Talk - Dukkha: Laying Down the Burden

The First Noble Truth the Buddha gave to us is that of Dukkha, most often translated as suffering, but best translated as "that which is difficult to bear".

In this Dhamma talk Bhante J spells out what Dukkha is in various ways, and how we go about abandoning it.

Transcript

Okay,

Okay.

We raised the volume up a little bit for Vantajee.

So,

I'm a loud mouth,

So.

Okay,

So.

Pubekhang bhikkave etarahi ca dukhanceva panyapemi dukhassa ca nirodha.

It's one of the most famous lines.

It's the Buddha talking about what he teaches.

He says,

Bhikkhus,

Both formally and now,

What I teach is dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.

So,

Welcome to this second day of the Three Characteristics of Existence Retreat.

Yesterday,

You had Vantajee talking to you about impermanence,

And he said that you had to go to me for suffering.

And here you are.

Those of you who have heard me talk before may be surprised that I have no jokes and laughter for you in this talk.

It's all very serious.

So,

We're talking about dukkha.

And one of the things to start out with is,

Dukkha,

What does it mean?

You've heard it translated many,

Many ways.

The most common is suffering.

Thanasarabdhikku calls it stress.

For a long time,

My favorite was unsatisfactoriness.

But I came across a way of translating dukkha about a year or two ago that I really liked,

That really I felt fit with,

The best with the word.

And so,

How you can translate dukkha is difficult to bear.

Du means hard or difficult.

Ka means to bear.

So,

Dukkha is what is difficult to bear.

You can also think of dukkha or translate dukkha in two ways.

There's the dukkha of the Four Noble Truths,

Which we're going to go into.

And then there's also dukkha,

Which simply means like pain,

Unpleasantness.

And so,

We'll talk about both types of dukkha in our talk.

So,

The Buddha gave us these Four Noble Truths.

Most of you,

I'm sure,

Know what the Four Noble Truths are.

The first one is the topic of our talk today.

You know the story of the Buddha.

He had three divine messengers.

He saw an old person,

A sick person,

And a dead person.

And then he saw a monastic or shaven-headed ascetic.

And this led him to renounce his life and go out and search for a way to end dukkha.

He didn't know what dukkha was at that point.

He didn't call it dukkha.

But when he came back after he was awakened,

When he,

In his first sermon,

Unveiling the Wheel of Dhamma,

He talked about he gave us the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Wayfold Path.

So,

This First Noble Truth,

Most people think of it,

Or hear they say,

Oh,

Buddha said life is suffering.

It's very pessimistic.

I actually prefer to see it as the truth of dukkha,

Not as pessimistic,

But as somewhere between realistic and optimistic,

As you'll see.

So,

The Noble Truth of dukkha.

And in addition to the definition I gave you,

The Buddha gives a much more detailed definition.

He says,

Well,

What is dukkha?

Birth is dukkha.

Aging is dukkha.

Death is dukkha.

There's this first three,

The first three divine messengers that he saw.

Sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

And despair are dukkha.

Not getting what one wants is dukkha.

Being separated from people,

Places,

Experiences that we love and want to hold on to is dukkha.

Having to deal with people,

Places,

And experiences we don't want to have anything to do with is dukkha.

And the Buddha says,

In short,

Five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha.

And keep those five aggregates in mind because we're going to talk about them a little bit later.

So,

Let's go over these in a little bit more detail.

Why would birth be dukkha?

There's a wonderful meme that I found on the internet,

And it's a picture of this brand new baby,

And the baby's crying,

You know,

Which is babies tend to do when they're born.

And there's caption under,

And it says,

Oh no,

Not again.

That is why birth is dukkha.

Because this is within the context of the fact of sangsara,

The fact of that this isn't our only life,

That we are stuck in this wheel,

And we keep being born again and again and again and again.

I had a good childhood.

I liked my childhood,

But I've reached the point where I don't look back and say,

Oh,

I'd like to do that again.

No thanks.

So this is why birth is dukkha,

According to the Buddha.

I think it's a little bit easier to understand why aging is dukkha,

Right?

At least for people who aren't too very young.

I started understanding that when I got my first gray hairs and started losing my vision a little bit and all these kind of things.

She's like,

Oh,

He's such a baby.

Yes.

That is why aging is dukkha.

