No Mud, No Lotus: Exploring Our Suffering

While the Buddha assured us that our meditation practice is the path to freedom, he also explained that in order for us to achieve a more profound happiness than we could ever find outside of ourselves, we first need to take an honest, courageous look at all the ways that we create more suffering for ourselves. This talk explores the many different types of dukkha (suffering) that we experience, and how shining a light on them through our practice can help to soften and even dissipate them.

Transcript

So,

I wanted to start this talk by sharing a personal reflection,

Which is that sometimes it's difficult to explain to strangers what I actually do for a living.

And as you might imagine,

My initial answer is simple.

It's that I teach meditation workshops and retreats and the conversation usually honestly doesn't go much further than that.

But over the years,

Sometimes people will tell me that,

Gosh,

A meditation retreat just sounds like it would be incredibly blissful and they're so jealous.

Like,

You know,

Maybe it's like they believe that we're having a full day at the spa,

But it's something like that.

And for the most part,

I try to just nod and smile because honestly,

I often don't feel comfortable telling them what we're really doing,

Which is deeply exploring what the Buddha taught us in the first noble truth,

Which is that there is suffering or dukkha.

And that what we're doing is learning how to take a really good look at all the many ways that we create even more suffering for ourselves.

So one of my teachers,

The great monk,

Bhante G.

Bhante Gunaratana,

Describes what we're doing this way.

He says,

Somewhere in this meditation process,

You'll come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.

Your mind is a shrieking,

Gibbering madhouse on wheels,

Barreling pell meld down the hill,

Utterly out of control and hopeless.

No problem.

You're not crazier than you were yesterday.

It has always been this way and you just never noticed.

So thankfully,

For those of us who are willing to go ahead and take a good look at our own madness,

The Buddha did not just end with that first noble truth of suffering.

There are happily three more noble truths.

The second noble truth,

The Buddha tells us that there's a reason that we suffer,

Which essentially involves our inability to let go.

And then the third noble truth,

The Buddha gives us some great news,

Which is that there's a path that he's discovered that can lead us away from so much of our suffering and into a greater place of peace and happiness and freedom.

He teaches us that it's possible to learn how to let go.

And finally,

In the fourth noble truth,

The Buddha gives us even more good news,

Which is that he's not only reached the end of this path,

But he's created a very detailed map for all of us in the form of the Noble Eightfold Path.

So this is really excellent news that there's a path that we can take if we choose to go ahead and walk it.

In fact,

Another one of my teachers,

The great monk and scholar Biku Onayo tells us,

This is a path of happiness,

Deepening at every stage along the way.

This is a path of happiness.

And of course,

It sounds wonderful,

But if we're really honest with ourselves,

We might admit that we all have a tendency to want to kind of skip over,

Maybe mentally scroll past that first part of the sermon,

That very inconvenient first noble truth,

Which is that there is suffering.

It's like we might think,

Well,

Of course they're suffering.

I just want to know the way out.

And what this usually means is right now,

Right?

How do I get the hell out of here right now?

So this is exactly where we meet the great paradox of the Buddhist teachings.

In order for us to discover our way to freedom or in order for us to achieve a more profound bliss than we could ever find outside of ourselves,

What we first need to do is really get to know our suffering.

We need to become willing to courageously see it very clearly and then to allow it to be here,

To really be with it with great compassion,

And then to examine it very closely without judgment so that we can see clearly all the ways that we are holding on.

In his teachings,

When he describes the Four Noble Truths,

The Buddha tells us,

Dukkha should be known.

The cause by which Dukkha comes into play should be known.

The diversity in Dukkha should be known.

The result of Dukkha should be known.

The cessation of Dukkha should be known.

The path of practice for the cessation of Dukkha should be known.

The late great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh described the same kind of teaching this way.

He said,

Don't get caught in theories or ideas such as saying that suffering is an illusion or that we have to transcend both suffering and joy.

Just stay in touch with what is actually going on and you will touch the true nature of suffering and the true nature of joy.

When you have a headache,

It would not be correct to call your headache illusory.

To help it go away,

You have to acknowledge its existence and understand its causes.

And so the idea is that whenever we can allow ourselves to get really close to our own suffering by actually allowing ourselves to be in it,

We can suddenly then see it for what it really is and understand it.

Then we can very consciously train ourselves to compassionately and skillfully not resist it or cling to it or identify with it.

Because as the teaching show us,

All of these things are what causes us to suffer even more.

