intellect, we tend to put ourselves into a trance, thinking things are permanent. Contemplation helps us understand profound truths that we rarely consider, even though our life is contained by them.

When we contemplate impermanence, it’s as if the teachings grab us by the collar, saying, “Just stop for a second and look at what is going on.” As we reflect on what is really happening, we begin to realize that we are not lords of our own situation. If we were, we could make life happen the way we want. We would have control over phenomena. But that isn’t the case. Every time we get what we want, it eventually dissolves. The meal at the fancy new restaurant gives us a stomachache. The cute baby becomes a surly adolescent. We suffer pain because we organize our life around the concept of an enduring self in a solid world, even though all of it is simply ideas and forms coming in and out of existence. That’s the truth of our situation.

As we continue to contemplate the conditioned nature of phenomena, we ask ourselves, “What do you think is real? Prove to me it is real. If that anger is real, it will be here tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that. If that building is real, it will be here today and in ten billion lifetimes.” Our assumptions of permanence melt in the glare of the truth. Nothing in the phenomenal world is permanent. If the body were permanent, there would be no birth and death. We would not need to eat because we would never be hungry. If feelings were permanent, we would not go from misery to elation in the course of an hour or a day. If the tranquility and steadiness we feel in meditation were permanent, we would never suffer the agitation of our mind bouncing around continuously, wanting more entertainment and stimulation.

We can contemplate the self in the same way. We regard ourselves as real; we nourish this belief in one another. When the skandhas, or “heaps”—form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness—come together, we think that this body and mind, are “me” and “mine.” We have layers and layers of opinions and preferences, and we mistake them for a self. If somebody tells us about selflessness or impermanence, we are immediately insulted: “How dare you question my being!” Without a second thought, we assume that we are who we are.

Selflessness is too subtle to see directly, so to get a glimpse, we look at what we can already see. The quietness of meditation offers an opportunity to witness how the entity of “me” comes into being. We produce thoughts, which hook together to solidify into an experience that we call real. But what we are experiencing is dependent on many causes and conditions. We are in one mood for a while, it dissolves, and then another mood arises. These different states create the illusion of a single self. It’s the same on the outer level: we get dressed, put on our coat, and comb our hair, bringing together certain elements to create an image and an identity. When we get sick, we say, “I don’t feel like myself today.” Where did the self we usually feel like go?

Contemplation is a process of “bringing to mind.” Most of the time we are engaged in bringing to mind our desire for permanence, pleasure, and getting what we want. We wake up with that contemplation and it becomes our daily meditation: we hold our mind to it. By changing our habit and bringing to mind the interdependence of phenomena are, we begin to see the conditioned, impermanent, and selfless nature of everything. As these truths begin to penetrate us, our perspective gradually shifts. This is how we develop prajna, transcendental knowledge. What do we transcend? We transcend duality and mundane mind.

After practicing contemplation in the morning, we can use whatever happens to us throughout the day to reflect on how we are holding our mind. We may realize that we are continuing to gather things, believing that they’re going to stay together. Perhaps we are able to catch our mind falling into the samsaric pursuit of pleasure and getting what we want. We might notice how the aggression we feel is coming from belief in a self that needs to be protected. If we can flip our habitual mind and see the impermanence and unsteadiness of thoughts, emotions, relationships, and events, our actions will begin to change. Our priorities will begin to shift. Our faith in the teachings will increase, and we will be lighter hearted, because we have less fixation and less pain.

These are signs that the meaning of our contemplation has penetrated: we begin to see the truth and experience it. Contemplating impermanence brings freedom and appreciation for what we have, because it allows us to relax and enjoy the ebb and flow of life.

wisdomeye SG

Each time I leave a meditation retreat, I’m struck by the level of speed and stress in our environment. I’m not just talking about Westerners. The first time I went to Tibet, life there was very simple, but when I returned three years later, cell phones were ringing and the distraction was visible, even while I was conducting ceremonies. Something else I’ve noticed lately is that we’re bombarded with bad news. But the people I admire have always focused on the good news: that we have in our mind wisdom, compassion, and all the other elements of enlightenment.

While living in stressful times does not ultimately affect our enlightened qualities, it does demand that we become more engaged in awakening them. To transform the environment, we must begin with our own mind. We can’t expect everyone else to change first. As my father, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was fond of saying, “It’s easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.” The process of putting on a pair of shoes is the path of enlightenment.

On the ultimate level, enlightenment is already here, but on the relative level we need to engineer its causes and conditions. The mind is a neutral situation, like a cotton sheet that we can dye any color we want, but unless we take hold of it, karmic tendencies—whatever habits we’ve engrained in the past—will just take over. The practice of the path is slowly orienting that white cloth and coloring it the way we want. The path consists of three elements: view, meditation, and activity.