Because we go from this very strong,

Very fit,

Beautiful,

Every complexion is good,

All these things,

And then we age.

Death is dukkha.

When we die,

We go through this process.

Not everybody's death is very pleasant.

Death is suffering.

Death is not an easy thing.

It's a difficult thing to bear,

Both while we're living,

Thinking about it,

And also while we're going through it,

And also for the fact,

According to the Buddha,

That it leads to just another birth.

So sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

And despair,

Easy enough to understand.

We've all had those mind states at one point in our life.

It's not a pleasant mind state,

Usually due to some kind of loss or some kind of thing that we don't want to deal with,

Which is the next one.

Being separated from everything that we love,

Everything that we want to hold on to,

That is part of life.

This is where,

When we think about these things,

People say,

Oh,

That's pessimistic.

Not really.

It's only pessimistic if you're putting your head in the sand like an ostrich.

It's realistic,

Because that is what happens.

Having to deal with people,

Places,

And experiences we don't like.

How many people at work are like,

Oh,

This person's annoying,

Or this or that?

You have to deal with people.

You're put together with people.

You're put together with experiences that you don't want to deal with.

You try to push it away.

We don't want to have anything to do with that.

That's dukkha.

Not getting what we want.

How many times in our lives do we strive for things?

We strive,

We desire something,

We go after it,

And we don't get it.

There's a wonderful quote,

The Buddha didn't say this,

But somebody also said,

There's two kinds of suffering,

Not getting what you want and getting what you want.

Because when you get what you want,

Then you don't want to lose it.

That's the other end of it.

Of course,

The five clinging aggregates.

The five aggregates are what the Buddha says is what we're made up of.

What we consider this to be this self,

This person that we've built up,

Are these five aggregates.

We built up this person,

This identity,

By clinging to these five aggregates as something more than what they are.

That's these five aggregates.

The Buddha gives in Sanyutta Nikaya,

Number 38,

That 14.

By the way,

Any sutra references that I say,

I'll put up on the board,

So you don't have to worry about it if you miss it.

Somebody also asked if I could put up some of the stuff that Bonte went over yesterday.

I'll try to do that as well throughout the whole retreat.

In this sutta,

The Buddha gives,

There's three categories of dukkha.

The first one is dukkha-dukkha,

And that's dukkha of physical pain.

All the pains that are related to having this physical form is dukkha-dukkha.

The next is viparanamma dukkha.

That is the dukkha of the changing nature of things.

This is a great example of that is aging,

Just like I said.

You grow up,

You're born,

And you're like this,

And then you're like this,

And then as you get older you go back down to like this.

That's changing.

Everything is changing.

Of course,

That causes us suffering,

But we'll see why that causes us suffering later on.

Again,

You can see these three types of dukkha as going from more gross experience to fine experience.

The next one is what's called sankara dukkha.

This is the dukkha of all conditioned existence.

This is technically where the Buddha says life is suffering,

Because all conditioned things have within them this mark of dukkha.

So that is our basic introduction to the basics of dukkha.

That is the first noble truth.

What is the second noble truth?

The second noble truth is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha.

That is our craving,

Tanha,

It's called.

Tanha literally means thirst.

It's like,

A good example is you hear about the hungry ghosts,

Right?

They're always hungry or thirsty,

And they have these little holes that can't get enough food in to satiate their thirst and their hunger.

That's basically what we are as beings in sankara.

We have this craving,

We have this thirst,

This thirst to experience pleasurable things through our senses,

Through our experience.

This is what drives us.

This is the origin of our dukkha,

And this is what drives us to future lives as well.

So there's three kinds of craving.

First one is craving for sensual pleasures.

Again,

This is any kind of experience that you can have through your senses.

Pleasant sights,

Smells,

Sounds,

Touches.

Pleasant mental states,

All these things.

These are things that,

Because they are pleasant,

They are very easy to get attached to,

Very easy to want to chase after,

Very easy to want to hold on to.

As we'll see,

You can't hold on to anything in this conditioned existence.

The next craving is what's called bhava-tanha.

The first one was kama-tanha,

And the next one is bhava-tanha.

Bhava means existence.

So this is craving for existence.

This is exactly what I just said about how the craving pushes us forward.

Not even the death of this physical body is enough to stop our craving from continuing on,

Going on to experience these sensual pleasures.