So it's like the Buddha has given us this amazing map,

But we are expected to discover the way there for ourselves on our own by fully knowing and understanding our own dukkha,

All of it,

And how we create it for ourselves and how we can end it.

I love the way the teacher Sharon Salzberg expressed this.

She said early on in her practice when she was studying in India,

Her teacher Menendra said to her,

The Buddha's enlightenment solved the Buddha's problem.

Now you solve yours.

Now you solve yours.

And Sharon said about this,

This was very important for me.

It felt like the first time someone looked me in the eye and basically said,

You can do it.

You can solve your own problem.

So this is truly our practice as well.

And in the Tibetan Shambhala tradition,

Which was my original tradition more than 30 years ago now,

We are all considered warriors because it takes great courage and determination and patience and compassion to do this work.

But in order for us to become warriors,

We first need to be willing to acknowledge it,

Which honestly can be the hardest part because our strategies for avoiding suffering tend to be really strong.

This kind of acknowledgement is so important in fact,

That it is said that the whole path of our practice is born out of acknowledging the first noble truth,

The truth of our suffering.

It's born out of it.

The author Cheryl Strayed,

Who I love so beautifully expresses what we're being asked to do in her memoir,

Wild,

When she courageously acknowledged and faced her own dukkha by hiking alone for more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail.

She wrote,

Nobody will protect you from your suffering.

You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away.

It's just there and you have to survive it.

You have to endure it.

You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.

I just absolutely love her story because what she realized is that in order for her to move on and grow and heal,

She had to really throw herself into the truth of her own suffering and really face it all by herself through literally thousands of miles of sometimes treacherous conditions.

So she couldn't just jump over it or quickly drive there,

Right?

She had to go through it and face her truth no matter how difficult it was.

And it was.

And when she'd finished her walk,

Her long walk,

She wrote,

I'd finally come to understand what it had been,

A yearning for a way out when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.

It was a way in.

The great master Ajahn Chah,

Who was the teacher of my teachers,

Very famously told us there are two kinds of suffering.

There is a suffering you run away from which follows you everywhere and there is a suffering that you face directly and so become free.

I'll repeat that.

There are two kinds of suffering.

There's a suffering you run away from which follows you everywhere and there is the suffering that you face directly and so become free.

I also find it really helpful and comforting to remember that none of us is alone in this in our experience of Dukkha,

Even though sometimes it can really just feel like that.

It's like there are times when we can feel like everyone else in this life has things figured out and somehow we're still struggling or we feel like we're imperfect or maybe not enlightened enough yet.

So we must somehow be flawed like our experience of Dukkha is a kind of personal failure whenever we experience it.

But the truth is that even when the Buddha himself had attained enlightenment at the foot of the Bodhi tree 2,

600 years ago,

He was still very much human and throughout the rest of his life this enlightened being experienced pain and suffering just like we do.

As Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us,

The Buddha was not made of stone.

He experienced feelings and emotions,

Pain,

Cold,

Hunger,

And fatigue just like all of us.

We shouldn't think that because we experience the suffering and afflictions of being human we cannot touch peace,

We cannot touch nirvana.

From his teachings and stories about his life we know that the Buddha suffered but the key point is that he knew how to suffer.

His awakening came from suffering.

He knew how to make good use of his afflictions in order to experience awakening and because of this he suffered much less than most of us.

I also personally find it so comforting to remember that it's just natural and completely human to experience pain and suffering in this life and that we are not alone.

We haven't failed in some way when we're suffering.

A thought I really love to remember from Brene Brown is,

What we don't need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.

What we don't need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.

We can also remember that besides our own inner struggles everywhere we look there are of course external factors that absolutely contribute to our happiness and suffering because again we're all connected,

We're all part of one another in this world.

There was the suffering of the pandemic that we've all been through and are still experiencing.

Other people can very often be thoughtless and selfish and even cruel.

World leaders can be corrupt.

Certain situations that we find ourselves in or see others in can be horrible.

And of course we can lose things,

Our loved ones,

Our health,

Etc.

So just like the Buddha himself it's not that we don't experience pain,

Of course we do.

Dukkha is universal,

There is suffering.

But like Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us the Buddha discovered freedom because he learned how to relate very differently to this universal dukkha.

In the sutras there's a phrase that describes what we're doing when we're facing the first noble truth,

Which is going against the stream,

Going against the stream.

