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August 11 - August 23, 2019
When we recognize and acknowledge our own suffering, the Buddha — which means the Buddha in us — will look at it, discover what has brought it about, and prescribe a course of action that can transform it into peace, joy, and liberation. Suffering is the means
the Buddha used to liberate himself, and it is also the means by which we can become free.
Without suffering, you cannot grow. Without suffering, you cannot get the peace and joy you deserve. Please don’t run away from your suffering. Embrace it and cherish it.
The Buddha called suffering a Holy Truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering, and let it reveal to you the way to peace.
the wheel of the Dharma, the Way of Understanding and Love. This teaching is recorded in the Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma (Dhamma Cakka Pavattana Sutta).
Three points characterize this sutra. The first is the teaching of the Middle Way.
He had learned firsthand that if you destroy your health, you have no energy left to realize the path. The other extreme to be avoided, he said, is indulgence in sense pleasures — being possessed by sexual desire, running after fame, eating immoderately, sleeping too much, or chasing after possessions.
The second point is the teaching of the Four Noble Truths.
The third point is engagement in the world.
The Four Noble Truths
The First Noble Truth is suffering (dukkha). The root meaning of the Chinese character for suffering is “bitter.” Happiness is sweet; suffering is bitter. We all suffer to some extent. We have some malaise in our body and our mind. We have to recognize and acknowledge the presence of this suffering and touch it. To
do so, we may need the help of a teacher and a Sangha, friends in the practice. The Second Noble Truth is the origin, roots, nature, creation, or arising (samudaya) of suffering. After we touch our suffering, we need to look deeply into it to see how it came to be. We need to recognize and identify the spiritual and material foods we have ingested that are causing us to suffer.
The Third Noble Truth is the cessation (nirodha) of creating suffering by refraining from doing the things that make us suffer.
The Fourth Noble Truth is the path (marga) that leads to refraining from doing the things that cause us to suffer. This is the path we need the most. The Buddha called it the Noble Eightfold Path. The Chinese translate it as the “Path of Eight Right Practices”: Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.1
A teacher cannot give you the truth. The truth is already in you. You only need to open yourself — body, mind, and heart — so that his or her teachings will penetrate your own seeds of understanding
and enlightenment. If you let the words enter you, the soil and the seeds will do the rest of the work.
It is true that the Buddha taught the truth of suffering, but he also taught the truth of “dwelling happily in things as they are” (drishta dharma sukha viharin).6 To succeed in the practice, we must stop trying to prove that everything is suffering. In fact, we must stop trying to prove anything. If we touch the truth of suffering with our mindfulness, we will be able to recognize and identify our specific suffering, its specific causes, and the way to remove those causes and end our suffering.
Buddhist meditation has two aspects — shamatha and vipashyana. We tend to stress the importance of vipashyana (“looking deeply”) because it can bring us insight and liberate us from suffering and afflictions. But the practice of shamatha (“stopping”) is fundamental. If we cannot stop, we cannot have insight.
We have to learn the art of stopping — stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us.
We can stop by practicing mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful smiling, and deep looking in order to understand. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love, and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy.
But our habit energies are often stronger than our volition. We say and do things we don’t want to and afterwards we regret it. We make ourselves and others suffer, and we bring about a lot of damage. We may vow not to do it again, but we do it again. Why? Because our habit energies (vasana) push us. We need the energy of mindfulness to recognize and be present with our habit energy in order to stop this course of destruction. With mindfulness, we have the capacity to recognize the habit energy every time it manifests.
Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us.
Forgetfulness is the opposite.
We need to shine the light of mindfulness on everything we do, so the darkness of forgetfulness will disappear. The first function of meditation — shamatha — is to stop.
The second function of shamatha is calming. When we have a strong emotion, we know it can be dangerous to act, but we don’t have the strength or clarity to refrain.
We have to learn the art of breathing in and out, stopping our activities, an...
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The Buddha taught many techniques to help us calm our body and mind and look deeply at them. They can be summarized in five stages:
(1) Recognition
(2) Acceptance
(3) Embracing
(4) Looking deeply
(5) Insight
After calming, the third function of shamatha is resting.
We have to learn the art of resting, allowing our body and mind to rest. If we have wounds in our body or our mind, we have to rest so they can heal themselves.
Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing.
The Buddha said, “My Dharma is the practice of nonpractice.”1 Practice in a way that does not tire you out, but gives your body, emotions, and consciousness a chance to rest. Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest.
Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, the course of our destruction will just continue. The world needs healing. Individuals, communities, and nations need healing.
The wheel of the Dharma was put in motion twelve times — three for each of the Four Noble Truths. To understand the Four Noble Truths, not just intellectually but experientially, we have to practice the twelve turnings of the wheel.
The first turning is called “Recognition.” We sense that something is wrong, but we are not able to say exactly what it is. We make some effort to escape, but we cannot. We try to deny our suffering, but it persists. The Buddha said that to suffer and not know that we are suffering is more painful than the burden endured by a mule carrying an unimaginably heavy load. We must, first of all, recognize that we are suffering and then determine whether its basis is physical, physiological, or psychological. Our suffering needs to be identified.
The wounds in our heart become the object of our meditation.
Our suffering is us, and we need to treat it with kindness and nonviolence. We need to embrace our fear, hatred, anguish, and anger. “My dear suffering, I know you are there. I am here for you, and I will take care of you.” We stop running from our pain. With all our courage and tenderness, we recognize, acknowledge, and identify it.
The second turning of the wheel is called “Encouragement.”
After recognizing and identifying our pain, we take the time to look deeply into it in order to understand its tru...
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Our suffering — depression, illness, a difficult relationship, or fear — needs to be understood and, like a doctor, we are determined to understand it. We practice sitting and walking meditation, and we ask for guidance and support from our friends and, if we have one, our teacher. As we do this, we see that the causes of our suffering are knowable, and we make every effort to get to the bottom of it. At this stage, our practice can still be “set back” (ashrava).
The third turning of the wheel is called “Realization” and can be expressed as, “This suffering has been understood.” We realize the efforts begun during the second turning.
We can now call our suffering by its specific name and identify all of its characteristics. This alone brings us happiness, joy “without setbacks” (anashrava).
When we look deeply, we will discover the kinds of nutriments that have helped it come to be and that continue to feed it.”1 He then elaborated four kinds of nutriments that can lead to our happiness or our suffering — edible food, sense impressions, intention, and consciousness.
The first nutriment is edible food. What we eat or drink can bring about mental or physical suffering. We must be able to distinguish between what is healthful and what is harmful. We need to practice Right View when we shop, cook, and eat.
Much of our suffering comes from not eating mindfully. We have to learn ways to eat that preserve the health and well-being of our body and our spirit. When we smoke, drink, or consume toxins, we are eating our own lungs, liver, and heart. If we have children and do these things, we are eating our children’s flesh. Our children need us to be healthy and strong.
The second kind of nutriment is sense impressions. Our six sense organs — eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind — are in constant contact (sparsha) with sense objects, and these contacts become food for our consciousness.
