It’s Easter, a holy day for Christians and a holiday for others in nations like Australia. Regardless of one’s religion, spiritual inclination or world view, such holidays give us a break from the normal rhythm of our lives and as such are a good time for reflection. This reflection reveals my Buddhist background and the Buddhist world view I retain to this day. It’s essentially a reflection on aspects of the core Buddhist teaching known as the Four Noble Truths, a statement on the causes of and way out of human suffering.
A Comfortable Beginning
When I first encountered the Buddhist view on suffering, essentially saying that suffering is the state of our human existence, I couldn’t help but think it was a bit of an overstatement. At that time, I was living a very comfortable life. The world situation seemed stable, and my generation was enjoying the fruits of post-World War II prosperity. Everything was on the up and up, and our standard of living was excellent. I looked at my life and thought, sure, there are people in the world who suffer—those with illnesses, those in war-torn regions—but me? I wasn’t really suffering. I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food on the table. I was okay. Given that, I thought, you could hardly say that suffering was as pervasive as the Buddha said it was.
The Revelation of Dukkha
Then I learned about a more subtle translation of the word ‘dukkha,’ the term the Buddha used when he spoke of suffering. Dukkha, I discovered, actually means the suffering of dissatisfaction. Suddenly, the Buddhist view on suffering made more sense. I looked around and saw it everywhere. People always wanting more, never content, always searching for the next best thing, searching for happiness or enlightenment or riches or … on and on it goes. That’s dissatisfaction, never satisfied. Dissatisfaction is indeed a form of suffering, and it does cause us to suffer mentally, if not physically.
Reflecting on Desire in My Own Life
I examined my own life and saw that though I had always been fairly content, there were areas of dissatisfaction, things I wanted to improve. It’s human nature to want more, to strive for better. Our desires drive us, getting us out of bed in the morning, pushing us to feed our bodies and minds. Buddhists call it the realm of desire because desire is what keeps us moving forward. We can’t avoid it as long as we’re in these bodies in a physical world. We must drink, eat, sleep, and protect ourselves from the environment. This is unavoidable.
The Endless Cycle of Dissatisfaction
Until our basic human needs are filled, we are driven to satisfy them. But once our basic needs are met, the key to happiness is being satisfied with what we have. Gratitude practice helps with this. What drags us away from being content with what we have is thinking that we’ll be happier when we get this or that, but there is no end to this kind of thinking. It’s an endless cycle with no satisfaction to be found because once we have something, we then desire something else. And we can never be happy this way because we’re always desiring something in the future instead of finding contentment in the present. Any happiness we do have lasts only until we decide we want more, and the dissatisfaction kicks in again. Dissatisfaction is not happiness; it’s a subtle form of suffering, and it can lead to a much more insidious kind of suffering.
The Danger of Unchecked Desire.
The suffering of dissatisfaction comes from desire. Desire becomes greed when people constantly want more even when they have more than they could ever possibly need. There’s a good reason why greed is one of the seven deadly sins. When greed takes hold and becomes insatiable, as with addiction – to drugs, money or power – the afflicted person will do anything to get what they want, no matter how much suffering they cause themselves or others. And once such people get power, if you add the other causes of suffering to that kind of greed – closed-mindedness and hatred, according to the Buddha – you have a recipe for immense suffering, not only for the one who is addicted but also for those he or she sees as mere pawns in their thirst for more.
A World of Suffering
As I look around the world today, I see an enormous amount of extreme physical and mental suffering. Wars persist, despite efforts for peace, and they stem from greed for more territory or power. And the most heinous of crimes are being committed in the name of war, driven by greed’s partners, hatred and closed mindedness. We can see the greed, hatred and closed-mindedness infecting the world on social media. People, shielded by screens, spew venom without having to look someone in the eye. Words like ‘freedom’ are twisted to mean freedom for oneself, not for others. And from this insatiable desire, rigid closed-mindedness and unchecked hatred, we have created a world filled with incredible suffering.