And what we're training ourselves to go against is our very human almost instinctive reaction to pain,

Which is to run away from it or maybe fiercely resist it or maybe fight like hell or maybe we find blame,

We blame ourselves or other people.

We also maybe try to cover it over,

Numb it out or change it,

Distract ourselves from it.

Maybe we just try to pretend it's not even there.

So these are all very instinctive reactions to our suffering.

They're habits of mind and we tend to do these things almost automatically without much thought,

Like we're on automatic pilot.

And if we think about it they are all ways that we try in some way to avoid the truth of whatever's happening.

So in essence they're all ways that we just don't want to be there with it,

With our suffering.

And oddly sometimes we can even unconsciously use our meditation practice for this.

So for instance we might catch ourselves thinking something like,

Okay,

If I just do this,

Then it will go away.

Which is again only another way of avoiding what's here.

In our training what we're being asked to do is something very different,

Which is to not only directly face our suffering and get to know it,

But to actually use the suffering itself as a way to discover freedom.

There's a great line about this that I scribbled down one time and sadly I can't remember who said it,

But it was,

Dear hard times and difficult people,

Thank you for helping me to grow.

It's kind of been like manure.

The writer Jennifer Wright tells us,

People talk about caterpillars becoming butterflies as though they just go into a cocoon,

Slap on wings and are good to go.

Caterpillars have to dissolve into a disgusting pile of goo to become butterflies.

So if you're a mess wrapped in blankets right now,

Keep going.

We might even recall the classic zen metaphor of Dukkha,

Which is that of the mud where the lotus blossom grows.

The phrase no mud,

No lotus,

Which is the title of this talk.

The idea is that we really can't grow without being willing to be in this mud.

And of course,

As we're investigating and getting to know this mud or this Dukkha,

Which is considered the first characteristics or truths of this life,

Dukkha,

At the same time we're also asked to get to know and understand the other two characteristics of life.

Since all three are intimately and intricately threaded together,

As many of you may recall,

The other two include impermanence,

Anicca,

The truth that there's really nothing to cling to,

And no self,

Anatta,

The truth that there is no permanent solid everlasting self that we can cling to either.

The teacher,

Louis Richard,

Simplified these three characteristics into this short phrasing that I find really helpful to remember,

Which is everything is connected,

Nothing lasts,

And you are not alone.

Everything is connected,

There's anatta,

No self,

Nothing lasts,

Anicca,

Impermanence,

And you are not alone.

We all experience Dukkha.

Another teacher and friend of mine,

Ruth King,

Puts it into even more specific terms for us,

Which I think are easier to remember.

She says simply,

Everything is imperfect,

Impermanent,

And impersonal.

Everything is imperfect,

Dukkha,

Impermanent,

Anicca,

And impersonal,

Anatta.

Imperfect,

Impermanent,

Impersonal.

And if we really want to condense this teaching down to its essence,

We can think of our Dukkha,

Our suffering,

As caused by our clinging to that which is impermanent,

Which is essentially everything,

Including ourselves.

So as you might imagine,

One of the first steps in our practice is to investigate for ourselves what the Buddha means when he uses the word Dukkha.

Many of you may know this ancient Pali word as suffering,

But I know that's such a heavy translation of suffering.

So I prefer some of the more modern day English translations,

Which include words like uneasy,

Uncomfortable,

Unpleasant,

Uncertain,

Difficult,

Disappointing,

Dissatisfying,

And My favorite definition is not permanently satisfying.

The word itself is made up of the prefix du,

Du,

And the root kha,

K-h-a.

So du means bad or difficult,

And kha means empty.

And a very famous metaphor for Dukkha asks us to imagine the wheel of an ox cart because this was a regular sight in the Buddhist time,

Of course.

And if the empty axle in the middle wasn't smooth and whole,

People were going to have a very bumpy ride,

Dukkha.

So it might be helpful to know that the opposite of Dukkha is sukha,

Which means happiness or comfort or ease.

And up until this year,

Actually I had a daily reminder of this word because I named my cat,

Sukha,

And he definitely brought me all of those things,

Happiness and comfort and ease.

In the great discourse on the wheel of Dharma,

The Buddha's very first sermon right after his enlightenment,

Where he laid out the four noble truths,

He gave us a kind of summary description of all the different things that cause us to experience Dukkha.

And happily he divided these into three different categories.

In the first category,

He called Dukkha Dukkha,

Dukkha Dukkha,

Which sounds really bad,

Doesn't it?

