The Third Noble Truth - The End of Suffering

“If you let go a little, you’ll have a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you’ll have a lot of happiness. If you let go completely . . . you’ll be completely happy.” - Achaan Chah

The Third Noble Truth, the end of suffering, is a very positive message in Buddhism and tells us that suffering can be overcome and happiness can be found for anyone. 

The First Noble Truth reminded us that because everything is impermanent and always changing there is suffering, dissatisfaction and unreliability in life; there just is.  Accepting that truth we looked to the Second Noble Truth that told us that craving causes suffering; we get attached to and crave all kinds of impermanent things hoping they will stabilize our experience in the world and make us happy.  But, pretty soon, we realize things don’t live up to their promise, they can't, they don't last. So, we begin to put it together that suffering and the causes of suffering depend on our own states of mind and on our own views about what’s going on, not on the things we desire.  

The good news, the reassuring news from Third Noble Truth is the fact anyone can change their mind states and their views and know happiness and contentment now.  We do this by seeing through and letting go of the misperceptions and delusions we've constructed to support how we want things to be in favor of a natural alignment with how things actually are.  The extent to which we let go of our craving is the extent to which suffering will drop away. 

The Second Noble Truth - The Causes of Suffering

In our discussion of the First Noble Truth we saw clearly that suffering is part of life.  It arises in relationship to actual pain or injury and in response to unfathomable natural and man-made events that affect hundreds of millions of people.  Suffering experienced as unsatisfactoriness also arises when we feel things in life are unreliable because they are constantly changing. Finally, we can also experience suffering as a kind of existential anxiety when we encounter the big “why” questions in life.

The Second Noble Truth tells us that before we can find freedom from suffering, we also need a deep understanding of what causes it.  The Buddha found through his own experience that craving and not being able to see the world as it really is were two primary causes of suffering. We crave pleasures of the senses but become unsatisfied and disappointed when they don’t last and we can’t control them.  We also suffer when we attach our fears, hopes, facts and behaviors on the world view we’ve built ourselves that is based on insufficient information and incomplete understanding.

The First Noble Truth - There is Suffering in Life

Over the next four weeks we'll take a look at the Buddhist Four Noble Truths.  These four topics are foundational teachings in Buddhism and offer insights into the suffering and dissatisfaction we all experience in life. The good news from these teachings is the promise that freedom from suffering is possible and available to everyone. 

The Four Noble Truths help us (1) realize that suffering is a real part of life, (2) what causes suffering, (3) how we can lessen or remove suffering, and finally provide us with (4) an eight step training program for finding freedom from suffering (The Noble Eightfold Path).

“The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.” - Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

All things and experiences are impermanent. They come and go depending on constantly changing conditions. The issue for us is that we really don't want this to be the case and it causes us a lot of suffering. The suffering can take many forms across a wide spectrum of experience from extreme physical and mental pain to the many subtle inner struggles and conflicts that arise in this human life. The Buddha spoke of "the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering. . ."  Through meditation and direct experience we can become increasingly aware of our own relationship with suffering and begin to better understand the role we play in its arising and find freedom from it.

Restlessness

Restlessness is often talked about in Buddhism as “monkey mind.”  Living in a culture that can’t sit still and has a tweet-centered response time, it’s not surprising that our minds are frequently restless and on the move.  When we are dissatisfied with the current conditions, we urgently and relentlessly looking for something better somewhere in the future.  Or, we are attempting to keep one step ahead of the results of our past experiences that we feel or believe didn’t go so well.  Restlessness, and its close relative worry, are outcomes stemming from how we perceive or view our experience in the world. The clearer we can be about our views and their accuracy and relevance in the present moment, the more we are able to adjust and fine-tune our restless minds and feel more at home now.  

Sloth and Torpor

Sloth and Torpor are experiences of mental and physical tiredness or dullness that affect our attention and concentration.  Aside from actually just needing rest, these states can arise if we’re discouraged, frustrated, bored, feeling hopeless or resistant to current experiences.  Because these states arise from how we view current conditions, we can often notice a complete change in our energy when conditions change.  If you dislike doing laundry, there may be a subtle or not so subtle shutting down or loss of energy.  If someone calls while your doing laundry and invites you to do something you enjoy, like going to dinner or going for a bike ride, you quickly find that energy was present and available all the time.

Aversion

Aversion is often described hatred and ill will and any of its many colors: anger, fear, sorrow, ill will, annoyance, irritation or a judging mind. These show up as resistance to experiences we don’t like or want in our bodies, in our minds or in the circumstances and conditions of life. With aversion, as we saw with attachment, is it most beneficial to look at the reactive state that comes up inside us rather than solely focusing on the object we're angry with or about.  

Travel and Stillness - Pico Iyers

“Anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around — you’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life.”

— Pico Iyers



​

Attachment

It isn’t unusual to have uneasy or insecure feelings lingering in the background of our experience in the face of everything constantly changing in life (impermanence).  It’s also not unusual for us to think that it’s us against the world and that we are separate from everything and everyone else and forget that everything is interconnected and dependent on everything else (interdependence).  In response to these uncomfortable sensations we often want or desire or crave or grasp after things we believe might reduce those wobbly and isolated feelings and stabilize and solidify our lives (attachment). We eventually realize though that those things change too and don't really soothe the isolation. The task for our attention and reflection then is likely to be more about being open and present for things the way they really are, in what ever way they show up in our lives and minds.