Then the next one is vibhava-tanha,

Which means craving for non-existence or extermination.

You can think of this at a couple different ways.

You can think of this at the gross level of you're as a human being or whatever,

And you want to end your life,

Commit suicide.

Or you can think of this as I don't want to live in samsara anymore,

Ever.

You can go probably a positive way,

Using that towards moving towards nibbana,

Or you can go a negative way of trying to not wanting to exist.

But that's vibhava-tanha,

Craving for non-existence.

And so one of the easiest ways to kind of get a handle of our craving,

To understand our craving,

Is to understand what arises concurrently with our craving.

That is the three roots.

Shantayji talked about them very briefly yesterday.

It's lobha,

Dosa,

And moha,

Greed,

Hatred,

And delusion.

So what's the first one?

Lobha,

It's greed.

You can think of it as greed,

Covetousness,

Clinging,

Wanting something,

Holding it,

Not letting it go.

This is the mind of attachment,

The I like mind.

I like it,

I want more of it,

I don't want to let it go.

And so the next dosa is the opposite of that,

Although this too is part of craving.

It's the opposite,

The other side of the coin of craving.

This is the mind of aversion,

Hate,

Dislike.

The I dislike mind.

I don't want to have anything to do with it,

I want to push it away,

Kill it,

Do whatever I need to do,

So I don't have to deal with this experience.

And so that's our MO,

That's what we do.

If you really examine your life,

Going day to day,

Observing what your thoughts and intentions are,

Almost all of the time we're going like ping pong balls between these two things.

I like,

I dislike.

Because we're craving.

We want pleasant things,

We don't want unpleasant things.

It's all from the root of craving.

And the reason why we do this is because of our delusion.

This delusion,

Which stems from our craving and from our ignorance,

That there is this,

This is called the I am mind.

So there's the I like mind,

I dislike mind,

And I am mind.

This is the mind that propagates,

Conceives and propagates this permanent self,

This being that we think that we are,

That is permanent,

Not changing,

All of these things.

So these three things,

Greed,

Hatred and delusion,

The three roots,

Are important for us to understand our craving.

And the reason why it's important for us to understand our cravings,

Because we're talking about dukkha.

If we want to do something about our dukkha,

We have to do something about the origin of the dukkha,

Why it comes about.

So this is craving.

There's a wonderful sutta,

It's called the Bajukha Sutta.

It's Samyutta Nikaya 42.

11.

And in this sutta,

There's a headman,

So it's like the head of a village,

Comes to the Buddha,

And he had a very ambitious question.

He goes to the Buddha and he says,

Tell me about suffering and the origin of suffering.

And the Buddha says,

Well,

If I were to talk to you about the suffering and the origin of suffering in relation to the past or to the future,

You'd be confused,

You'd be vexed.

So let me,

Here,

Sitting here right now,

Talk to you sitting there right now,

In the present,

About how dukkha arises and its origin.

And so the first question he asks is,

In this town that you live in,

Are there people who,

If they were to be murdered or put in prison or censured or harmed in any way,

From which that act would be suffering for you?

And he says,

Yes,

Yeah,

There would be.

And so then the Buddha says,

Are there people in this town that,

If they were to be murdered,

Put in jail,

Censured,

All these different things,

That this would not be suffering for you?

This would not bring up any kind of sorrow?

And he says,

Yes,

There are people in this town that this would not bring up any kind of sorrow.

And so he says,

Just like that,

Whatever suffering that arises is dependent and is rooted in craving.

The word used is called chandaraga,

Which is a compound of desire and passion.

So that's really what the headman said,

Yes,

I have desire and passion for the people,

And this is the reason why I would have suffering if they were to be hurt in any way.

And then the headman has this little light bulb movement come up,

And he says,

Yes,

I have a son,

And he lives far away,

And every day I have to send somebody to go and check on my son.

And until the person comes back and says that my son is okay,

I'm beside myself.

And so he's like,

Oh yeah,

Okay,

I understand what you're talking about,

Buddha.

And so then the Buddha uses that example.

He says,

Well,

What would happen if your son were to be murdered or to be put in jail,

To be censured,

Etc.

,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And the headman says,

Well,

My life would be altered.

How could I not have sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

And despair at the loss of my son?