It's like double Dukkha,

Dukkha Dukkha.

These include the physical and mental sufferings of birth,

Aging,

Illness,

And death,

Along with not getting what we want and getting what we don't want.

So let's start with the Dukkha of not getting what we want or getting what we don't want.

For most of us,

We might instantly think of those really big things that we want,

Like,

I want a bigger house or I want more income,

I want a better job or maybe a perfect model body or a perfect family,

Perfect partner,

Etc.

Or we might think of those really big things that we don't want,

Right?

You might think of those things right now.

What are the big things that you really just don't want?

If we really start to examine this Dukkha Dukkha more closely,

Doesn't this involve honestly just about every single moment of our lives?

Aren't we almost constantly assessing this?

So for instance,

Our experience of Dukkha Dukkha can be as subtle as thinking,

I want the temperature to be warmer or cooler,

Just not perfect right now.

I want a particular type of food or tea.

I don't want that noise.

I don't want that person to do that thing or I don't want that itch or that pain that I'm experiencing,

Etc.

And you might notice a specific word that's repeated,

Which is wanting,

Or in Pali,

This is called tanha,

T-A-N-H-A,

And it means thirst or desire or longing,

Tanha.

And of course,

This is the experience of clinging,

Of not being okay with the way it is now,

Wanting things to be different than they are,

Which of course is one of the main reasons that we suffer.

And if we really use our practice to start noticing how often this happens,

It can feel less like Dukkha Dukkha and honestly,

Sometimes more like Dukkha Dukkha Dukkha Dukkha Dukkha Dukkha.

It sounds awful,

But again,

We're being asked to really see this and know it so that we can slowly learn how to let go and stop doing this,

This constant never ending wanting and not wanting,

Wanting,

Not wanting.

That first category of suffering,

But it also tells us that birth,

Aging,

Sickness and death are Dukkha,

Which seems pretty straightforward.

We all experience various levels of physical Dukkha almost constantly,

Don't we?

For example,

We experience Dukkha whenever we stub a toe or when we're tired or we have any ache in the body.

Maybe we have the suffering of a chronic illness.

We all also experience the Dukkha of our aging bodies.

And of course the process of dying can be major Dukkha Dukkha.

And again,

As a practice,

We might start to notice how often we are wanting our bodies to feel differently,

To not want the pain or the aches or the tired or the hungry.

When we're really resisting rather than investigating.

We might even take some time to truly consider the question,

Why is birth Dukkha?

Why is birth Dukkha?

There are many answers for this,

Which of course includes the fact that our bodies are all incredibly needy and require vigilant,

Constant attention and that they rarely,

If ever feel perfect.

We might even consider this right now as you're listening.

Are you absolutely and completely comfortable and pleasant in your body?

And if your answer is yes,

You might notice when this changes.

You might also notice how often we're obsessed with how our bodies look and how much mental energy goes into thinking about this and working on this and creating a sense of self or identity around it.

But to get back to why birth is suffering,

The main reason that birth is suffering is that it always inevitably leads to death.

And if we're honest,

Most of us would really like to avoid this topic,

But again,

This is just the way it is.

It's inevitability for ourselves and for all living things.

Actually,

It really is the one thing,

The only thing that is completely predictable in this life.

And of course we suffer because of our wanting this to not be so again,

Because of our clinging or our wish to hold onto things that are essentially impermanent.

Ajahn Chah described the suffering of birth this way.

He said,

Take a big lump of ice,

Say as big as this tape recorder here and leave it out in the sun.

You can see how it declines much the same as the body.

It will gradually disintegrate.

In not many hours or minutes,

All that's left is a puddle of water.

This is called kaya vayam,

The decline and dissolution of all compounded things.

It's been this way for a long time now,

Ever since the beginning of time.

When we are born,

We bring this inherent nature into the world with us.

We cannot avoid it.

At birth,

We bring old age,

Sickness and death along with us.

Which brings us to the second category of dukkha or suffering,

Vipa-ranama dukkha,

Which is the dukkha of pleasant or happy experiences changing to unpleasant or when the causes and conditions that produce the pleasant experiences cease.

So here we might notice that we also experience a sense of dukkha even when we think about those things in our lives that we consider pleasant.

This is because part of us knows that it's just not going to last.

Right?

The things that we enjoy or love are honestly not going to last.

The situations that we enjoy or love are not going to last.

