Life Is Not Wrong If You're Struggling

It's easy to get caught in doubt and despair when life serves us stress, struggle and grief. A light overview of dukkha - the fundamental teaching of the Buddha. Wise understanding and wise view shape how we approach life.

From The Nature of Awakening residential retreat, October 4-10, 2025.

Transcript

Well, I feel like we only nearly lost one yogi today, So that's good. How is everyone? We didn't nearly lose anyone. We didn't nearly lose anyone. That's dramatic. Did anybody daydream about going home today? No. Daydream about going home? Daydream about going for a six-hour walk? Anybody take a nap when they weren't really tired? These little escape routes that we have. How are we doing? How was the day today? I really like this. This is something that I bring into classes a lot, Too, The thumb. It's like gladiator. Where on the spectrum are you today? Okay, Okay, Okay, Okay, Okay. That's nice. We're having overall maybe a fairly soft landing, So for those of you who are having a little bit of a bumpier landing, Let the group support you in that. It's not a comparative thing, What's happening in your current experience. It truly is just conditions coming together in this moment. For some people, Having an 80-degree day in early October in New Hampshire is bliss, And for others, It evokes some sadness or nostalgia or longing for something different. All of those are normal. I think one of the elements that I really love about this kind of retreat, Where you're here and you're just in it, Is a phrase that Pema Chodron, I think she has a book called this, Too, The Wisdom of No Escape. It's like you are committed, You've made the decision, You're here, The phone may or may not be in the basket, But you have a little bit of an accountability buddy, Because most of you are rooming with other people, And they can certainly see what you're doing. So if that doesn't evoke a little bit of accountability, Then I don't know what does. But you know, It's this, It's like to be willing to be right in the midst of whatever experience you're having in any given moment or throughout any given day is so brave, Because we know that it will shift, Or in the moment, We hope that it won't shift if it's going really great, And if it's not going great, Then we hope that it's going to shift soon. Right, But it takes a little bit of time to build that awareness, To build that momentum of awareness that can be with experience as it's happening without feeling kind of like we're a pinball just being flipped around from one thing to the next, But it also takes a lot of curiosity, You know, To be willing to look a little bit deeper, To be willing to sense into what's actually happening with the heart and the mind. And this word citta that is used for mind really, Really is like heart-mind, You know, So in the yoga sutras, Different, Different lineage, But you know, Yoga is citta-vrtti-nirodha, So yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the heart-mind. Just to go back to that equanimity thing, Not that we'll never encounter pain, Or that we won't encounter loss, Or we won't encounter love, Or real beautiful highs in life, But those fluctuations are held within a container that's large enough to meet that, That we have developed a range big enough to hold all of that that we encounter without getting stuck and feeling like, Ooh, If only it could stay like this forever. One of the themes that kind of kept coming up through the small groups today was this sort of feeling of, Am I doing this right? You know, Should I be doing something different? I'm not really sure. Even you know, For some like, That's real fundamental wounding that I think so many of us have is like, This feeling of not really belonging, Like not belonging in a community or not belonging in this world, Not belonging as a part of what's happening on a larger scale and just always standing a little bit outside of that. And for me, I've shared this quite a bit, But you know, I will continue to share it because here I am doing it, But this, You know, Getting over the fear of like, Sitting up in front of a room of people and sharing anything, Even just being seen, Like moving in front of a group of people is always so terrifying to me. And it's just amazing how much like, Over the years, My own relationship to doing this has shifted. Maybe this is relatable to you. I remember when I was very young, I like desperately, Desperately wanted to be a ballerina. It was the 80s, So ballet was hot. Jane Fonda, Ballet was in. And I just really, Really wanted to be a ballerina. And so I took all the lessons, I was in it, And I got to the first and only ballet recital that I ever did. And so Matt Cordner Hall, Which is on Whitman College campus, Behind the red curtain, Thick velvet curtain, It has beautiful, Beautiful outfit on, It was blue. Had my makeup done. It was like a lot of makeup on a six-year-old. I did it myself. It obviously looked great. And I was in the opening stance, Ready, Ready to go. And I hear the person, Like with the mic on, And she's like, Okay, We're going to open the curtain. And it was like, Absolute panic. And I just started sobbing. So I'm in this ridiculous position, Crying, And trying not to move, And trying to not let everybody down around me. And that was the beginning of decades of being terrified of doing exactly what I'm doing now. And so, You know, There's always this like, Sense