The Six Sufferings Of Samsara

Venerable Sangye Khadro leads a meditation on the six sufferings of samsara or cyclic existence. Meditating on these helps us to develop a realistic view of our present situation and strive to become liberated from suffering and its causes.

Transcript

We're going to do a meditation on the six disadvantages of psychic existence.

We'll spend a bit of time on each one of these to get a deeper understanding of them and try to see how they exist in our lives and in the lives of others.

So start by getting yourselves into a comfortable position for meditation.

Whether you're sitting on the floor or in a chair,

Do the best you can to have a straight back.

But at the same time,

Let your shoulders relax and also try to let the whole of your body relax.

Be free of tension,

Tightness.

So one helpful way to do that is to take a few deep breaths,

Breathing in slowly and deeply as much as you can.

Hold it for a moment,

Then breathe out slowly.

Let the air go out slowly,

Either through your nostrils or your mouth.

And as you exhale,

You can imagine if there is any tension in your body or in your mind,

That it leaves you with your breath and then it just vanishes in space.

So do that for a few breaths,

One,

Two,

Three breaths,

And then just go back to normal breathing.

One,

Two,

Three breaths.

And before we continue,

Let's take a few more moments to check our motivation and generate a positive altruistic motivation for doing this meditation.

So bring into mind,

Into your heart,

All the feelings of love and compassion and wishing to help others that you're able to feel.

If you're comfortable with the idea of becoming enlightened to help all living beings,

You can bring that into your mind.

That is your reason for doing the meditation.

Otherwise just try to feel as altruistic as you can and have the wish that this meditation will help you in your life,

In your work,

In your interactions with others,

To be able to bring more positive energy like compassion and love and also wisdom and skillful means so that you can be more helpful to others and less likely to do anything harmful to them.

So now let's begin contemplating these six disadvantages,

Six unpleasant experiences we have in samsara.

So the first of these is uncertainty.

So as long as we're in cyclic existence,

Samsara,

Not yet liberated or enlightened,

Then there's always uncertainty.

And this is unpleasant because we generally like certainty.

We like to have plans and we have hopes and dreams and expectations about how we would like things to be in our life,

In our relationships,

In our work and so on.

But we can never be 100% certain that things will turn out the way we wish because we don't have complete choice or control over what happens in life,

What happens in the world,

What happens with other people and even what happens with ourself.

We always want to avoid problems and yet we do continue meeting with problems again and again.

So see if you can think of some examples of this in your own life,

How you encountered uncertainty,

Things didn't turn out the way you hoped or wished and how difficult this is to experience.

Now,

Like she said,

You need you need confidence to use freedom to help further appropriate and organizational activities.

They and others need to Prize one another and I.

And then the second of the six disadvantages is dissatisfaction.

And this means that we often have hopes and wishes,

Dreams about what we would like to have in life,

Certain types of possessions,

Or a relationship with a certain person,

Or having children,

Having a certain kind of job,

Living in a certain kind of house,

And so on.

Buying things.

And we hope that these things will bring us happiness and satisfaction.

Maybe for a while they do,

But at a certain point we usually start to become dissatisfied,

Feeling this isn't really what I wanted,

What I expected,

What I hoped for.

And then our mind might start looking elsewhere for more,

For better,

For something different.

Again,

See if you can find an example or examples of this in your own life,

In your own experience.

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So one reason for this problem of unsatisfactoriness is because we tend to seek happiness and satisfaction outside of ourselves,

In other people,

In objects,

In places,

And things,

And don't know how to find genuine peace and satisfaction within our own mind.

But we can do that.

That is something we can learn,

And then we'll be less dependent on external factors for our happiness and peace.

And then the third disadvantage of cyclic existence is having to die again and again.

So this may be difficult to understand if you don't accept the Buddhist view of rebirth,

Reincarnation,

But let me put aside your doubts and just imagine that it might be true.

So what that means is our mind goes from life to life.

We've already had many lives before this one.

