Podcast

Taking happiness and suffering on the path (part 2)
by Lama Tsering Everest

And what lord Buddha said is that life is suffering; now that wasn’t like some big pessimistic point of view, he was just saying that the way that our mind works produces suffering and that if you understand that the mind itself is producing this sensation of suffering, if you recognize what is really creating the sensation of the phenomena then you can change the mind and you can eliminate suffering.

But if you think that someone else is causing your suffering, like for me, the people coming in and out of the door, actually they are just coming in and out of the door, but if my mind goes there, “Uau, how can people be so rude? To be so late, to be coming in and out of the door” Not only have I lost my thread of thought, chain of thought, I have blamed them; my mind lost its chain of thought but I blamed them, my mind perceived them as a problem coming in and out of the door, then my mind blamed them, you know, some people’s children, not only them, their heritage I can blame; but I am the one who sat stuck, sitting in my mind’s reaction; I am the one who is disturbed, they just sat down!

What Buddha Is trying to point down by his teaching is that as long as our mind divides, you are always going to suffer; life is suffering because we divide everything; our whole take on reality is a dividing mechanism; the division and the dividing mechanism of the mind sprouted from a misunderstanding, in that misunderstanding we didn’t recognize the true nature of mind and so we identified with the observer, “I”. Even before it became sort of clunky like “I”, there was  simply the sensation of some thing and then the sensation of what noticed that there was something and as soon as the what noticed the something detects something more, it becomes more real this sensation of something; so the subjective sense of objective reality sort of reverberates like a feedback loop; the truth of the object that the subject sees, makes the subject more true. And then there is, “it’s round” or “it’s square” and now I can determine that it is round or it is square and then it’s pretty or ugly.

Now the judgment, really the sensation of self judging the object becomes much stronger the more you judge the object. And then I like it or I don’t like it, then I want it or I don’t want it, and then you have got a full crescendo. If you can’t get what you like then you suffer; if you get what you like and you can’t keep it you suffer; if you get what you like and decide you don’t like it anyway you suffer; if you don’t like it and it happens you suffer. But the suffering looks like the object did it, looks like the people walking through the door did it, looks like that the guy who ripped of your car did it, looks like your mother did this or that, your brother did this or that, your boss did this or that; mosquitoes, they do it, you know, they do it to you. And so then it looks like this separation; this is what our mind is doing, our mind has started to operate at this wave link of division and separation and we are just really fully caught there and it’s really, really, not so great because it inevitably produces suffering.

Now, you could argue with me and say: “But, but, but, but, but there is cappuccino!” And there is cappuccino, but it’s impermanent, and this is what Lord Buddha is saying: “Life is suffering”. There is the suffering of change, there is the suffering of difficulties atop difficulties atop difficulties and there is nobody who says: “OK, that’s enough, it’s really not very fair”. There just becomes more difficulties, never, ever does it really sort of end, until naturally change affects it and then there is not so much difficulty; but suffering atop suffering, atop suffering and change. And deeply inside of us we know something is missing. This is sort of the thing that I think is so amazing about us, and that it really sort of validates the fact that there is absolute truth; that we would know in all of this relative, interactive, divided, fictitious phenomena that we think is true, that we would know that there is something else, something more, and we do know that.

I have some opinions, I suppose I can’t really give credit to the Buddha, but you know, this whole issue in our culture now, everybody being so depressed, I mean, we are depressed; imagine, everybody is depressed, there are so many people that are taking medication for being depressed; and to me, I mean, there are some people who have biological disturbances and their chemistry is out of balance but to me, depressed is intelligent; it is depressing; it’s specially depressing when your false contentment cracks; its depressing to know that there is sickness and aging and death; it’s depressing but it’s intelligent to know that. And if you think that there isn’t, then you know, you have to look again.

Lord Buddha said: “There is birth” Birth is difficult, I mean, you may have forgotten but you all went through great difficulties to getting here, not only you, your mother went through great difficulty getting here; there is birth, there is sickness and it doesn’t matter how careful you are; and aging, you may think ”Well, I am not old yet” but you are a lot older than when you started. There is aging and you are in it, you are aging; and there is death; and there is nobody you can argue to about that. You know, we don’t think about arguing much for ourselves but it’s when someone we love, someone we cherish, someone that it’s just unfair, they should have lived a long life and they die and there is nobody we can register a complaint; it’s just not acceptable. And Lord Buddha said: “Life is suffering”.

This is where Buddhism begins, life is suffering, the very first noble truth. That doesn’t mean you don’t have moments of happiness, it means that happiness is impermanent and that, no matter how happy you can go, it eventually falls.
So Lord Buddha started there and seems like, as a culture, we are sort of getting there; basically because we have a lot, we have so much, even if you are really poor, even if you are really poor you have got a lot. We have so much and we are finally beginning to realize that just having a bunch of stuff is not going to make us happy. And then we start thinking: “Well, maybe I will have a baby I will be happy, or maybe I will have a career, or maybe I am going to cure all the ecological problems of the planet and then I will be happy; or maybe I will take a trip, or maybe I will buy some new clothes, or maybe I will get a facelift, or maybe I will just get a tattoo”. You know, it’s like, what do we do? We know that it doesn’t work. I am going to get another lover? OK, well that one we still think it works, but it’s impermanent, everything is impermanent.

So it’s not that Lord Buddha was trying to tell you to really get all upset and be angry about it; impermanence is impermanent, it’s true, it’s impermanent. In order for us to ultimately attain happiness that is not impermanent, we have to realize the mind that is not divided. And that mind is not some place else, that’s your own mind but now the function of our mind separates everything, there is me and everything that is not me; goes into other; and the difference between me and other, between subject and object, which is the byproduct of this initial lack of recognition of the true nature of the phenomena, which doesn’t have separation.

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