So,
Last week I introduced the topic that we'll explore this week and next.
And it's a teaching called The Three Characteristics or The Three Marks of Existence.
And these are not metaphysical claims.
This is about how we experience and participate in reality.
And the three are dukkha,
Or pain,
Often translated as suffering,
Which we'll look at today.
Impermanence,
Or anicca,
The way in which all experience can be characterized by change.
And then anatta,
Which translates to not self.
And that will be the topic for next week.
And these are considered core insights of insight meditation.
So they're pretty important.
And we have certainly all experienced them.
Some people think that these insights are something that you're supposed to believe.
And then what happens is they struggle with them.
But really for most practitioners,
What happens with these three marks is they just start to reveal themselves to us.
They appear as you practice.
Suffering appears,
Change appears,
Not personal,
Not self appears.
You start to see them more and more in your own time.
So you don't have to believe them.
And it's not the job of the teacher to convince you that they're true.
You can actually see for yourself,
Listening to your own internal teacher.
So dukkha.
Today we'll start with dukkha.
It kind of says it all,
Doesn't it?
The most literal translation from the Pali of this word is painful.
But it's most often translated as suffering.
And some translations refer to dukkha as kind of an unreliability.
All experience can somehow be characterized as having some quality that is unreliable,
Some level of dissatisfaction that is in it.
I really appreciate this,
Which I'll read to you from my first teacher.
He was a Zen teacher,
Is a Zen teacher named Norman Fisher.
He wrote this about dukkha,
And it feels so accurate.
The more we look around us,
The more we pay attention to what we're feeling and what others around us are feeling,
The more suffering we see.
There is more suffering than we know.
Anxiety is suffering,
Isn't it?
There is a lot of anxiety.
Not getting what you want is suffering.
How many of us don't get what we want?
Irritation is suffering.
Anger is suffering.
Having to put up with things you don't like is suffering.
Knowing that you're going to have to die and you really don't want to,
That's suffering.
Sickness is suffering.
Old age is suffering.
Not having enough money is suffering.
Losing your job is suffering.
Having a bad marriage is suffering.
Having no marriage can be suffering if what you want is to have a marriage.
Fear is suffering.
Knowing you could lose what you think you have is suffering.
Being ashamed is suffering.
Feeling disrespected is suffering.
Feeling unloved is suffering.
Feeling loved but not loved enough is suffering.
Feeling lonely is suffering.
Feeling bewildered is suffering.
Being too cold,
Being too hot,
Being stuck in traffic,
Getting in the wrong line and the guy in front of you is very,
Very slow and the other line that you could have gotten into is going much faster.
That is suffering.
All that is suffering.
Even without talking about the earthquakes,
The wars,
The deprivation,
The oppression,
The illness,
And the hunger that is happening all over the world,
Suffering is really common.
It's not a special condition.
Suffering is a daily experience.
It's so true,
Right?
And yet in the moment that this truth is present,
We habitually resist and perpetuate more dukkha,
More suffering for ourselves.
I think the emphasis is to have,
We have to be very honest and willing to sort of stop and look at and address and be with suffering and not pretend otherwise when it's there.
I saw a bumper sticker years ago in California.
It said,
I stop for suffering.
I love that.
It's like that.
It's part of the function of our mindfulness practice to see it.
So to see over and over again,
This is pain.
This is dissatisfying.
It is here now.
Can I breathe with it?
Can I connect with my body and just breathe with it right now?
So one of the ways to understand this is that we can practice the opposite of these characteristics.
We try to develop ourselves kind of in the face that they're here.
Each of these characteristics has an opposite,
And the opposite of dukkha is well-being.
The Pali word for that is sukha.
Sukha means happiness or well-being.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing about suffering.
We can't overcome suffering with simply a positive attitude.
I think that may be one of the greatest human self-deceptions that you can somehow look on the bright side.
I mean,
It's helpful to look on the bright side,
It is.
But we don't want to do this in an artificial way.
The first noble truth is to fully understand dukkha.
How to fully understand is to kind of stand under it.
Stand under the dukkha like standing under a waterfall.
To be with it,
Even if the pattern is that we want to change it.
Not asking why this is happening,
But to just look at it fully.
It's like this,
Ugh,
Like whatever it is,
You know?
And in that we can see if we can be with what's happening,
We don't need to back away from it.
You know,
We can be with what's happening.
Sometimes,
Sometimes it might be skillful to move away from dukkha.
When we can bring a quality of presence to even that which is difficult,
There is equanimity,
There is balance.
When we're not reacting to the pain of what may be happening,
The discomfort,
The dissatisfaction,
Just opening,
Just opening,
That's great progress on this path.
One of the ways to steady an agitated mind is to really not react to it and not to judge it either,
But just hold it in your awareness and give it a lot of room.
Knowing that it's there,
You know?
When there's clear knowing of an experience,
You're not kind of stirring it up.
Dukkha is like taking a stick in a muddy pond and stirring,
And the mud,
You can't see clearly when it's stirred.
So what we're doing is we're letting the mud clear.
We're letting it be there so that it falls to the bottom of the pond.
So the cultivation of well-being,
The opposite of dukkha,
We're not trying to make ourselves feel good.
We're not bypassing or putting our head in the sand,
So it's not artificial,
But there are ways to support the natural arising of well-being.
One of the ways is to recognize the goodness in your life.
Just recognize things that you can be grateful for,
And it can be really,
Really simple.
Maybe it's your dog or your cat coming up to nuzzle you,
Or it could be the way the light is in the clouds or in the sky,
Flowers or the river or mountains,
Bird song.
We just start to open to it and let it inform the difficulty.
This too is happening,
Because whatever you think about frequently is going to shape your heart and your mind.
It's the first thing they say in the Dhammapada,
In the early teachings.
So if you're frequently thinking about your neuroses,
Guess what?
There's more neuroses coming your way.
So to find a way to settle the neuroses,
The distress that we feel.
So as we come to the close of this teaching today,
I invite you that whatever is alive,
Whatever dukkha is alive in your life right now,
You can also open to what you can appreciate in this moment,
In this life.
So thank you for your kind attention this morning.
