This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Insight into the Three Characteristics (4 of 5): Suffering - Mei Elliott. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Mei Elliott at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome to all of you. It’s great to be here again. My name is Mei Elliott, and today we’ll continue our study of the three characteristics with a focus on the second characteristic, Dukkha1, or unsatisfactoriness, suffering. Yesterday, we looked through the lens of Anicca2, impermanence. When observing impermanence, it’s pretty clear that we’re observing change, the arising and passing of phenomena. But when we consider insight into Dukkha, we might think that the practice is just to sit around and think about the ways that our life sucks, which is obviously not the case. That’s not what we’re doing with this practice.
So I just want to be overt about the fact that contemplating Dukkha is not about dwelling in or ruminating on our difficulties. And it’s also not to cement a view or a belief that life is suffering. Rather, we’re learning to clearly see the source of suffering, which is craving. We know this from the Second Noble Truth. The source of suffering is craving; that’s what we’re interested in seeing. When we crave and claim, we suffer. And of course, the other side of the coin of craving is aversion. So when craving or aversion are present, when wanting or not wanting are present, we suffer.
During the meditation today, we’ll be noticing if and when craving or aversion are present, or we’ll be noticing the absence of craving or aversion. If and when we identify desire—wanting, not wanting—during the practice today, we’ll meet it by using a practice called RAFT.3 RAFT is an acronym developed by Tanya Wiser, frequently taught by Gil. R-A-F-T. The ‘R’ stands for Recognize, ‘A’ for Allow or Accept, ‘F’ for Feel, and ‘T’ for Tease.
So the ‘R’, Recognize: we’re just really clearly recognizing when desire or aversion are present. ‘A’ for Allow: we don’t try to get rid of them. This would just be more aversion sneaking in through the back door. So we’re letting them be present. And then ‘F’, we Feel it in the body. Desire and aversion often include tension or contraction, so we’re learning what it feels like and where, really getting to know it. When we can get to know these manifestations really, really well, we’re much less likely to be consumed by them, to be hijacked by them.
And then lastly, ‘T’ for Tease. Though this is the last letter in the acronym, we’re actually kind of doing this one first. We’re teasing apart the object of desire—say, the desire for a cup of coffee, so the coffee would be the object—from the desire itself. Rather than just fixating on getting the cup of coffee as the typical human does, we look a little closer and notice if there’s some desire in relationship to the coffee. So we’re teasing apart the object from the desire just so we can see that there are two things that are present. We’re usually so absorbed in getting what we want that all we see is the object, all we see is what we’re trying to get, not the wanting in relationship to it.
So in this acronym, this teasing apart is going to need to be upfront so that we can really clearly see, “Oh, there’s desire here.” And that teasing apart will allow us to ‘R’ Recognize. Once we’ve recognized it, we can ‘A’ Allow and ‘F’ Feel. This is one way that we can deliberately explore Dukkha in our own experience. But as I said yesterday, there are many, many ways to explore the insight themes. You don’t need to go directly looking for them, but it can help to be intentional about it from time to time to learn how to develop the capacity to see desire and aversion clearly. It’s really helpful.
So for our meditation today, as with yesterday, we’ll start by cultivating the supportive conditions for insight. We’ll connect with any contentment that might be available, we’ll allow the mind to settle a little bit, and then we’ll shift to exploring wanting and not wanting more directly. So that’s what you can expect today.
Let’s start our meditation. Go ahead and connect with a posture that supports you to be both awake, alert, and relaxed. Maybe taking a deep breath to support you in landing.
Maybe starting by sensing what’s here for you physically. How’s the body? How’s the heart? How is the mind? Just a brief check-in at a glance. Whatever you find, can you meet it with contentment? Even if there’s 99% discontent or dissatisfaction, maybe there can be 1% okayness. Maybe just being content that it’s possible to know things as they are. The beauty of knowing things as they are—what a gift.
And when you’re ready, connecting with the breath or with your primary anchor, and inviting the mind to settle and relax. If it’s supportive for you to connect with vitakka4 and vicāra4 as we talked about on the second morning of this series, you might try that. Making contact with the moment a breath starts and then sustaining that contact, like a bird flapping its wings and gliding. That little bit of effort to touch in, to connect with the felt sense of breathing.