And again,

The Buddha says,

All,

Any suffering that arises,

Arises dependent on desire,

Dependent on craving.

And so then the Buddha continues further.

He says,

He talks about the headman's wife.

He says,

Before you knew your wife,

Was there any desire or craving for her?

And he says,

No.

And he says,

After you met your wife,

Was there desire and craving for her?

And he says,

Yes.

And then so the Buddha says,

Oh,

How would it be that,

What would happen if your wife were to be murdered or put in jail,

Censured,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And he said the same thing.

My life would be altered.

How could I not have sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

And despair?

And so the Buddha is really hitting it home that any kind of suffering we have is related to our own craving,

Our own desire.

There's another sutta called Visakha.

There's Visakha,

The name of our dorm,

Was one of the foremost laid women disciples of the Buddha.

And there's,

In the sutta,

She is,

She's a grandma.

And I think what happened was her grandchild died.

And she went to the Buddha and was talking to the Buddha and asked him about the death.

And he says,

Well,

Just so.

All beings,

Everything that arises is subject to cessation.

And the Buddha asked Visakha,

He said,

There are many,

Many children in this town.

Would you take all of them on as a dear one?

Like,

Would you love and take on all of,

Basically,

Adopt all the children in the town?

And she said,

Yes,

I would.

And he says,

When somebody,

When you have a dear one,

You have suffering.

So he says,

If you have a hundred dear ones,

You have a hundred sufferings.

And he goes down.

Fifty dear ones,

Fifty sufferings.

Ten dear ones,

Ten sufferings.

One dear one,

One suffering.

No dear ones,

No suffering.

Very impactful.

Now,

What does this mean for,

You know,

Lay people?

I get questions all the time at Q&As like,

But I have children and I'm married.

I can't give up all,

You know.

And so what I think the important thing to realize here is that it's not saying for some people,

Like monastics,

Obviously,

We're supposed to give up,

You know,

Dear ones.

But for the most people,

You're going to have dear ones.

I think it's important,

The message to get from this is not necessarily that you should just ditch your family and,

You know,

Go away.

But that you understand that because you have this attachment,

When something changes,

When they leave you,

When they die,

Etc.

,

You're going to have suffering because of that.

That doesn't mean,

You know,

All it means,

You know,

Like,

You're bad because you're going to have suffering.

It's just something that you understand.

I'm a monk.

I have a mother and a father.

When my mom dies,

I'll have suffering because of that.

It's just the way it is because I have an attachment because she brought me into this world.

That's what attachment is about.

This is why I talk about the Buddha's message being more realistic as opposed to pessimistic because this is exactly,

This is life.

You know,

This is the fact that whoever you have an attachment to,

There will be a separation and you will have a sorrow because of that.

So,

This is a good sutta for us to understand this.

And I think it's done,

A lot of times,

Many suttas can be very hard to understand.

But oftentimes,

Buddha really goes straight to the heartwood,

Straight to the core in a very simple and easy way to understand.

So,

The next topic is a sutta called Bharara Sutta.

And this is one of my favorite suttas in all of the Pali Canon because it packs so much in.

So,

We've learned about dukkha,

We're learning about the origin,

We learn about the inner relation between these two things.

Whatever suffering,

Whatever dukkha there is,

Is related to our craving.

And so,

In this sutta,

The Buddha says,

I will teach you of the burden,

I will teach you of the carrier of the burden,

I will teach you of the taking up of the burden,

And I will teach you of the laying down of the burden.

So,

He says,

What is the burden?

The burden is the five aggregates subject to clinging,

Where the Buddha said,

In short,

Five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha.

So,

That is the burden.

Now,

Who is the carrier of the burden?

This self,

This identity that we propagate.

We create this self,

And the burden comes along with it.

Because we conceive and we propagate all the things related to this self.

So,

What is the taking up of the burden?

Craving.

Craving is the taking up of the burden.

And the laying down of the burden?

Nibbana.

And so,

Those of you who have heard my guided meditations,

I usually start off with talking about laying down our burdens.

I use the example of Atlas holding up the world.

You've seen the pictures of the guy holding up the world from Greek mythology.

Well,

Technically,

It's holding up the sky.

So,

We have this burden that we hold up,

That we carry,

And it's a heavy,

Heavy burden.

