The Truth of Suffering: Part One

The first noble truth is what we call the “truth of suffering”.  It means that we do experience suffering in life.  While of course the varieties of circumstances involved are limitless, the teachings describe three broad categories: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and all-pervasive suffering. 

Remembering Noble Truth Zero

It’s important as we begin to talk about this that we recall what many of us call “Noble Truth Zero”, which is that our buddha nature is always there and that suffering itself does not go all the way down. 

It’s not our true nature to suffer, but only arises because of causes (2nd noble truth), there is freedom from it (3rd noble truth), and a path to freedom from it (4th noble truth). 

A similar term for buddha nature is ground Prajnaparamita, which means the perfection of wisdom.  Embodied, she’s depicted as the great mother, the infinite space which can hold everything. 

This is the resilient space of our own heart, which can embrace our suffering with love, like a mother holds a child. 

It can be helpful to remember and practice this at any point if reading all about suffering starts to get depressing or overwhelming.  In that case, please pause, and breathe, and embrace our experience however it is.   

As I’ve shared before, it’s buddha nature which recognizes suffering and longs for freedom.  So, if we feel heartbreak as we read all about suffering, that would be our buddha nature shining through.

We may then resonate with the young Siddhartha who likewise longed to be free from the entire cycle altogether when he witnessed the suffering of aging, sickness, and death---and that’s precious.

Yes, there is suffering

This brings us to the first noble truth.  While literally it says “there is suffering”, many of us would experientially describe working with the first noble truth as “recognizing and accepting our suffering”, or even, “yes, there is suffering”. 

It’s important that we’re completely honest about our suffering, and willing to embrace ourselves the way we are.  We can feel whatever we feel, with acceptance and friendliness.  That in and of itself can be extremely helpful and healing.

It’s also from that ground that we can work with our actual situation, look into the causes of our suffering, and begin to free our hearts. 

Otherwise, our entire path can be one big spiritual bypass, an attempt to avoid feeling pain. 

The tragedy of this is, it doesn’t work, and may at best provide a temporarily more pleasant “spiritual experience” while allowing the seeds of suffering to grow until they burst through the floor of our palace, and our life finds itself in the ruins of its own shadow. 

One of the major revolutions of the spiritual path is that we can in fact feel pain, and leave it there.  We have that loving strength. 

We don’t have to multiply our pain exponentially by obsessing over it, trying to convince ourselves “it’s not that bad”, endlessly spin narratives explaining it away, or blaming others or ourselves. 

Instead, we can simply acknowledge that we’re hurting, bring it into our connected, breathing presence, and healing begins.    

And so, the Buddha taught, “there is suffering”. 

The Suffering of Suffering 

The Sanskrit term being translated as “suffering” is dukkha.  It can also mean “unease”, “dissatisfaction”, “misery”, or more.

The first broad category of suffering the teachings describe is called “the suffering of suffering”.

This is exactly what it sounds like.  Things that are inherently painful and difficult are “the suffering of suffering”.  One text I like calls it “blatant suffering”. 

In the next article we’ll talk much more about all kinds of difficult life situations that many of us would immediately think of (yeah, you’re right).  Those can be included here or also in all sorts of forms in the next category “the suffering of change”. 

But first, Buddhism highlights four main experiences within the “suffering of suffering”.  These are birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Birth

Being born itself is said to be quite painful.  One moment we were in our mother’s womb with everything we needed, and the next, well…

Birth is the end of a certain kind of security, and the entrance into what will ultimately be a groundless situation we call life. 

As well, it also means “rebirth”, which is that so long as the solidification of ignorance leads to chasing thoughts into actions, the way we’ve conditioned our minds and activity doesn’t stop at death, but creates the next life, like going to sleep and our mind creating a dream. 

This happens for better or worse.  Being born human with all the freedoms we have would be as good as it gets, and the result of many positive karmic actions---so we’ve done well this time and it’s very precious! 

I won’t emphasize rebirth for now, as it’s a rich topic in and of itself, particularly in a cultural context where for many of us that’s a very new idea and not always a natural one, nor one that we need to go into at present to appreciate much of what these teachings are describing within our present life. 

However, the notion of rebirth also highlights why we talk about samsara as “cyclic existence”, which means that total freedom is from the entire cycle of suffering altogether, even aging, sickness, death, and rebirth---the buddha nature---waking from the dream.

Aging

Aging is said to contain suffering.  Especially it refers to old age, but it can also refer to the entire process of aging altogether.  For example, many of us find at least some aspects of puberty, the teen years, entering adulthood, middle age and the loss of youth, the further physical fading from there, the loss of vitality or fertility, etc., etc., to be painful and confusing. All the more so in a society that tries to bottle up our youth and sell it back to us.

Buddhism is saying we’re not wrong, and yeah, big hug. 

So much of our identity is based on our physical bodies, so as those change in ways we don’t control or didn’t want, we suffer. 

If we’re lucky enough to live into old age, that also brings it’s own difficulties.  It’s harder to do things we used to enjoy, the world has changed since our prime, our friends and loved ones are dying, and we know it’s coming for us. 

Of course, if we embrace our aging process, it can also bring maturity and wisdom, the benefits of learning from life experience. 

In Buddhism, “elder” is an honorific term, though it doesn’t mean physical age, it means having practiced enough to guide others along.  It’s one of the kinds of teachers. 

Sickness

Sickness is suffering.  People who work in healthcare or related fields see the graphic horror of this more up close and personal than many of us do until it’s us or someone we love.  In many underprivileged places in the world, including some here in the US, it’s on full display. 

As we’ve seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, sickness can take millions of lives, disrupt billions, carry with it financial hardship, and all kinds of other immeasurable losses. 

While our level of resources can make drastic differences in our access to care, sickness can nevertheless strike down any person at any time.  Steve Jobs died of cancer.

Death

Dying has suffering.  It’s the ultimate loss.  Many of us find losing a job, relationship, or cherished possession to be painful.  In death, we lose our own bodies, and everything at once. 

Sometimes we know when we’ll die, but often, it comes without warning.  Nobody ever gets up in the morning and says “today, I’ll die in a car accident”, “after lunch, a heart attack”. 

At the monastery we did funeral practices every month for anyone who’s loved ones asked, and lots of the dead were younger than me. 

In terms of rebirth, we don’t totally lose loved ones.  The connections remain, while the forms change.  We can always love them, wherever they are.  And we can always practice for them. 

Gradual, more expected deaths have their own variety, and often, they’re quite painful as our body shuts down.  We’re warned about this a lot in Buddhism, as in to basically know that death is coming and it likely won’t be easy. 

However, if we’ve prepared in life, death can be a very sacred moment.  There’s a famous Buddhist saying:

“When we’re born, we cry, but everyone else celebrates.

When we die, everyone else cries, but for us, it’s a chance for great liberation”. 

This is because as our bodies and all we knew fall away, the open ground of buddha nature is revealed. 

To the extent we’ve become familiar with it in meditation during life, we’re able to recognize it at death, like a child returning home to our mother.  We can rest, and be free. 

This is a very special opportunity for enlightenment or at least profound progress, and several Western practitioners I know of showed signs that this occurred when they died.  If we prepare, it’s very much possible, and people with jobs and families have done it recently.

Otherwise, that space of buddha nature is just a little gap that goes by, and on we go to the next dream…