Suffering

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

My cat, absorbed in the pleasure of sunshine on the window ledge, is an example of how all humans and animals are equal in that our fundamental purpose in life is to experience pleasure and avoid pain. If we take an honest look at the reasons behind our behaviour, our daily activities are mostly directed towards gaining the experience of sensory pleasure and happiness, or towards avoiding unpleasant experiences and unhappiness.

There is nothing wrong in experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain, the problem is that we are not very good at achieving these goals. And, even when we do gain some degree of happiness, we are extremely skilful at screwing it up and turning the party into a great big flop.

Upon achieving enlightenment, the Buddha remained for a long time without saying anything. It is said that his hesitation in spreading the good news was due to a thought which went something like, "I have discovered the profound truth of existence; they (you and I) will never be able to understand."
Fortunately, Buddha was persuaded by the great beings, Brahma and Indra, to reveal his knowledge. "You are not going to like it," he warned. Well, I just made that up, but look at what he did say: "Life is utterly miserable and it's your own fault."

We may reply to that, "Hey, just a minute, change the politicians, give me a great, well-paid job, a beautiful family, and a house by the seaside and I'll show you whether life is miserable or not."

When I was on the road in the early seventies, I once stayed with the owner of a Norwegian shipping line who, with his beautiful wife, had built a dream house on a quiet beach on the island of Crete. But she had died just before the house was completed, and he was very, very lonely. Although I had attended a course with Tibetan Lamas, I had not yet accepted the teachings to be true and I was still chasing the dream of a perfect partner, a great job, and unsullied happiness in this life. But my Scandinavian friend's situation made me think.

To clarify his initial statement, Buddha described three levels of suffering. First, there is "suffering of suffering," the experiences that we all accept to be suffering, such as the physical pain of sickness and the mental pain that occurs with a death in the family. These need no elaboration, but the second level of suffering, the "suffering of change," is more difficult to recognise.

Suffering of change refers to what we ordinarily call happiness. Every happy situation leads to unhappiness because, externally, it depends upon the gathering of causes and conditions that cannot last forever and this inevitably leads us to experience the melancholy of "the party's over." Why else does merely the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" universally produce tears in our eyes?

The internal reason why our happiness inevitably leads to unhappiness is that we cling to the object of happiness and the happy experience itself with great attachment, and this inner agitation destroys the pleasure of the moment. Attachment irrationally refuses to accept that we cannot remain in the embrace of our lover forever. It will not accept that things and people change, and so, not only does our mind destroy the happiness of the present, it also becomes lost in nostalgia wanting to relive past happiness, or in futile clinging to impossible dreams of future happiness.

Another mental problem is that we believe that pleasure exists as an intrinsic quality of the object of pleasure, and the mere acquisition of that object should automatically bring happiness. Our garages, attics, and address books, however, are full of discarded possessions and people who we were convinced would make us happy. They did not work out because our expectations were simply wrong. And also because of a deeper, more sinister internal reason called karma. Just as those who are paranoid with delusions of self-reference can never be happy because every event is seen as a threat to their person, when non-virtuous karma, the echoes of past actions when we have hurt others, ripens in our mind, it is impossible to be happy no matter how much wealth or how big a circle of friends we have gathered around ourselves.

The third level of suffering is "pervading suffering" - we are always under the control of karma, mental afflictions, and death. Death can and does occur at any time, and is rarely welcome. One moment of anger can cause us to drive too fast, crash the car, and ripen the karma to be consumed in an inferno of flames.

So, look out pussycat, the clouds are coming to deprive you of your sunshine. Cleanse your mind of karma and mental afflictions before it is too late.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.