This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Suffering and Non-Suffering; Insight (19) Aware of Suffering without Suffering. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Hello and welcome to this morning’s meditation. We’re in the middle of this series on insight, and we’re coming to the part of insight practice where we’re looking at the amazing Pāli1 word pronounced dukkha2. As I’ll talk more about, it’s an adjective. In English, one translation of dukkha is “suffering,” and the preposition that sometimes follows it is “with”—someone suffers with something. What I’m trying to say here is that in Pāli, it’s an adjective. It’s always something that is painful. And when there’s something that’s painful, there’s also something which is not painful. When there’s suffering, there’s also that which is not suffering. When there is affliction, there’s also that which is not afflicted.
When there is suffering with something, there’s also that which is not with suffering. This meeting of what is suffering and what is not suffering is a fascinating place. Sometimes we emphasize that things are either one way or another. But in the dharma, it’s helpful to think of them not as either/or, but as an “and.” The dharma happens in the “and,” in between. It’s not just suffering, and it’s not just happiness. There’s an “and”—suffering and that which is not suffering; happiness and that which is not happy, but it’s not yet suffering either. It’s that which is even happier than happiness, that which is freer of suffering.
So, to have a meeting, to feel where things are stressful, tense, or uncomfortable, and to know it with a knowing that is free of suffering, a knowing that is free of stress, a knowing that is free of contraction and tension in relationship to it—that meeting place of what is suffering and what is not suffering, look for that in this meditation. Don’t try to have it one way or the other. Don’t try to have only no suffering. Don’t try to only focus on suffering. But try to find the place where that which doesn’t suffer can meet what is suffering, so that in the end, you can find stability, you can find a steadiness, you can find freedom.
So, to assume a meditation posture.
Gently close your eyes and take a few moments to feel your posture, maybe swaying back and forth, kind of adjusting the positioning of your weight in your body to find a feeling of balance with your posture. Loosening up places of holding. I was long ago taught when I did Zen to flap my elbows a little bit when I’m sitting cross-legged or in a chair to loosen up any subtle ways the arms are being held. I’ve also been taught to gently shake or move the fingers so the hands can loosen up. Sometimes it’s nice to rotate the head a little bit, almost like you’re saying no—not to say no to anything, but rather to loosen up in the neck, maybe in the shoulders.
And then gently taking some deeper breaths. On the exhale, softening the whole body. On the exhale, let the whole weight of the body settle into the pull of gravity.
And then to let your breathing return to normal. With a normal exhale, relax different parts of your body. Soften in the body. With the exhale, soften some of your tension or holding in your thinking mind.
And then to settle into your breathing, or to settle into the present moment here in the body, this time and place, in whatever way allows you to feel a settling, a stabilizing, and an entering into a fullness of this moment. A fullness with the body breathing.
Soften and relax how you’re aware, how you’re mindful, but be clear, being aware clearly, knowing clearly the present moment experience. The sense of present moment knowing, present moment awareness is valued, is appreciated. It is its own thing that’s being established, separate from being entangled with thoughts, emotions, and attitudes. Entering into knowing, awareness, mindfulness of the present moment with every breath.
If there’s any strain or tension in how you’re aware, how you’re mindful, see if you can soften, relax, open up how you’re aware.
There is breathing, and there’s how you’re aware of breathing.
And then noticing that in the meeting of breathing and awareness, notice if there’s any part of that experience where there’s an absence of suffering, tension, stress. Notice that absence. Breathe with that absence. Open to that absence.
And then as we continue, if you’re feeling any suffering, any stress, tension, or emotional pain, allow it to be there, but let it be there in the meeting place with what is not stressful, what is not suffering. Don’t lean into suffering or hold on to it or react to it. Let it coexist with awareness, which is not suffering. Let it coexist with something here that has no strain in it, no tension.
Rather than feeling or believing that suffering or uneasiness is a global experience, it’s always a partial experience, where a global experience includes that which is not suffering. With this practice of mindfulness, hold them both together: the meeting place of suffering and non-suffering.