View is our attitude, how we orient our life. Our attitude is intimately connected with our motivation. Traditionally the Buddhist teachings list three kinds of motivation: small, medium, and large. These levels of motivation describe how we evolve on the path of enlightenment. As we gradually shift our view, our motivation grows larger. When we wake up in the morning, where is our mind taking us? Whatever it is, from that motivation, everything else will arise.

When our motivation is small, we use our day getting the “stuff” we think will make us happy—food, clothing, and friends. When it’s a little bigger, we might add some yoga to make us feel better. We might even expand it further to think about the karmic consequences of our actions—but it’s still all about “me.” With a medium-level motivation, we’re no longer so fixated on our own happiness; the basis of our actions is loving-kindness and compassion. We’re maturing: instead of having a hundred thoughts about “me,” we might have at least thirty about others. With the largest motivation, we put the happiness of others before our own. This is the motivation of the Buddha. If we get up in the morning and the first thought that comes to mind is, “There are so many sentient beings; even if I am the last person on earth, I will stay here to help them,” that is a very big view. Motivation is just an attitude, and it’s free. So why not have big motivation?

Why is view so important? View is how our mind is oriented, and the way our mind is oriented determines what we get. Our realization is based on the size of our view. The view of enlightenment is that we are taking charge of our own destiny. Little mind becomes smaller with bad habits. Big mind becomes bigger with good ones. Unless we take the mind where we want it go, the environment will take the mind where it wants it to go. But rather than trying to change everything at once, we can work with changing a small percentage of our attitude for a small percentage of the day. We can get up in the morning and say, “With ten percent of my mind, I’m going to try peace instead of irritation.”

By setting our view every morning, we become very good at supporting ourselves in the second element of the path, meditation. Meditation is essentially a dualistic process in which we place our mind on an object. When we place our mind on something, the mind absorbs its qualities, because we’re becoming familiar with it. This isn’t particularly a spiritual truth; it’s our everyday reality. For example, if the object is the anger you feel toward your spouse, you become more familiar with anger, soaking up its qualities like a sponge. In the end, that meditation leads to action. You yell at your spouse or stomp out of the room.

Meditation is a proactive approach to this reality of mind. We practice choosing the object rather than being led by whatever thoughts and emotions randomly beckon. We steep our mind in qualities that lead it forward. We begin with the stabilization technique called shamatha, “peaceful abiding,” in which we focus on the breath. Through this practice our mind becomes settled and workable. Why is this important? We may have good intentions, but if we can’t control our mind, we can never enact them. For example, we want to be compassionate but we get discursive, distracted by our mental ups and downs. Before we can cultivate compassion, we need to possess our mind. That’s what we do in stabilizing meditation, where we calm down and experience the space of the mind just being there. From that, our mind is much less speedy.

The mind resting peacefully has incredible implications. If you’re present for the moment, you’re present for your life, and you can therefore observe what’s going on. If you can observe what’s going on, you can make judgments, deciding where you want to go. At this point—known as the present moment—you can change your karma. You can reorient your whole path, because in terms of the future, you’re in the driver’s seat. You are getting more enlightened. You are waking up.

We actively reorient ourselves in contemplation, the second kind of meditation, known also as vipasyana, “clear seeing.” Now we take a thought as the object of our meditation. For example, we can focus on our motivation, stated very simply: “I want to meditate,” “I want to develop compassion, “I want to tread on the path of enlightenment, or “I want to become enlightened—no holds barred.” At other times we might contemplate a quality—generosity, exertion, discipline, or patience—that could support our motivation.

This is a practice of fabricating our enlightened qualities so that our mind naturally turns in their direction. We know that we’re innately compassionate, and we also know that we don’t feel it right now because there’s a blockage. So we contrive our buddhanature in order to reveal it. We call this relative understanding.

That understanding may be brief, but we should not be discouraged. If we place our mind on thoughts that are based upon compassion and wisdom, that’s what the mind will become familiar with. Then like any habit, thinking of wisdom and compassion will increase. By becoming familiar with the view, we are clarifying our future.

It’s one thing to have the attitude of enlightenment and another thing to act in an enlightened way, which is conduct or activity, the third element of the path. If we have proper understanding of our motivation and are getting used to our enlightened qualities, chances are we can deal with speed and stress more effectively. First we can create space in our mind to see where we are. Then we can reorient ourselves by remembering what we’re doing. That allows us to say, “Sure, I’m tired and in a hurry and my phone is ringing again. Yet I can stay on the path by sticking with the ten percent of my mind that really wants to do this.” The more we develop the tools to move forward on the spot, the less influence the other ninety percent of our mind will have. Our karmic tendency to drift into agitation and discursiveness will incrementally decrease. View, meditation, and conduct give us a way to remember what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and then enact our own enlightenment. As we do that, we are stepping on the path. We are making progress.