And in each life we work very hard to do well,

To find happiness,

Have a family,

And so on.

But then inevitably our life comes to an end.

We have to go through the experience of dying and leaving everything behind,

Which is usually quite painful.

So even to die once is difficult,

But as long as we're in samsara,

Cyclic existence,

We have to go through that experience of dying again and again and again.

We can never remain permanently forever in one body,

In one life.

Just think about that and see how that is a painful experience,

A painful aspect of being in samsara,

Cyclic existence.

And then the fourth disadvantage is having to be born again and again.

So until we escape from samsara and obtain genuine freedom,

Liberation,

Then after dying we are born again.

Due to karma and due to afflictions like ignorance,

We don't have any choice or control over where we are born and even whether or not we take birth.

It just happens.

We are impelled by our karma.

And being born again and again,

Even if we're born in a good situation like as a human being,

It means starting all over again from the beginning.

We spend a whole lifetime learning and growing and gaining maturity and then in the process of dying and being born,

We forget all the things that we learned and we start off all over again as a tiny baby and having to learn all those things again.

How to talk,

How to walk,

How to feed ourselves and then we have to go to school and again spend many,

Many years gaining knowledge in order to support ourselves to have a job and a life.

Just think about that situation of being born again and again and having to learn the same things over and over and over again and see how this is a disadvantage of the cyclic existence.

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And then the fifth disadvantage is changing status again and again or rising and falling again and again.

So what this means is at certain times in samsara we are born in a good situation.

We have a fortunate life.

We may even have high status and wealth and power and a lot of good experiences,

But inevitably that life comes to an end.

We lose what we had in that life.

There's no guarantee that the next life we have will be the same.

We might be born in a very unfortunate situation,

Poor,

Deprived,

In a lower class of society,

A lot more problems,

A lot more difficulties.

And we can see that happening even in one lifetime,

Even in our world.

There are stories of people who at one point in time are in a good situation.

They're wealthy,

They're famous,

They're popular,

They're powerful.

But then something can go wrong.

They might commit a crime and be convicted and sent to prison,

Or they have an accident and are injured,

Maybe disabled or disfigured.

And then they no longer enjoy the status and the wealth,

Popularity that they had before.

So as we go through samsara,

One life to the next,

And even within one life,

We sometimes go from a higher position to a lower one without any choice.

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And the sixth and final disadvantage is being alone.

So of course we have friends,

We have family,

We spend time with other people.

But at certain times we're alone.

When we're born,

We come into the world alone.

When we die,

We leave alone.

Nobody can go with us.

We have to leave everyone behind.

And even during our life,

When we're having some powerful experience,

Like maybe strong,

Painful experience,

Physical or mental pain,

Nobody can really experience that with us.

Even if they try,

They can't really be there with us in that experience.

And the same with beautiful experiences when we experience great joy,

A sense of beauty.

So that too is something we alone experience.

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So to conclude,

The purpose of meditating on suffering is not to become depressed,

To have a feeling of despair and hopelessness.

Rather,

It is to recognize that these experiences do occur to ourselves and to others,

And we can become free of suffering.

We don't have to continue having these experiences over and over and over again.

It's possible to become free.

And realizing that there are these painful experiences in samsara gives us the motivation to do what needs to be done so that we can become free,

And then go on to help others become free as well.

So see if you can come to that conclusion that you would like to do whatever you can to stop creating the causes for samsara and all of its painful experiences,

And work for liberation,

And beyond that,

Work for enlightenment,

Becoming a Buddha to be able to help all other beings become free as well.

And finally,

Let's make a mental dedication of the merit,

The positive energy,

Of doing this meditation with an altruistic intention.

So let's share this positive energy with all other beings.

May it bring them peace,

Happiness,

And may it be the cause for all of us to reach enlightenment as quickly as possible.

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Reviews

Thank you for this lovely practice.

A really good meditation on Samsara

Really good teaching meditation

🙏🏼💜🙏🏼