And then leaving suffering alone. Any uneasiness you might feel, however subtle, leave it alone. And settle into some of the feelings and characteristics of that which doesn’t suffer. Maybe there’s a feeling of spaciousness, stability, stillness, openness, aliveness. Enter into that which doesn’t suffer and breathe with it. Feel it, sense it. Let it grow and spread.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, may it be that the practice of mindfulness shows us how not to be afraid of suffering. May it show us how to show up for the suffering we have and the sufferings other people have—to meet it, to know it, without suffering. To meet suffering in a mature, honest way, with that part of us that has stability and openness, receptivity, that doesn’t suffer.
And may this ability to meet suffering—our own and the suffering of the world—may it allow for us to meet the suffering of the world, to meet our own suffering with love, with wisdom, with compassion and care. May we find a new way to be with suffering that can transform the world, transform ourselves, to make this a peaceful world, a safe world, a world where happiness and care and love can flow. A world where we feel free, we can breathe freely and easily, and be at ease with each other.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Hello everyone, and welcome to this series on insight. We’re now into the second half of the year, and what I’m introducing this week is built on all that we’ve done in the first half of the year. So this is not out of the blue; it’s not meant to be self-standing. It’s meant to have a phenomenal support so that we’re ready to bring mindfulness to that part of our life that’s quite difficult, to the world that English Buddhists call “suffering.”
An essential part of Buddhist practice is a mature, clear, honest encounter with suffering, with stress, with tension, with the emotional difficulties of our life, and the ways that life can be so challenging for all of us. It’s about how to be able to meet that in an effective and useful way, to be able to be present and not collapse in the face of challenges. To meet it and stay in some way strong and open. To meet it and not be defined by the suffering, not be overwhelmed by it, not be confused by it, but to be able to really be present for it in a clear, effective, and honest way so that we find our way to freedom. So we find a radically different way to be with suffering than how we ordinarily might be. Hopefully, many of you who’ve been doing this now for six months feel you have this in the background to be able to meet this in a new way.
The word that we translate as suffering is dukkha2 in the ancient language of the Buddha, Pāli1. Dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A, is actually an adjective in the ancient language, whereas the English word “suffering” is usually considered a noun, maybe a verbal noun. But in Pāli, it’s an adjective. So that’s very different. It means that it’s always referring to something; it’s a characteristic of something. It’s not its own thing, not its own event that’s there. This perhaps demotes the word “suffering” from how it can be seen as this grand, catastrophic kind of thing that is so big.
The literal meaning of the word in Pāli is “painful,” and it doesn’t distinguish between emotional pain and physical pain. It’s whatever is painful, and human life has pain in it. But the Buddhist orientation is to give extra attention to the emotional pain that we might experience because the emotional pain, or the psychological pain, is the part of the pain that we feel that, in one way or another, we are contributing to. We’re not necessarily responsible for our suffering, but there is a way in which we contribute to it, and that adds to it and makes it much more difficult.
There are certain forms of emotional pain which come with being a human being. To grieve is painful, but it’s not wrong to feel that pain. There’s something sacred about grief and about that pain of grief that’s very tender and very human to experience and make room for. It’s fairly easy to add a degree of stress and tension that’s not necessary to it. We can suffer more by what we contribute to it: the fear, the resistance, the collapsing into it, the excessive reactivity to it, the heavy beliefs that we live under around what we’re experiencing. So, we have a contribution that we make.
The dukkha as an adjective is the stressfulness, the painfulness, the tenseness that we contribute to whatever the experience might be. It’s maybe challenging to talk about our contribution because then we might feel like we’re wrong or that we made a mistake or that somehow now we’re being blamed for the suffering that we have. That is not what we’re trying to do here at all. We’re actually trying to free ourselves from this more complicated way of interpreting and concluding who we are, what we are, and what’s going on, and learn how to be very simple, very quiet and simple. Then we can feel the ways in which we add stress, the way there’s tension, the way in which there’s suffering that can be met with that which doesn’t suffer, that can be met with something that holds it caringly, compassionately, openly. Some way of holding it so there’s a peacefulness. We don’t add second arrows. We don’t add ways that we make it worse. If anything, what we’re adding is how to make it better for ourselves in relationship to suffering.
