Posts tagged Four Noble Truths

Oh, such sufferin’

My days are full of sufferin’

And Bufferin!

-Maurice Sendak/Carole King, from Really Rosie

Life is Suffering.

-Buddha

The Four Noble Truths are at the heart of Buddhism, and the first Noble Truth is, “Life is suffering.” – right?  Not exactly.  As with biblical translations, some words and concepts don’t translate well.  The Buddha actually said that life was dukkha.  I like this word.  I wish it was a word that I could use more often on a daily basis, except that people probably would think that I was even stranger than they already think I am.  It is a word that conveys a lot more ground than the word, “suffering”(and, to me, sounds like something that you don’t want to step in).

So, what is dukkha?  My favorite way to explain it is by visual analogy.  I heard once that it referred to a cart with a wobbly wheel..   On Wikipedia, they also mention the image of a pottery wheel that is off center…in other words, something is off kilter, just not quite right.  How often has my own life felt like that?  Like something is just dissatisfactory;  just a bit off, a bit wrong.

The Buddha said that everything impermanent and changing is dukkha¹ and everything is impermanent or changing so, by that definition, everything is dukkha.  The Buddha went into descriptive detail about this dukkha.  In fact, he identified three types:

1. Ordinary dukkha
2. The dukkha produced by change
3. Dukkha produced by conditioned states²

Ordinary Dukkha

This is what we think of as suffering.  That routine, everyday dukkha. Not only the biggies like aging, sickness, death, physical or mental distress, losing or being separated from loved ones, but also those other things that cause us suffering on an everyday basis:  dealing with that irritating co-worker or spouse, not getting that new big screen TV that you really, really thought you needed, having to balance your checkbook and pay bills when you’d much rather be out kayaking.  It’s interesting that birth is also in the category of ordinary dukkha.  Birth is a happy experience, right?  The experience of birth itself is likely painful, and it is also our introduction to the wonderful world of dukkha.  In fact, the Buddha went into amazing detail in ways in which birth is dukkha³.

The Dukkha of Change

Impermanence is one of the three Dharma Seals of Buddhism⁴ – that are marks of a truly Buddhist teaching.  I remember at the end of the final episode of Six Feet Under, Nate says to Claire, looking at their family just before she leaves, “You can’t take a picture of it – it’s already gone ⁵.”  This is the way our lives are.  A moment happens, and it’s gone.  From one moment to the next, there are changes in our bodies, changes in our environment.  This is the way things are…but how often do we want to accept change?  I sometimes look at my belligerent teen and wistfully see the little girl she was, but sometimes, in almost the same instance, I know she’ll outgrow this difficult phase and I see the woman she is becoming as she grows up.  Even happiness and positive change is dukkha, because the happy circumstances will eventually change.  It’s our clinging to the way things are and not wanting to allow this change that gets us into all this dukkha (or clinging to the way we want things to be because we can’t accept the way they are).

The Dukkha of Conditioned States

This one is more difficult to understand and explain.  In Buddhist teaching everything is conditioned, meaning it’s dependent on something else⁶ – interdependence.  How is this a cause of dukkha?  When this is explained, it is usually in terms of the five skandhas.  The term skandha, means, “mass, heap, pile, bundle or tree trunk ⁷ .  So – a skandha is one of a bunch of “heaps ⁸”…that make up what we call a self.  The heaps are form (matter), sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness.  In other words, together, my body (and also, by extension, my stuff), sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness are what I call “me.”  But, if I look, I can’t really find “me” in any one of these heaps.  These heaps are also in a state of flux and dependent on other things, they are dependent on each other, they are conditioned and impermanent like everything else.  There is no separate, permanent self, and no self that’s not dependent on something else.  Yet, I’m really attached to me.  I want nice things to happen to me.  Me. Me. Me.  This type of clinging to a permanent, independent self is dukkha.

If I had to put it briefly, dukkha all comes down to attachment and clinging.  Learning to be flexible, accept change as a constant, and to let go and not need to force and control everything  is what dealing with dukkha is all about.  The Buddha described the Eightfold Path as the path leading to the cessation of dukkha…but that’s for another post.  Right now it’s enough to try my best to follow the path and deal with the daily dukkha as it comes at me.  In the words of Mr. Ashleigh Brilliant, “I try to deal with one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”