And in my meditations,

I teach to put the burden down,

At least for the time of the meditation.

Because if you think about it,

If you tell somebody,

Your identity is a real burden,

Just put it down.

You're like,

I like my identity,

But it's me.

I can't put that down yet.

So,

You can't just tell somebody to put it down.

This is what I noticed when I started using that on myself.

I got this fear,

Oh,

I don't want to put down the burden yet.

And then I would say,

Okay,

Just for the time of the meditation.

And then my mind's like,

Okay,

For this short time,

I'll put it down.

That shows us our craving.

That shows us our clinging of this burden that we have.

We gladly take it up,

Because it's what we think will bring us the most happiness and the most meaning in our life.

But when you experience Dukkha,

That's reality saying,

Well,

What you thought was this,

Probably not.

And this is the reason why,

Is because of impermanence.

So where does impermanence and Dukkha go together?

There is a stock phrase that the Buddha uses.

It's in many,

Many suttas,

But I'll give one as an example.

It's called Tu Anaruddha.

It's Samyutta Nikaya 44.

2.

And the Buddha always starts out going through the five aggregates.

He says,

Is form nitya or anitya?

So he's saying,

Is form permanent or impermanent?

And so they say,

As we understand the Blessed One's teachings,

We understand that form is impermanent.

He says,

Good.

So then he says,

Is that which is impermanent,

Sukkha or dukkha?

So sukkha is the opposite of dukkha.

The dukkha is unpleasant,

Sukkha is pleasant.

Sukkha is happy.

So Buddha's asking,

Things that are always changing,

Is there happiness in there?

Is there sukkha or is there dukkha?

And they say,

It's dukkha.

And so then the Buddha continues on.

He says,

Is what is impermanent,

Unsatisfactory,

Dukkha,

And subject to change,

Can that be considered this permanent self?

Can this be considered atta or atman?

And they say,

No,

Venerable sir.

So he says,

Just as thus,

All of these things,

The proper way to view them as,

This is not me,

This is not myself,

This I am not.

And that's going into Bhante's talk tomorrow,

So I'm not going to go into that too much.

But the reason why I brought this up was this first two.

So the fact that that which is impermanent is intimately connected with dukkha.

Why is that?

Now,

When you examine the word anicca,

This is why the Pali is important,

Not just to sit up and say cool things and all that kind of stuff.

But when you really,

There's things,

When you hear other people's definitions,

It doesn't really,

Okay,

This is what they think it is.

But then when you look and you see this word can mean a bunch of different things,

It can be translated a bunch of different ways,

And you go,

Whoa,

Okay,

Well,

This connects with me.

And that's the same thing that happened with anicca,

Because the other way you can translate anicca,

Besides impermanence,

Which is kind of like a buzzword and almost loses its meaning for some people,

Is unstable or not stable.

And when I first saw that,

I said,

Wow,

That's amazing.

Because if you think about,

Think about this,

Everything in conditioned existence is not stable.

What does that mean?

If you had a table,

And I don't know,

Maybe it's from some place and it's cheap and it's about to fall apart or whatever,

Would you be able,

Would you put like a huge,

Heavy,

Expensive thing on that table?

Now the table will,

Because it's not stable,

It's not sturdy.

Just like that,

When we,

Anything that's not stable,

Our relationships,

Our items,

Our jobs,

Our thoughts,

Our body,

Anything that's not stable,

If you attach to that,

If you depend on that,

If you cling to that,

There is your dukkha.

Because you are,

For a great way of putting it is,

You are expecting from the world what it can't give you.

Whatever we try to cling to in life,

Our relationship,

Right?

This is this other person,

They're going to help me,

We're going to be very stable and sturdy through life.

And then what happens?

Everything is impermanent,

Including what we like and what we dislike.

So our likes and dislikes change.

We fall in and out of love.

People die.

There's nothing that you can depend on in that relationship.

There's nothing that you can depend on not changing.

Maybe that's what I should say better.

It will all change.

So after looking at this,

I had this simile come to my mind.

And it's like being in the ocean in a storm.

You're on a boat,

But that boat is broken apart and it's sinking.

And you're trying to grab for some kind of floats and some kind of wood,

Something to hold you up so you don't drown.

And every time you think you have something,

You grab and you hold on to it and then it just disintegrates.

And it falls apart and you go back under the water.