Some people translate the word dukkha as “stress.” The advantage of that is that it’s not such a big word, and it’s not necessarily so automatically tied to our psychology or our identity as the word “suffering” can be. Stress is an inherent part of human life as well, and maybe it’s easier to appreciate that stress is extra and that we can work with our stress in a responsible way to de-stress. The advantage of “stress” as a translation of dukkha is that as the samadhi3 gets really strong, as the meditation goes really deep and full, we wouldn’t call what’s there suffering anymore. But we can feel very subtle tension, very subtle stress, that’s maybe even right in the midst of feeling a lot of joy, right in the midst of feeling a lot of happiness, right in the midst of, in a very subtle way, feeling a lot of peace. And so to feel that stress, to feel the subtlest little pieces of tension, is part of the onward-leading nature of freedom. Even there, to find tension and stress in the subtlest, in the deepest kind of peaceful states of meditation, expands the fullness of that which doesn’t suffer—the experience of freedom, of openness, the absence of suffering into which we can fall, into which we can open.
So, the idea that dukkha is not its own thing—it’s an adjective—means that it’s part of something, which means that suffering is never the whole thing. It’s always a piece of our humanity, a section, an aspect of it. And I know that sometimes the whole atmosphere, the whole world can just feel distressing and fearful and dismaying and difficult, and the weight of the world can be on our shoulders. The idea in a mindfulness practice is to practice with the world that we have, the experience we have. Not to make it worse, not to suffer more because of it, but to be able to find some degree of stability, steadiness, stillness, some ability for clarity, clear awareness. So, we begin to recognize there’s always more going on here than whatever it is we’re calling suffering, whatever it is that’s painful for us, emotionally or physically. And to begin to feel that which is more, feel that which is not suffering, so that we can be with suffering in a mature, responsible, caring, and wise way.
When there’s enough stability, enough ability to meet suffering without adding second arrows, without making it worse, then the hope is that we can think more wisely, more clearly about it and know how to address it appropriately. Sometimes something needs to be fixed, something needs to be addressed. Sometimes we need to speak to someone or take care of something or do something. Sometimes we need to take a break or find relief. We need to find a vacation. We need to find some way to even occasionally distract ourselves so that something can relax and be easeful. But it’s never meant to be an escape. Buddhist practice is not an escape from suffering; it’s to learn how to work with suffering in a wise way.
And there comes a time in the meditation, when the mindfulness, the practice is strong, when the best strategy is to learn to suffer better. That’s a provocative statement: to suffer better. What I mean by that is not to just suffer for the sake of suffering. Suffering better is to suffer in a way that’s wise. Suffer so there’s less suffering. Suffer so that suffering is met with that which doesn’t suffer. Suffering is felt as only part of the picture, something we can breathe with, something we can find our ease with, something we can practice with. Where, with the idea of practice, we identify more with ourselves as a practitioner of peace, of mindfulness, of clarity, of stability, of calm, than we identify with whatever suffering we have. We can meet our suffering with that which doesn’t suffer.
And if we can’t, to be mindful and clear about that, it’s okay. If we can’t be together with our suffering in a clear and useful way because we’re spiraling out, then the appropriate thing to do is to find another way. Then mindfulness is not the way at that moment. Then it’s to do something, shift something, go for a walk, talk to our friend, maybe do some exercise, or occasionally, as I said, distract ourselves. We retreat only so we can come back later and begin addressing the edges of what is difficult. And not to address it to try to fix it, but rather—and this is the amazing thing about this practice—we’re not trying to fix something, but we’re trying to find our freedom with it. Find our freedom with suffering, so that suffering and that which doesn’t suffer can meet each other. And there, in between them, that’s where we find our freedom.
Thank you very much, and we’ll continue this topic of insight into suffering. Thank you.
Pāli: An ancient Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is the language of the Pāli Canon, or Tipiṭaka, and is the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism. ↩ ↩2
Dukkha: A Pāli word central to the Buddha’s teachings, often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” “unease,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It refers to the fundamental pain and dissatisfaction inherent in conditioned existence. ↩ ↩2
Samadhi: A Pāli word that refers to a state of meditative consciousness or deep concentration, often developed through sustained meditation practice. It is the last of the eight elements of the Noble Eightfold Path. ↩