It's never going to happen,
That day when it all finally falls into place.
The day when problems resolve themselves neatly.
The day when the people who drive us crazy quietly disappear.
The day when we sink back into an old armchair and let out a long satisfied sigh and feel complete for good.
We keep waiting for that day,
As if life is a puzzle that once solved will stay solved.
But if you look closely,
You might notice something quietly uncomfortable.
The effort to get rid of problems is often made of the very same energy that creates them,
The tightening,
The resistance,
The insistence that things should be different from how they are.
Alan Watts once put it in a way that makes me wince a little every time I hear it,
Because it's so accurate.
He says,
You're only making a mess by trying to put things straight.
You're trying to straighten out a wiggly world,
And no wonder you're in trouble.
Damn,
So what do we do then?
Because clearly wanting life to be different is exhausting,
And yet it feels almost automatic.
We notice that something isn't quite right inside us,
Around us,
And our mind immediately reaches for a fix.
But that reaching carries a subtle message,
That this moment is inadequate,
That something is missing,
That life as it stands right now has failed to meet the standard.
This is what the Buddha called Dukkha.
Dukkha is loosely translated here in the West as suffering,
And it's not suffering in the obvious sense,
But the underlying sense that things aren't as they should be.
It's the restlessness that whispers,
Once this changes,
Then I'll be okay.
It's the tension that darkens even good moments,
With the fear of their ending.
It's wanting what we don't have,
And not wanting what we do.
And here's the quiet revelation.
Dukkha isn't something the world is doing to us.
It isn't caused by the weather of life,
By other people or circumstances,
Or the endless unpredictability of things.
The world is wiggly,
It always has been.
Dukkha is the lens through which we are looking,
And if we can begin to notice that lens,
Not judge it,
Not fight it,
Just see it operating,
Something loosens.
Because the moment Dukkha is seen clearly,
It loses some of its authority.
We realise we don't have to obey every thought that says,
This shouldn't be happening,
Or I'll be at peace once this goes away.
How many times have you had a toothache and thought that all you need is this to go,
Then life will be great,
And it went,
And life wasn't great.
This Dukkha persisted,
Finding something else to trouble you with.
Seeing Dukkha in action is the beginning of freedom from it.
Not a dramatic freedom,
But a steady,
Grounded peace that doesn't depend on life behaving itself.
A happiness that doesn't need everything to line up,
A sense of okayness that remains,
Even when the world stays gloriously,
Frustratingly unresolved.
This Dukkha.
In the coming days we'll look at this more closely together.
We'll sit with it,
We'll feel it,
We'll see how it shows up in our own experience.
Because freedom from Dukkha isn't an idea to believe in.
It's something to notice,
Right here in the middle of life.
And tomorrow we'll take the next step.
Instead of trying to eliminate what's hard,
We'll explore what it means to turn towards it.
Tomorrow is about befriending the difficult.
I'll see you then.