If you’re using an object besides the breath, vitakka and vicāra can be practiced there as well. Whatever the object, this connecting and sustaining contact, aim and sustain.
Vitakka, connecting, connecting with the breath. And vicāra is sustaining contact with the breath. Making contact and sustaining contact.
As you practice with the breath, at times it’s likely that thoughts and emotions will arise. And when you notice thinking, rather than jerking the mind back to the breath, take a moment to recognize where you were. What landscape were you in when you were thinking? Were you planning, maybe planning dinner or your next vacation? Were you regretting or replaying a memory? Are you fantasizing or rehearsing an upcoming conversation? Or maybe fixing? If you notice that thinking is occurring, rather than get lost in the storyline, notice thinking almost as if you were an onlooker, not in the thought but observing the thought.
As you practice, you might notice recurring themes, recurring thoughts that seem to keep coming back. Often these thoughts are fueled by unseen desire and aversion. So if you notice thinking is occurring during your meditation, see if you can recognize if there’s any wanting or not wanting in relationship to the content of the thought. If you’re regretting, there may be aversion present. If you’re fantasizing, there may be desire present. If you’re trying to fix or change something, maybe both. We’re just opening to the field of the mind to notice our attitude, to notice any wanting or not wanting in relationship to our experience.
As you do this, as you check the mind for desire or aversion, you might notice an absence of desire and aversion, which is also valuable to notice. So continuing with the breath and just checking the mind here and there. See if there’s desire or aversion, maybe in relationship to the thinking mind or maybe in relationship to some other aspect of experience.
If you notice desire or aversion, wanting or not wanting, can you recognize it, merely seeing it? Can you allow it, not pushing it away, not getting rid of it? Can you feel it in the body? What’s it feel like to crave, to cling, to want, or to push away experience, to reject experience? Maybe there’s contraction or tightness, some aspect of discomfort.
If there’s an absence of wanting or not wanting, you might feel what that’s like. What’s that like in the body? Maybe the body is relaxed or soft.
In your own time now, practicing with the breath, and when it feels right, turning to check the attitude, checking for wanting or not wanting.
Welcome back again. My name is Mei Elliott, and today we’ll be continuing our study of the three characteristics, with our focus today on Dukkha, or suffering, sometimes translated as unsatisfactoriness, stress, or dissatisfaction. Dukkha covers the full range of difficulty. It can be the slight discontent of wearing a sweater that’s too tight, the pain of a sprained ankle, to the heartbreak of losing a loved one. So this full spectrum of difficulty.
Yesterday we talked about how all conditioned things are impermanent. The characteristic of Dukkha is sometimes phrased, “all conditioned things are unsatisfactory.” This isn’t saying that all conditioned things, that all things are unpleasant. We know that many things are pleasant. Rather, it’s saying that they can’t lead to lasting happiness. To say all conditioned things are unsatisfactory is pointing to the fact that they can’t lead to the forever fulfillment that we’re seeking, that we’re investing into them.
Having just talked about insight into impermanence yesterday, we can see the relationship between that insight and this one, impermanence and unsatisfactoriness. And here’s how: because all things are of the nature to change, of the nature to pass away, that means that all objects and experiences are unstable refuges. As in, any object or experience that we might try to get or have, it can’t provide deep, lasting satisfaction. This is really important information because it guides us on our path to happiness, which is really what the Buddhist teaching is all about. It helps us discern where happiness is and where it isn’t. If all objects and experiences pass away, why would we try so hard to get them? Why crave and cling to them if we know that it’s not going to work, that in the long run, it’s not going to work?
And that’s not to say that we don’t turn on the heat in our house when it’s below freezing, or that we don’t share love with those that we care about. There are ways to skillfully engage with objects and experiences, but what we find is that the clinging to them is not so useful.
One of the key insights into suffering, as we talked about before the meditation, is seeing that the source of suffering is craving. Typically, as the Buddha would say, an untrained worldling thinks that they’re suffering because of their circumstances. So, “I’m suffering because my socks are too itchy,” or “because I feel insecure after that conversation with my partner,” or “I’m suffering because the food is too salty,” or “because my coworker is incompetent,” or “I’m incompetent.” Or, “I’d be happy if I only had a better relationship or job or house or family.” So if we could just arrange our circumstances, then we wouldn’t experience Dukkha, then we wouldn’t experience suffering.
