What is Dukkha

I don't think there is or was anyone with most expertise and insight into what this words meant other than the Lord Buddha himself. But he advised each one of us to understand the meaning by ourselves, since that is the way to Nibbana.

What I am going to write in my blog today is my understanding of Dukkha as I have experienced and seen it up to date. I am sure my views will change an evolve with time and more practice but what is going to help me or not is what I understand today. So I will share my understandings as of now.

During this past year, I have had many changes in my life. Some have been positive and happy experiences and other have been not so and has brought much unhappiness and worry to me. But all these things have made me contemplate on the unfolding of life. Life is a chain of events. They arise, stay for a recent amount of time, even if it means seconds, then fade away. No matter how big or small these events are they all have the same characteristic. Same with emotions. Usually our emotions are associated with these events. Either they arise along with the events or after or before an event. Either way they too arise in the mind and stay for a while and fade away. I have watched this happen over and over again over the past year.

I have found that getting emotionally involved with any of these events creates a lot of energy within myself. The energy can be negative or positive. Negative means it creates anxiety, restlessness and worry etc within my mind whereas positive ones create elation, joy, excitement, restlessness etc. When I have looked deep into all these emotions, the positive and the negative both, I have noticed that they both create a kind of waves in the mind. It really is insignificant what emotional value we attach to it. Either way it is a movement. It's like throwing a pebble into clam, clear water. Does not matter whether you throw a pebble or a diamond, it creates ripples. I see the same in the mind. Good or bad the mind moves.

This movement I have found to be Dukkha or suffering. One might say, if things are happy why should you call it Dukkha. What I have experienced it that as a result of that arising and fading away, this happiness too will go away and in its place, we will have an emptiness which we will find not to our liking. Or it might be replaces by a negative event. So it goes on and on and on. I find this exhausting. I mean at the the end of the day everything boils down to this principle.

But I get involved nevertheless. I am sure I do that because my understanding of this constant change which the Buddha called impermanence is not strong enough.

But I have come to this understanding of Dukkha.

When I saw that I felt a sense of sadness. Then what is all this living for. The things we do, the things we strive for to make things better if at the end it all falls into this ever churning cycle. I contemplated on this too.

I realised that the things we do, the things we strive are actually not the things we need to put forth energy into. I mean don't get me wrong. We need to earn a living and put food on the table and pay the bills and so on. But all of us strive for much more than just living and putting food on the table. We need cars, vacations, nice clothes, parties, friends and fancy foods etc. All of these things that we put forth most of our energy into ultimately end up in that principle of arising, staying and fading away. At the end what does it leave us with? Memories, yearnings, expectations all of which I see tends to create restlessness in us. But only a few us notice this. Most of us tend to think of it as life.

I beg to differ. I think we don't understand life fully. As a result we don't know how to live it. I remember somewhere in a talk or in a book Ayya Khema said that we need to learn to live life. I will not fully agree with her. The things we have been passed on by our elders, society, norms, customs etc are there because we have created it. Not necessarily out of understanding how to live life. Therefore I think we need to figure out how to live life fully, Not just because we were born into it, not just because most of the world and people around us tell us to live in a particular way, not just because we have no other choice.

I believe when we learn to live life as it ought to be done, there will be a lessening of Dukkha,  I have learnt that when you learn these skills and methods of living, your life becomes easier rather than difficult. Your emotional responses to life becomes more peaceful rather than conflicting. As this unfold our emotional ups and downs to events of life will become less and less.

This is not "NOT FEELING". In fact its the opposite. You feel and see things fully and clearly. But it does not sway you in one direction or another, because your mind had seen that no matter what, it all follows the arising, staying and fading away principle. Within that, it's best to stay serene rather than get involved.

I have found this way of living, at times when I am able to, to be very peaceful and enjoyable. In fact it much more enjoyable than getting involved emotionally. You can simply sit back and enjoy the drama. Once its over you can quietly leave, instead of crying for the fact that you don't have it anymore or wondering when you get to see it again. You are in your sweet spot.

The Buddha said that where there is Dukkha arising, in that place itself is the cessation of it. I am beginning to see how right he was. I used to avoid dukkha or run away from it but now I simply cannot even if I wanted to. Because I have this deep belief that I need to stay with it until I am out of it. For once Dukkha runs it course out, there will be that sense of peace and quiet. But  it has to be faced with and dealt with.