That is impermanence.

There's nothing in that sea that you can hold on to and it's not going to change.

It's always not stable.

And so when you realize that,

You realize no matter what happens in your life,

It's going to change.

And I think the important part about that is that you develop a gratitude.

You have a gratitude for,

You know,

This person's in my life.

They're very beneficial.

There will be a time where they're not going to be in my life.

So I want to do the best I can,

You know,

Spend good time and live skillfully and,

You know,

Have a skillful relationship with them,

Etc.

,

Etc.

,

Etc.

Because it's going to change.

It might be tomorrow,

It might be 50 years from now.

It doesn't matter.

It's going to change.

So when we understand that these things,

The five aggregates form,

Feeling,

Perception,

Thoughts,

Consciousness,

All of these things are impermanent.

If we take them to be permanent or stable,

Then we create dukkha.

That is our dukkha.

And so the Buddha at the end,

Every time he goes through this,

You know,

This series,

He says,

How could aggregates that have arisen from what is impermanent be permanent?

So this is this expectation.

These aggregates are permanent,

Right?

No,

They're impermanent.

They're unstable.

You can see it as you grow old.

You can see it as you grow sick.

You can see it as you die.

You can see that everything,

Any kind of experience you have will change one way or the other.

So if you're sick,

It's okay.

You'll either get better or you'll die one or the other.

It's a wonderful quote from monk Ajahn Chah that I really love.

But you can guarantee,

Right,

What did Bhante say?

The only thing permanent is impermanence.

You can bet on impermanence.

And once you understand impermanence,

Then the things that happen in life,

As the Buddha says,

How could something that isn't permanent be permanent?

There's a,

In the sutta called Mahaprabhinnibbana,

It's the last days of the Buddha,

There's a scene that really struck me at the Buddha's death.

So the Buddha passes away into Nibbana.

And it says that all the monks and the lay people were beating their breasts and rending their hair.

The monks didn't have hair,

But you know,

People had,

They're rending their hair and doing all these things and saying,

Oh,

The life of the Blessed One was too short.

And then this says,

But over here,

Or the ones who have seen the Dhamma,

And they say,

All conditioned things are impermanent,

How can it be otherwise?

And I read that and I was like,

Wow,

I want to be like that.

That's really cool.

So this is the,

This is the connection between impermanence and dukkha.

There's a simile called the simile of the arrow.

And the Buddha says that the average person,

When stuck with dukkha dukkha,

With physical pain,

So he gets struck by an arrow of physical pain,

The average person gets struck by a second arrow.

And that second arrow is mental suffering.

That second arrow is sorrow,

Lamentation,

Pain,

Grief,

Despair.

But an awakened being,

When struck with the arrow of physical pain,

Does not get struck by the second arrow.

They do a little dodge or something.

I don't know.

But they,

So they don't have that second arrow.

And the reason why they don't have it is because the first arrow is purely physical.

Even the Buddha,

You can read the suttas,

The Buddha had pains,

Especially when he was old.

You know,

He had to rest because his body was,

You know,

Could only do certain things.

But he didn't have that second arrow.

The second arrow is pure dukkha.

That's what it is.

It is our own creation from our own mind.

So when you think about that,

Then you can understand the difference.

Because we have this body,

Because we have this,

Because we are existing in this experience,

We're going to have all of these things that cause us to suffer.

Or at least cause us to have what you would say unpleasant experiences.

But as we practice and we progress down the path,

We can understand little by little how we can accept these experiences and lessen our suffering,

Lessen our dukkha in relation to them.

Because the dukkha really is all in the mind.

Physical suffering is part of the body.

Dukkha is the mind.

And the reason,

The important reason,

The good reason for that,

This is where the optimism comes in.

The optimism is that you have a choice.

The optimism is that because this is something that you have created of your own actions in previous lives and in this life,

Then you know,

Well it's not like,

You're not a victim.

It's not like something that you can't change.

It's not something that is,

Well,

I'm stuck in this,

Oh well,

This is really bad.

I can't do anything about it.

No,

You can do something about it.

That's the fourth noble truth.

That is the Noble Eightfold Path.

The Buddha gave you a way to let go,

To abandon your dukkha.

So this is why dukkha is the center point.

Dukkha is what you can change.

Impermanence you can't change.