of like, I really hope that whatever it is that comes out of this mouth, Whatever it is that comes out of this heart is going to be helpful, Is going to be meaningful, Is maybe going to inspire something or plant a seed down the line. But I also just don't know. And when I attach too much meaning or too much sense of my own worth or my own identity to how it is going to be received, That is exactly where the struggle starts to happen. So over the years, You know, I've really paid attention to it. And I've fortunately had so much repetition over and over and over and over again. To be able to work with this, I've suffered a lot around doing exactly this. You know, This is like, Classic, Just such an obvious and an easy example of this word, Dukkha, Which I brought up earlier today as one of the characteristics, Right, One of the fundamental characteristics of life. And that's like, One flavor of dukkha is that, Of course, Everything that we encounter is bittersweet, Because we know it will change or we know it will end. We can't hold on to it. It's subject to a niche or impermanence. But there's also dukkha as in the four noble truths. So it's how the mind meets experience, Right, Bound by craving, Bound by this clinging, This velcro sense of how we expect life to be, And whether or not life is meeting that expectation in any given moment. And it's just so creative in the ways that we are able to find and experience dukkha. And maybe today you felt it in big ways, Like very obvious ways, You know, Moving through challenging states of mind and heart and feeling where you are getting stuck, Feeling these old patterns play out or, Or feeling a lot of fear arise. Or maybe you felt it in small ways, Like going through the lunch line and selectively choosing the things that you like to put on your salad, You know, And maybe being like a little disappointed that there wasn't more of the thing that you really love to be able to just pile it on there. Like, Ooh, Yeah, Carrots, Like cucumbers, I don't know what it is for you. But like, Just those little things, Those little things that rub. But that urge to be happy, That urge to fulfill all of these desires that we have, Is really the mirror, Right? The mirror for our desire to be free from pain, From suffering, From dis-ease, From stress. It's like the desire to be happy shows us that that's what we want. So we spend so much time looking for different ways to do that. You know, And this path is an interesting one, Because the Buddha, Like while this central thesis of dukkha being the, And clinging being the source of suffering, The source of stress in our lives, Right? The Buddha said this all the time, I teach one thing, I teach suffering and the end of suffering. And so when we start to open to the places where that grip is happening, And we have the willingness and the the curiosity to actually let ourselves go there, That's where we start to find release from it. That's where we start to find the cause and we start to see the cause of that for ourselves. And then we start to see actually how it also unhooks a little bit. And the more times we see that through small things, Like not having tomatoes today, Or whatever, The bell being slightly too loud or too soft for your personal preference, Or we feel it through big ways, Like the losses that we come against in our lives or the ways that we are shifting that feel uncomfortable to us because they're unfamiliar, The more we can almost like acclimatize to it, The more we can get into the path of starting to see like, Oh, That's dukkha, This is dukkha. One, I think it was the first, I used to teach a course called Yoga Foundations, And I haven't taught it for a little bit, But I think it was in the first cohort of that. There was a mom and a daughter who took it, And so I was teaching about dukkha, And one of them said at some point, Like, Oh my gosh, Yeah, This last weekend, You know, We were out at lunch and like something came up or wandering around or whatever, And now we just have this kind of joke, Like, Oh, That's dukkha, Oh, That's just dukkha, That's dukkha, And I was like, Well, How freeing is that, You know, To just be able to name, Like, Oh, That's dukkha, Simple, So really, Really simple, Like, Oh, That's dukkha, Recognize it for what it is, You know, You don't have to assign more to it than that for the purposes of what we're doing, For the purposes of, Yeah, The purposes of practice in any given moment. That word dukkha means like out of alignment, It's likened to a wheel that is kind of off its axis a little bit, And so it's wobbly. That's why when I talk about like kind of that energetic state of when we feel like something isn't quite right, It is that kind of feeling, It's like the wheels aren't all quite going in the same direction, Like there's one that's a little squeaky or one that's like a little wobbly, And it seems like something that we need to fix, And that desire to fix is a trap, Because you will never be able to fix everything, Again, The whack-a-mole situation. That desire to fix has a name, Too, In this tradition, It's called samsara, The endless wheel of suffering, The endless cycle of suffering, Where we feel pain and we react to it, And then we go to fix it, And we fix that one, And then another cycle of suffering happens, And it just keeps going and going and going, And both on a small scale for us, This samsara that we experience personally, But also