The people and the creatures that we enjoy or love are not going to last.

And again,

Finally,

We ourselves are also not going to last.

Which leaves us with the third category of dukkha,

Sankara dukkha,

Which is similar because this is the suffering of conditioned experience.

And the idea here is that because all things arise and pass and everything is constantly changing and shifting,

We can never find permanent happiness or satisfaction by clinging onto or keeping anything forever.

On a really subtle level,

For instance,

We might notice that we can never find that elusive perfect posture where the body just feels completely weightless and both mind and body feel totally blissful.

Even if we do find this perfect posture and mind state for a minute or two,

Then the bell rings,

Right?

And permanence.

Which of course means that the experience of dukkha is inherent even in pleasant things,

Mainly again,

Because they cannot offer us permanent happiness and satisfaction.

So you might be beginning to see a theme here or a common thread,

Which basically boils down to our inability to truly let go.

Ajahn Chah once famously told us,

If you let go a little,

You'll have a little peace.

If you let go a lot,

You'll have a lot of peace.

If you let go completely,

You will be free.

If you let go completely,

You will be free.

And finally,

In the time remaining,

I just want to remind us or maybe really emphasize that as we use our mindfulness and wisdom to take a good look at all the ways that we create suffering for ourselves,

We want to do this with great compassion or karuna in Pali,

Great compassion.

We actually cannot do this without compassion because it's not going to really lead us any more fruitful.

It's not going to lead us to any healing or growth or freedom.

I don't know where I first saw this,

But there was an interesting photo of a sign on the door of a factory that relates to this idea.

And the sign read,

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Wisdom and compassion are actually considered the two wings of our practice,

Which means we cannot fly with just one of them.

We really need both.

We need both.

I also love the analogy of wisdom and compassion as being like two oars in a boat.

So if we only use one of these oars,

We're just going to find ourselves spinning around and around in circles.

So we don't ever want to take a close look at all the ways we cause ourselves to suffer as just another way to beat ourselves up in some way or judge ourselves or blame ourselves or even try to fix ourselves.

Instead of coming at this with a sense of fixing a flawed self,

What we're doing is simply shining a light on all the ways that we unconsciously create suffering for ourselves so that we can very kindly,

Compassionately and patiently learn to let go.

And finally,

Just to end,

I want to invite you to listen to this description of how we are being asked to be with our suffering from one of my favorite teachers,

Tannasaro Mary Weinberg,

Who tells us,

When we're with suffering,

It's as if we're with a child that's very unhappy.

If the child is wailing and wriggling,

Wanting to get away,

Wanting something but it doesn't know what,

We kindly hold the child.

Sometimes we can experience our minds as the child and the awareness as the mother.

The child of the mind can be really hurting and screaming,

I can't bear this,

I'm hopeless,

Or no one's there for me,

Or just an unnameable pain that seems so familiar,

So ancient,

So intractable.

But the mother,

Our aware present heart,

Just sits it out and waits patiently for the deeper truth to emerge.

She is breathing with the pain while gently holding the mind and body with kind awareness.

Then something happens,

Something beyond the reactivity of the mind.

Instead,

The heart softens,

It sees its own nature,

Spacious,

Non suffering,

Peaceful and timeless.

Here is freedom.

Here we find the courage to bear suffering in order to overcome it.

Ms.

Helen Keller so wisely reminded us,

All the world is full of suffering,

It is also full of overcoming.

All the world is full of suffering,

It is also full of overcoming.

Namaste and blessings.

Reviews

Some great quotes! and a good theme. I really appreciate your talks.

What a genuine relief to listen to Shell throughout this talk. Grounding, kind, immensely intelligent, and the wisdom that makes every difficult thing in life exhale. Thank you, Shell! Can’t recommend this enough.

Thank you for this wise teaching and many blessings to you 🫶

Thank you, I had been suffering in my own mind, i asked the universe to show me a direction to go to that i would understand deeply to help guide me out of suffering & up you popped I am so grateful to be here right now, to of listened to your teachings from the Buddah & other wise mentors.
I'm actually going to Shen Buddist Service in a couple of hours, so when I'm asked to speak, I have some realization & compassion to speak about. Thank you, namaste 🙏❤

This is extremely helpful

Excellent talk. Thank You! 💚

Perfect wisdom for today whilst I am experiencing Triple Dukkha 🌟 Thank you

Very insightful. Gently spoken. Thank you and Blessings 🕊