Like Bhante said,

Even the Buddha couldn't change impermanence.

He couldn't change the world.

The Buddha didn't change the world.

He made peace with the conditions in it.

He realized there's no one that could change Sangsara.

This is the reason for the practice.

This is what we do.

This is why we practice so that we can gradually lessen our dukkha.

And we do that by developing our insight.

We let go of slowly,

Surely,

Incrementally,

Little by little,

We let go of our greed,

Hatred and delusion,

Our craving.

And that replaces our ignorance with insight,

With panya.

And when we have that insight,

That wisdom,

Then the second arrow bothers us less.

And eventually we don't get hit by that second arrow at all.

We have gone beyond this dukkha.

We have totally abandoned it.

And so as I said,

Impermanence,

This is something that you can't change.

Anatta,

Not self,

This is something that you can't change.

These are characteristics.

Dukkha really is the only characteristic that you actually have control over.

It's the only characteristic that you can slowly,

Gradually work to lessen and to let go of.

And so we have a choice every day.

Do we want to keep our heads in the sand and be,

Oh,

This dukkha is all pessimistic stuff?

Or do we want to say,

You know what,

I'm tired of this dukkha.

I want to let it go.

How do I do it?

Okay.

Start from the ground up.

Start from the beginning and gradually,

Slowly,

Letting go,

Letting go,

Letting go until we're just like Atlas who puts down the burden.

We just let go of the burden and put it down.

And if you've ever had something heavy on your back,

Like a heavy backpack,

Maybe you have to think back to like school or something like that.

You carry something heavy and you maybe carry it for long periods of time.

And when you take it off,

There's the feeling is a feeling of lightness,

Like,

Whoa,

All of a sudden I feel much lighter.

I feel free.

This is such a wonderful feeling.

That's what happens when you let go of the burden.

When you drop the burden,

You have freedom.

And so I'll end from the Barasuta,

The last lines where the Buddha gives a couple of verses.

He says,

The five aggregates are truly burdens.

The burden carrier is the person.

Taking up the burden is suffering in the world.

Laying down the burden is blissful.

Having laid the heavy burden down without taking up another burden,

Having drawn out craving with its root,

One is free from hunger,

Fully quenched.

That is the Buddha's advice to us.

To take out,

To use another example of arrows,

He says to pluck out the arrow of craving from yourself.

To abandon your dukkha,

To find peace.

So with that,

Friends,

That is dukkha.

We've gone through impermanence and unsatisfactoriness.

And tomorrow we'll realize and we'll understand why that which is impermanent,

Subject to change,

And unsatisfactory,

Cannot be considered self.

So you can put your questions in the Q&A box and I'll answer them at seven.

Until then we can take a break and come back for meditation.

Sadhu,

Sadhu,

Sadhu.

Reviews

Thank you! This was both eye opening and affirming. 💛

This talk clarified so much for me, thank you a thousand times! You have a beautiful way of explaining things that help to make all parts of the topic make sense, tie together, and easy for the layman to understand. Many blessings!🪷🙏🪷

Clear, helpful talk. I like the definition of dukha being “difficult to bear,” and the notion that accepting impermanence will help us to suffer less. Still, craving and attachment are essential (inevitable?) aspects of human life, yes? I will look for your followup talk.

Thorough and explained so well!

Thank you

Thank you so much for this talk. I deeply appreciate your insight and clarity. I will be thinking about this talk for some time.

Thank you for your teaching . Very grateful to you 🙏❤️

A really clear and helpful talk. Thank you so much for uploading it. ☺️🙏

Thank you.. I look forward to more of your talks

Thank you for your teaching❤🙏

Your talk on dukkha is EXACTLY what I'm searching for! Meditation has saved me... I'm 9 months into daily mindfulness meditation practice & am searching for meaning & purpose in my life. I will be listening to all your content, as it seems the Buddha has touched me more than any other practice.

Sādhu! Sādhu! Sādhu! 

Very enjoyable talk. Thank you

This is a wonderful lecture that really helped me to understand suffering and impermanence. Thank you! May you be blessed🙏🏻

Excellent, one of the best talks I’ve heard so far on the app. Thank you!

Loved it. Thank you. 🍡

Grateful for this.

Great xxx thank you

A really good one

Such a helpful way to think about very human experiences.