the samsara of the world, Right, All of our energy, Let's get a little out there, All of the energy, You are energy balls, We're all balls of energy, We're made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, Okay, So if we are all balls of energy, And our energy is continuing to add to this cycle of suffering, To this soup of samsara, Then it's going to continue to move in that direction, If for us individually, We can learn how to slow that down, Or even cease it, Full enlightenment is when suffering ceases, When we see beyond the fetters of greed, Hatred, And delusion, And we're free, Right, We're free, We're enlightened, We see a different way, Right, Then our energy is removed from that cycle, And that's really, It's like this is walking each other home, Right, So we're all doing our own thing, But we're also all helping each other at the same time, One way of understanding that. So, If you had to guess, Right, We've talked a lot about vedana, It came up today too, This vedana, This feeling tone of pleasant, Unpleasant, Neutral, If you had to guess, Is dukkha pleasant, Was dukkha neutral, Nah, Dukkha is unpleasant, Right, It's always experienced as unpleasant, So we can have this idea that if we change the vibe, Or change the experience, Or change the circumstances around the experience, That will stop the suffering, And that could happen temporarily, But we also miss the fundamental wisdom within it, Which is like, Ah, Actually, The thing that was probably causing this out-of-alignment-ness is something that's going on internally, It's not a circumstance, Sometimes the circumstances don't help, Sometimes the job isn't right, Sometimes the community isn't right, Sometimes the friendship, The relationship, The whatever isn't right, But the timing isn't right, But something in it is out-of-alignment with where we want to be, It's out-of-alignment with what we really feel our heart moving towards. One of the ways that I've really felt this has helped, I can't even remember, This may have been one of my teachers named Vance who shared this, Like the way of working with dukkha is that it really wants to be known, It wants to be acknowledged, It wants to be felt, All of those little places that are rubbing, Are calling to you for your attention, They're calling for your care, Right, Because attention is care. How else do you show it? Like you think of a friendship, You know, Like, Oh, I care about you, Of course, Like, Oh, You're struggling right now, What can I do, How can I help, Can I make you soup, Can I bring you ice cream, Do you want to sit with me, Can we have some tea together, That's care, Right, Your attention is your love, And in that same way, We bring that attention to ourselves. It's said that the mind in response to dukkha either responds in bewilderment, So either responds in confusion, Like it can't understand, It can't quite get itself around it, And it's, Or it searches for a way to end it, And a big part of this path, Actually the first, So we talked about the Four Noble Truths, They introduced that last night, Right, The truth of dukkha, The truth of this dis-ease being a part of our lives, That the cause of it is some kind of identification with it, Some kind of clinging, Some kind of belief behind it, Some kind of buy-in to the thing, Right, Whatever the thing is, Whatever the suffering is, Whatever the story is, The narrative, And that there's an end to it, And the end to it is found in this path, So the first factor of the path is wise view, And you're like, Well, How is that the first thing, When I have absolutely no idea what I've been doing, And I've been doing this for however many years, It's like that wisdom-wise view is both the beginning of the path and it's the end, It's like panya wisdom, We start to see with more clarity, That's what vipassana means, This practice of vipassana meditation, Of which this falls under, Seeing clearly, So we're starting to see more clearly, And when we start to see that we're trying to fix the moment to be what we want it to be, Rather than allowing it to be as it is, And finding ease within that, That's when we start to unhook, That's when we start to feel like, Well, I don't have to fix this body pain in order to be okay, I don't have to fix the fact that I have another birthday coming up really soon in order to be okay, You know, I don't have to fix the loss of this person from my life who I really love and care about in order to be okay, I'm going to be okay, It's going to be okay, There can be heartache, Right, There can be sadness, There can be grief, But also those are normal human emotions that we go through, That's a part of this experience, And like, My gosh, I hope that you feel those things, Quite frankly, They're hard and they suck, And on the flip side of that, Like the ability to feel anything also means that you can feel everything, You know, It's the more things that you can feel, The more you can enjoy the highs and all of the other stuff too when they're there, But not be attached to those as trying to make those a permanent state of being, Like just, If we just think about like, Just to take it on like a slightly cultural edge here, The pursuit of happiness, Being about the thing, Getting the thing that you want, And so you work, And work, And work, And work, And work, And you get the house, And you get the car, You have the job, You have the partner, And stuff goes along, And it's like, Well, But