Accepting the Truth
Understanding dukkha has been a journey. From dismissing the Buddhist view on suffering to realising the profound truth of the Buddha’s words, I’ve come to see that suffering, in its many forms, is an integral part of the human experience. I often say, ‘Have body, will suffer,’ as a way of acknowledging that for so long as we are physical we will have to live with aches and pains of one sort or another. We will experience, illness, old age, and death. There is simply no way to avoid it, and accepting that enables us to save an awful lot of energy that we might otherwise use to rail uselessly against our circumstances.
This is not a miserable view of the world; it is a realistic one. And there is a way to navigate such a world that minimises the potential for suffering. Though we can’t always stop our physical suffering, we can stop suffering over our suffering. If we accept that illness is part of life, then when we get ill, we will be able to navigate the illness more easily than if we refuse to accept it. Accepting the inevitability of suffering is the first step towards the cessation of suffering and the purpose of the Buddha’s first noble truth
The Causes of Suffering
Recognising the causes of suffering is the purpose of the second truth. We can’t escape suffering unless we know its cause. In one word, the cause of all suffering according to the Buddha is ignorance. Ignorance in this context does not mean uneducated. It means unawareness, not seeing the true nature of self and the world. It means grasping to a false sense of self, thinking we are separate to everything around us, thinking that we are permanent, independent and singular. When we are aware of our true nature, that we are impermanent (we all die), that we are dependent on the support of the earth and other people, and that we are made of parts that can be dismantled, we can step outside of the desire that drives this cycle of dissatisfaction.
This kind of ignorance that sees ourself as a singular, permanent and independent entity manifests as closed mindedness, a complete disinterest in examining reality as it truly is. It causes us to want to protect this false sense of who we are. This manifests as aversion to things we don’t like and hatred of anything we perceive as threatening to us. It also manifests as the desire to give this self more – more property, more land, more food, more clothing, more power etc. Hence the Buddha said the causes of suffering are ignorance, attachment (desire) and aversion.
Note that in this Buddhist view on suffering, attachment here does not mean a healthy loving attachment to someone, but rather an unhealthy attachment that manifests as a desire for remaining in a relationship at all costs, the kind that causes coercive control and domestic violence.
The Way Out
In the third noble truth, the Buddha said that suffering can cease, and in the fourth, he told us how to go about it.
We often can’t stop the physical suffering we’re going through – at least not without time, medicine, a change of government, or peace deals and so on – and we can’t stop feeling uncomfortable things like grief and sadness, but we can minimise how much we suffer because of these things. The Buddha’s way is to work on ending our own dissatisfaction through the practice of meditation. Meditation brings us into the present moment, and it’s only in the present, in cultivating gratitude for what we do have, that we can cease the endless cycle of dissatisfaction that causes so much harm to ourselves and others.
And it is only in meditation that we have any hope of seeing our true nature. This is the real purpose of meditation. Take it out of context and sure, you can use meditation just for gaining a bit of peace and and mental clarity, but in a Buddhist context, its so much more. It’s the key to the way out of dissatisfaction and suffering, along with the Buddha’s Noble Eight Fold Path that lays out the ethical requirements for meditation to be effective in its deepest purpose of removing our ignorance of the true nature of self and reality.
When we see that, even for a brief glimpse, ignorance has fallen away and desire and hatred ceases. With that our dissatisfaction ceases. This is the Buddhist view on suffering, its causes and cessation.
Affecting Change
Being satisfied with what we have doesn’t mean that we will never do anything to change our circumstances. The most powerful place from which to act is the state of acceptance of what is – even if we don’t like what is – and the most powerful beings on the planet are those who are satisfied with what they have, even while working for beneficial change (the Dalia Lama, Nelson Mandala, Mahatma Gandhi and so on). When our mind is free of insatiable need, we can see clearly and act wisely and with heart. And when the majority of us have cut the cycle of dissatisfaction in ourselves, the world will change.
While we strive for beneficial change, we must also cultivate contentment, compassion and understanding in a world that desperately needs it.
What do you see when you look at the world with this Buddhist view of suffering? Does it seem true to you or a bit of a stretch?
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