But what we don’t tend to realize is that the Dukkha isn’t from the objects or experiences; it’s from the craving and aversion itself. It’s not because of the socks or the crummy job. Our suffering comes from the wanting and not wanting.
It was striking for me to see this for the first time in relationship to physical pain. I have a disability, so I live with some associated chronic pain conditions. This was particularly pronounced during my time training as a monk at Tassajara Zen Center5 in the Ventana Wilderness. It’s very rustic conditions there, especially cold in the winter. We’d get up in the morning, maybe 3:45 a.m., sit meditation till noon, work a few hours, and then go back to the Zendo.
During one of these long days of practice, first thing in the morning, I had a few sips of tea, and it set off a multi-hour spell of this chronic digestive pain. For much of the morning, the physical sensations I had were quite unpleasant—contraction, tightness, pressure—but the mind wasn’t agitated. It was relaxed around the object. It was fine; it was just unpleasant sensations. But a few hours into the sitting, a thought arose, and the thought was something like, “Wow, I can’t believe this pain is still happening.” And with that thought, there was this sense like, “It shouldn’t be this way.” I felt kind of incredulous that that much pain would come from such a minor stimulus. And that feeling, “it shouldn’t be this way,” you can probably hear in it, was just dripping with aversion. There was so much not wanting with that, and that feeling just cut me like a knife. And suddenly, I was consumed in Dukkha, was filled with suffering.
Here’s what’s interesting: nothing changed with the level of pain, but I went from very peaceful and at ease into the throes of suffering in an instant. So what happened there? What happened? This was such a noteworthy insight because it showed me where the suffering was. It wasn’t the sense object that caused the Dukkha; it wasn’t the stomach pain, it wasn’t the unpleasantness of the pain. I was able to be with that without suffering, with an easeful mind. But rather, it was the craving for it to be otherwise. It was the aversion of, “It shouldn’t be this way.” I was just fine until that feeling came along.
Ajahn Sucitto6 says, “First we think we need to get out of the predicament of this predicament. Then we realize we are the predicament.” So the predicament wasn’t the pain, it wasn’t the chronic illness; it was my own mind. The predicament was my own aversion.
So how are you relating to your own Dukkha in any given moment? Most of us aren’t even aware that we’re suffering when we’re suffering. So our first step is just knowing, recognizing, “Oh, this is suffering.” And can you be aware that suffering or stress is happening when it is? If so, that’s actually great. It’s great to be able to know that’s happening. Most of us don’t feel excited when we recognize suffering is present, but that’s actually a really important thing to see, because if Dukkha is present, that means craving or aversion are present.
You can see that if you’ve teased apart that object or circumstance from your own reactivity. You’re seeing the difference between the circumstance—say, fixating on how your roommate doesn’t take out the trash—and you’re teasing that apart from your own aversion. That’s the ‘T’ in RAFT that I talked about before the meditation. We’re able to see the difference between the object, the thing that we don’t want, and the aversion itself.
Once we see, “Oh yeah, aversion is here,” then we can practice R-A-F, those first letters of RAFT that I talked about earlier. We can clearly recognize it, we can allow it to be present, not judging ourselves for it, not going to war with our aversion or our wanting. And then we can ‘F’, feel it in the body, feel it in the heart and mind. For me, there’s often a lot of tightness in the chest or the belly, a point of contraction somewhere in the body, maybe in the throat, in the forehead, the temples, the jaw. So see what you recognize or see what you feel. What we often find is that desire and aversion are actually uncomfortable. They’re kind of painful in a sense. And when we can see this really clearly, and we can see this with mindfulness, it starts to train the mind-heart that, “Ouch, desire and aversion are painful. I don’t want to keep creating this aspect of the mind, this quality of mind.” And it begins that wisdom, that clear seeing, begins to let go of the pattern, the pattern of constantly craving, constantly rejecting experience.