now we need the second house, Like this is the American dream, It's not just to have one house anymore, It's to have two houses, It's to have three houses, It's to have multiple cars, It's to have so much stuff that it's just coming out everywhere, We have so much stuff, We have storage units that we pay for to store our extra stuff, It's insane, It's totally insane, It's like such a, It's such a endless cycle of wanting and trying to fill that void, Whatever that void is, Trying to fill the void with something else, Is that triggering for you? My parents have a lot of stuff, They have a lot of stuff in their house, And every time I show up, I'm like, Did you need more Christmas decorations? Because only one of us is going to be around to clean this out. That's me, Maybe Lindsay will do it too, I don't know, Laura will take care of it. Oh yeah, Yeah, And like, What is it, What is it that we are buying, What is the happiness that we're buying, And when you buy it, Does it actually keep you happy for that long? Talk about Samsara. You know, Life's not going wrong when we struggle or feel pain, And that is such an important thing to remember, Right, That it's not wrong if we are in a state of struggling, Or it's not wrong if we're in a low energy state, It's not wrong, It's just the way that conditions have come together in that moment, And conversely, It doesn't necessarily mean that life is going perfectly right, If things are super smooth and easy. I had this experience at a retreat a few years ago, It was in California, And like, If you've been to California, The weather is apparently always nice in California, I think that's why so many people live there. I was in California, Just outside of Santa Cruz, And I had taken my hammock with me to this longer retreat at a very, One of my favorite retreat centers, Sitting with a couple of my very favorite teachers, And I was just so like, So ready for a retreat that wasn't just struggling through it, Because I had had a couple of years of like, Every retreat, Every time I sat being struggle, And I was just so, I was like, I just want to give up the struggle, Just give up the struggle, Please. So I took my hammock, And I strung it up between these two trees, And this particular retreat center isn't like this, It's like, You know, Santa Cruz is a bit tighter, Like, Just stuff is more developed in that area, So they have a big fence that goes around the entire perimeter of the retreat center, So I'm like, Right up against the fence, And nobody's walking by, I'm like, A little off of the trail that runs around the perimeter, And it's perfect weather, So I went out there, It's like morning, This long morning period, And I was in the hammock, And just like, Resting in this hammock, And it was so, So perfect, And in that period of time, It was probably like, I don't know, A couple of hours, Hour and a half, Two hours, Just swinging away in my little hammock, 75 degrees, Light sun, Just a hint of a breeze, No problems in the world, And I was like, This is it, I'm never, I'm never gonna feel pain again, Because now I know that this is all it takes, This is all it takes, Is just this, Like, Just this mind state of like, It's just, You know, In the mind, It's like, Everything is like, Water off a duck's back, I don't care, It's fine, Oh, This is coming up, This story is coming up, It's fine, It's okay, I understand, You know, I was wrong, They were wrong, Like, It's okay, Lots of stuff going on, No problems, Perfect, And certainly then, Next day, Dukkha day, Like, Absolute dukkha day, Just falling apart, Just absolutely falling apart, And so we swing between these two, Right, Dukkha, It's a little bit of out of alignment, And sukha, Ease, Joy, Those two words, Dukkha and sukha, Just swinging in your hammock, Enjoying both, But it becomes a conditioned habit, Right, That when craving arises, And when we can fulfill that craving, So like, A craving for ice cream seems to be hot here in the northeast, I've never seen, I've never lived any place where ice cream is so popular year-round, It is shocking to me, All the time, It's like, It's like, Oh, January, Let's go get a ice dunkin' and some ice cream, Like, It's so cold, But when we can fulfill that craving, It becomes a habit, That like, I will be able to do that again and again and again, It's like the slot machine, You know, Just like, Keep hitting the little button, Oh, Okay, And when we can't, It almost becomes even more addictive, It's like, Well, Maybe if I try a little harder next time, Or if I like, Just stay in the loop long enough, Then I'll be able to like, Figure it out, And then I'll get the, Then I'll get the sukha, It's like, Intermittent reinforcement is even more addictive than predictable reinforcement or validation, You know, So the second noble truth of how craving relates to dukkha, What this is, Craving is to be understood, It's to be examined, So this is a real key in your practice, Is to feel those urges that happen, And I don't mean like, The, This was a question that we just got, Actually, I don't mean the craving to understand, The craving to be free, Right, That is, That is chanda, That is like, Hopeful, That is wholesome craving that is leading you onward, That is helping you to align with what you really want in life, Freedom, Happiness, Right, Peace, Peace, Happiness has a different flavor than like, The birthday party happiness, Peaceful happiness, We start to understand