So these are some of my understandings of Dukkha. I am sure I must have rambled on but for me writing these feelings/thoughts is essential so that I can come back to it again and again. These things have a way of vanishing into thin air. So the only way to make sure I don't lose them is to write them down.

Living in the moment

During the past week I have learnt many lessons about life and meditation. One of them is about being in the present moment. There is a lot of books written about the subject by those who are experts. What I am trying to do here is not to add to that but instead to write about my personal understandings. 

Last week was a tumultuous week. Many things happened and most were not pleasant. These events created much emotional turmoil, worry and anxiety within my mind. It was not a happy place to be in. But I persisted with my meditation nevertheless. When you are so unhappy and full of anxiety and worry, it takes much space in your mind. There is little space for happiness. The energy is negative and entrapping, not freeing and free flowing. So my week was like that. I felt trapped. I need to find that light at the end of the tunnel but everything looked bleak and obscure.

On Tuesday morning, I had to run some errands. Before that I did my usual morning chores and my meditation. Then I washed and got dressed and went to run my errands. After coming home, I did my exercise and then went in to the shower. While I was showering I understood something. And that was that, all things in life that unfolds are events. They are simply events or episodes by themselves. But we attach a great deal of meaning and emotions to them. That makes us unable to stay in the present because there is much emotional baggage that is lying around or lurking around to be attended to. The present moment is very simple. I was showering. There is nothing fantastic about it or earth-shattering emotional experience. It was a simple activity. So there is little to think. So, the mind has nothing much to do. The mind needs to be occupied all the time. It needs to be occupied with interesting things. Whether they make us happy or unhappy, the mind sees them as things that can occupy its vast empty space. So it picks on them and attaches. Then its put on a scale, giving it values/meanings. 

So the mind cannot stay in the present. Cause if it did, there is nothing much to do, no chattering to be had about anything. It's space, emptiness and peace. But we don't see this often enough to want to stay in it.

I realized that during my shower. I realized that all the drama that unfolded in the days previous were merely events/activities. I had weighed in on them and attached a great deal of emotional significance. Therefore, I could not get away from them. They keep coming back again and again wanting attention, wanting sorting out. This train of emotional thoughts generation connects the past, present and future. When its all connected I am overwhelmed. I feel that I have no way out. Of course I have no way out, because I want to stay in it, because its important to me. It's important than the simple present moment that I have where I get to do nothing but a simple activity which has no emotional significance unless I give it a name.

When I saw this I was amazed. But I realized that what I experienced was soon going to vanish and it did. I was back to my same old drama. But I was happy that I had a glimpse to something that I could possibly come back to again and again, just because I saw it for real once. 

So today, after almost a week, I was meditating. I saw this same process unfolding in my meditation on breath. I cannot stay on the breath, because there is nothing much to do there. There is the breath and then there is the seeing of it. But its not that interesting as the vacation that is coming up, or all the worries of the past. So the mind goes to them, because there is so much emotional investment. 

Since I had had this experience/understanding in the previous week, I decided to give my breath more importance. I gave it more emotional value. Along with that the mind stayed for much longer. Every time I entertained my thoughts my mind went to them and stayed in them. But when I realized this came back to my breath, giving it importance it stayed on.

I learnt a good lesson. It's like watering the weeds vs the flowers. I think I have heard Ajahn Brahm say this thousands of time but I probably never quite saw it like I did the last week. 

Every time I go to my drama, I water them. Therefore they grow. Along with it, my peace vanishes, I get anxious, worrisome and unhappy. But when I start watering my breath, it starts to grow. It gets peaceful, happy and light. I was able to do this for a while. It was interesting. 

I don't know whether I would be able to do this at will but I know now, what I need to do. After years of meditation, I feel as if I am still learning and dabbling in the basics. But I don't mind really. Every little bit helps. I hope this understanding will grow, until I am able to only water the flowers in the garden of my mind. 

Gaining perspective

Last week has been tumultuous to say the least. My husband had to fly out of the country, I got sick with a facial tic and I was all by myself. Not having my husband around is bad enough, that I had to be sick and by myself was worse. I was very unhappy, scared, anxious and simply wanted to curl up in bed until it was time for me to travel to join him in Hong Kong.