When we look at our craving and we see that it’s painful, this is in part because at its core, craving is an expression of discontent, of a lack of contentment. We could say desire wears a thousand different costumes. It masquerades in all of these different ways in our life so that we barely recognize it. But within all of the different facades, it always carries the secret message: “This moment isn’t quite right. This moment is not enough.” And this is a message of dissatisfaction. This is the core of Dukkha. “This isn’t right. This just isn’t right.”
But what happens is when we see the source of suffering in the mind, that it’s in the mind and not in all of the external objects, there’s an opportunity for transformation, because we can train the mind. As some people say, the Dharma may not solve our problems, but it has the capacity to dissolve our problems. It can dissolve our problems when we can let go of our craving and our resistance.
So over time, as we encounter Dukkha again and again and again, we begin to see that it’s not bad news, that it’s actually the seed of our awakening. It’s the foundation of the path. One of the Buddha’s teachings is called liberative dependent arising, and it consists of 12 mental states that condition the mind for enlightenment, for complete freedom from suffering. And the reason I mention it is because of the first step, and this is what I find so extraordinary about this particular teaching: the very first link, the very first necessary condition in this list of 12 that ends in liberation, is suffering. Suffering is step one on the path to liberation.
If we don’t suffer, we don’t see a reason to practice. And we need to practice in order to wake up. Tibetan monks actually have a prayer that they chant where they’re actually praying for suffering so they can have something to practice with. So often we think that something’s going wrong when we suffer. But what would it be like to meet suffering saying, “Oh, wonderful, I’m right on track.” Can we meet our suffering with that sort of, “Oh great, I have something to practice with.” This is our task in life, in our practice, in transforming obstacles into the way, allowing our suffering to inspire our practice.
So let your suffering fuel your practice. As the insight teacher Joseph Goldstein says, “Don’t waste your suffering.” Don’t waste your suffering. Remember, as we explore insight into Dukkha, remember that the role of the three characteristics fundamentally is to teach us to let go, to let go of craving and aversion, wanting and not wanting.
The Thai Forest Master Ajahn Chah7 he used to say, “If you let go a little, you will find a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will find a lot of peace. If you let go absolutely, you will find absolute peace and tranquility.” Now, elsewhere in Ajahn Chah’s teaching, he also said 70 to 80% of spiritual life is knowing we’re clinging and not being able to let go. So that’s why insight is really helpful, because it cultivates the wisdom needed to let go of what we can’t release on our own. So often we see we’re clinging and we can’t let go. The heart just won’t let go. We know that’s what needs to happen, and it’s not happening. So it’s insight into the three characteristics that provides the wisdom to let go of what we can’t let go of on our own, that 70 to 80% Ajahn Chah talks about. And when wisdom lets go of clinging, we let go of suffering.
This is where the path takes us: to complete peace, complete liberation. So today as you practice, don’t waste your suffering. Allow it to inspire you to be mindful. Recognize your suffering, see if craving and aversion are present, and if so, allow it to be there. Feel it in the body. There’s a sacred visitor that comes to teach all of us. This visitor is Dukkha, and our job is to get to know our guest.
May you notice your Dukkha with clarity and kindness. Thank you very much. Have a lovely day.
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It refers to the fundamental unsatisfactoriness and pain inherent in conditioned existence. ↩
Anicca: A Pali word for “impermanence,” one of the three characteristics of existence in Buddhism. It signifies that all conditioned things are in a constant state of flux. ↩
RAFT: An acronym for a mindfulness practice: Recognize, Allow, Feel, Tease apart. It is a method for working with difficult emotions and desires. ↩
Vitakka and Vicāra: Pali terms from Buddhist meditation theory. Vitakka refers to the initial application of the mind to the meditation object (like the breath), and vicāra refers to the sustained examination or connection with that object. ↩ ↩2
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center: A Sōtō Zen monastery located in a remote area of the Ventana Wilderness in California. It is known for its rustic conditions and intensive practice periods. ↩
Ajahn Sucitto: A British-born Theravada Buddhist monk and former abbot of Cittaviveka (Chithurst Buddhist Monastery). He is a well-known teacher in the Thai Forest Tradition. ↩
Ajahn Chah: A highly influential Thai Buddhist monk and meditation master of the Thai Forest Tradition. He was a key figure in establishing Theravada Buddhism in the West. ↩