that a little bit more, Becomes more of a priority, Tanha is craving, So chanda and tanha, Tanha is craving, And tanha's translation is thirst, So it's like, I always imagine like, Being, Crawling through the desert and just looking for the mirage, Like, Reaching for that mirage that's out in front of you, Water, The oasis, Mirage, Laura has a thing about the word oasis being used incorrectly, The mirage of an oasis, And just like, There's not water, It's not an oasis, It's a paradise, It's a paradise, Just like, Oh, Just like, Reaching for, And then you get there, And you realize, Right, And then you realize, Oh, That's actually just, That was just an imagination, That was a fantasy, That was a trick of the mind, That I would be fulfilled once I got there, Because that thing doesn't actually exist, That's tanha, That's, That's the difference, Right, So chanda, Chanda, Chanda, Wholesome, Onward leading, The wholesome desire that brought you to sign up for this thing, And you're like, I don't even really know what's gonna happen, But I met Cort and Laura once, And they seem pretty reasonable, So I'll show up, So I'm here, You know, Maybe it'll be a soft landing into something, Like a bigger thing that I can, Can pursue and figure out for myself, Versus like, Yeah, That, That endless, Endless desire, Of tanha, The really good news about all of this, And I know, I tend to, I tend to weave a lot of different elements, And a lot of different, Like, Substrates, And, And different things into one talk, Versus being like, Okay, And these are the, You know, Seven factors of awakening, Or like, This is the, Whatever, That this list, Or that list, But the, The really good news about craving is that because it is conditioned, Like everything else, It is the law of conditionality, Everything that is arising was conditioned to arise as it is now, I'll come back to that in a moment, But because it is conditioned, It can also be conditioned another way, We can condition the mind to understand in another way, So by the law of conditionality, I mean this, Think of all of the elements that came together for you to be able to come on this retreat, To take a week away from your daily life, To have the financial resources, To have the time, To have the job, Or to be in retirement, To have the person who told you about it, Or the whatever, Like all of the different things that came together that brought you here, That's causes and conditions, You know, So that's like on a very physical level, But also like any mind state that you are experiencing is due to causes and conditions too, Just like the body is like the record of your life, Everything that happens throughout your life, However the body is treated, Or moves, Or doesn't move, Or the genetic coding behind it, And the, Your, All that comes with that, The epigenetics, Like how everything from your families is also passed to you, Right, All of these things have created you in this particular moment right now, And whatever is happening here, Is that so cool, Just like, I love it, I love it. So wise view, Right, It's the first, First path factor, But it's also the whole unfolding of the dhamma begins and ends with it, You start with a little bit of understanding, And work with what's here, You work with whatever you got, And through that, Then it starts to open out a little bit more, And a little bit more, And a little bit more, And we start to see these, These, These, These, Deeper truths come out, And it doesn't take, It's like so, So ordinary, You know, So don't dismiss, Right, Don't dismiss ordinary moments, Don't dismiss ordinary insight as insignificant, Because it's not, If you're like reaching for something, If you're grasping for something that feels super, Super natural, Right, It's not super natural, Awakening is natural, If we set the course, And if we nurture it, And if we give the causes and conditions that has come together, It's a natural process, We don't have to be in a rush, It's really found just in one, One moment of feeling at a time, One moment of hearing, One moment of knowing, Just like one moment at a time, All we have to worry about, All we have to take care of, And we just know what qualities of heart and mind are here, Let go of the control, Loosen the grip, Let it be as it is, You might just check in with how the heart-mind, The chitta is now, And you might feel this kind of balance of some energy and some ease, And some amount of trust, Or faith in yourself, Faith in the process, Faith in the unfolding, Lawful unfolding of nature, And the wisdom to know that like, Yeah, You, You do, You do have to put in a little effort, Just this moment of sensing, Just this moment of feeling in, One moment of knowing at a time, And maybe we can soften our expectations a little bit, Expectations for ourselves, Expectations around what should be happening, Maybe we can soften into those places that feel a little rough or ragged, And the ache, And to teach about suffering and the end of suffering, As we continue to move through, Move through the evening, This very relatively cushy setup that we have here, Okay, When dukkha does arise, You just recognize it as such, And don't push it away, It's really there, Right, Don't waste your dukkha, It's there to show you something, What a gift, What a, What a weird, Weird gift this is, Okay, Thank you so much for your kind attention, Thank you for hanging out, I hope you have an excellent supper.