Being unwell and being all by yourself without family around is hard. I felt alone and scared. I had little energy to do anything except get up and do my basic daily chores. But I had to see a specialist, go to my volunteer work on Monday. I wanted to give up.

Then I started to think. I have been volunteering as a hospice patient visit volunteer for just over a month. I see two patients for about an hour every week. I also spend time with one of my patients spouse. I started to think of them. I felt that I was like my patients in the hospice, minus of course the confirmed death within 6 months. I felt alone. I felt I was stuck in a body that was not making me feel good. I was inside my own house without any loved ones. I was also at the care of total strangers in medical care facilities.

But then I thought more. I tried to see what it must be like for my patients. They are in there late 80s, so very weak physically, they are in a nursing home removed from their familiar surroundings and their loved ones. There loved ones will visit them from time to time but they could not dictate when. They were in the care of strangers. Room mates of strangers. Stuck in weak, sick bodies. Perhaps like me I thought. But then again I realized, that I was not in my 80s and stuck in a body that is frail and unable to move. Yes I didn't have my loved one but I could walk out, drive any place that I wanted to, in case for entertainment, food or whatever. My faculties were well functioning.

I realized that I had very little to complain about. My feeling sorry for myself, could no longer be justified. So I got up and went to see them and later that day I also went to see the specialist.

I didn't feel elated at the end of the completion of these tasks, that I had found to be so very difficult in the previous day. But I wasn't feeling sorry for myself anymore. I was clam. That was good enough.

Thinking of my patients changed my perspective. I think we lack perspective for the majority of the time we live. We take things for granted. Our health, what we have, our comforts, people who love us and many other things which are really not that complicated. Then when we lose them, we complain about them. Instead, I realized that I needed to appreciate and feel a sense of gratitude for what I have and stop complaining about what I don't have. Because at the very moment I am complaining, there are many  people in the world, who live just fine and make do with less things.

Why is it that we cannot gain perspective? I contemplated on this for quite sometime.

I felt that we lack a great deal of empathy for the general suffering that goes around. We live in our own little bubble. We usually think people who are rich and powerful live in bubbles. I don't think so. I think each one of has a bubble of our own. No matter what conditions we are in, the kind of people we deal with, whether we have comfort or not, each one of us has a bubble. Outside of that is all other things external. All our dramas, pain, happiness and the whole bag of it, happens inside of our own bubble. Therefore we feel it is ours only. There is a sense of why is this happening to me. Why is the world unfair to me? Why do I always have the rough end of the stick?

But what I realized is that in each bubble this unfolds. We just cannot get ourselves to look at the other bubble and recognize that what's happening inside mine is not that much different to what's happening in the bubble next to me. Therefore my suffering takes on this all important role. But if you were to look outside and see that the person next to you goes through similar issues, then yours will not become that important. But we humans are not engineered to do that.

I realized that's something we need to acquire. I think it's one of the most important acquisitions to be made, because it makes you understand that we are all alike in some way or another. That these huge barriers that we seem to erect between individuals, groups and societies is really not necessary.

I have also been watching the Kardashian show during it's last two seasons. I'm sure some people think they are privileged and lucky. But when you cut through their clothes, mansions, cars and expensive looking trips, they go through the same dramas, personal issues, unhappiness, confusions we all go through from time to time. I also realized that they are worse off than us, because they have to live under the scrutiny of so many people in the world. They also have to succumb to expectations of so many people in the world. So after watching this show for almost two seasons, I have come to see that their lives are not that different to mine, except that I have a great deal more freedom and choice than any one of them combined.

I saw the same conclusions, when it came to my hospice patients. I may not be certified by two doctors that I would die within the next six months. But then people die without the certifications of doctors everyday. My suffering was not that dissimilar to theirs, except that they had great many more barriers to their day to day living.

So, this perspective helped me to be less engrossed in my own issues. I became a little less selfish.

I think we become selfish because we are too engrossed in our own issues in our lives. We are the center of our universe and everything has to revolve around us to make our lives better. Well it never works like that, not for me, not for you and not for anyone, no matter how much we would like to believe. But when we live in our bubble things look and feel very different.

So it's important for us to step outside of ourselves. Understand where people are coming from. Not from your perspective but from the theirs. Then you learn to appreciate whatever little you may or may not have there is much to be grateful for and when we live in our little bubble, that gratitude is lost in our selfish desires and complains.