Getting What You Want Isn't What You Want - The First Noble Truth

Gautama Buddha, the historical Buddha, lived between about 563 and 483 BC in India on the border of present-day Nepal. He was a son of the King Sudhodana, ruler of  the tribe called the Sakyas (from where Buddha derived the title Sakyamuni, meaning "Sage of the Sakyas"). The young prince also received the name of Siddhartha. He maintained a privileged life behind the palace walls until one day he decided to visit the nearby town. The king called for everything to be swept and decorated, and any disturbing, unpleasant, or sad sight to be removed. But while Gautama was travelling through the streets, an old wrinkled man appeared before him. In astonishment the young prince learned that decrepitude is the fate of those who live long enough. Later he saw someone seriously ill, and then a funeral procession with a corpse, both of which opened his eyes to suffering and death. Finally he met an ascetic, a beggar, who told Gautama that he had left the world to pass beyond suffering and joy, to attain peace at heart.

Gautama left his palace, wife, and child, and became an ascetic for about 6 years, desiring to understand and eliminate suffering.  Although he achieved deep meditation states, his body suffered and he did not achieve peace.  Finally, he achieved the realization that there is a middle way between selfish indulgence and asceticism.  He became aware of what are now known as the Four Noble Truths – that suffering (dukkha) is universal, the cause of suffering, that suffering can be overcome, and the path by which it can be overcome.  With this insight, he became the Buddha, which simply means one who is awake.

About seven weeks after the Buddha’s awakening, he met five former ascetic companions, and the Four Noble Truths are seen as the first teaching he gave.  The four truths are not as such things to “believe,” but to open to, contemplate, see for yourself, and respond to.  In this post, we focus on the first of the Noble Truths - that dukkha exists. (If you want to read some of the details, see HERE)

Dukkha: Although this is usually translated into English as suffering, dis-ease, unsatisfactoriness, discomfort, anxiety, and stress may be somewhat better. There are several types of dukkha.  Gompopa (in the “Jewel Ornament of Liberation”) organizes them into these three types:

1. Dukkha - Dukkha (Suffering of suffering):  Ordinary suffering or pain, which can be physical, emotional, or mental

2. Viparinama Dukkha (Suffering of Change):  Suffering brought on by the truth of impermanence, and our desire to keep things from changing. 

3. Samkhara Dukkha (Suffering of Conditioned States; All-Pervasive suffering):  This is the trickiest to define.  It's basically suffering brought on by our neurotic habits, by being a self with the Five Skandhas (the five aggregates that we mistake for “self”), which are constantly changing.  In brief, we have bodies and things have forms, we have sensations and feelings, we have perceptions and cognitions, we have thoughts, opinions, prejudices, and attitudes, and we have consciousness.  One way of thinking about it is that these five Skandhas maintain a reference to "self," which causes us to separate the world into self and other, which can cause suffering.

As you might have noticed from this list, suffering is much more complicated than it at first appears.  In fact, the Buddha defined eight types: 

"Now this, monks, is the Noble Truth of dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In brief, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha." — SN 56.11 

I tend to think that  there is a ninth type of suffering - getting what we want.

Think about it.  As soon as you get that thing you really desired, you start worrying about it.  You get the fancy car and then begin stressing about it getting door dings, or breaking down, or stolen.   Getting what you want begets dukkha when it gets boring (aging), when it breaks (death), when we worry about it getting stolen or harmed (distress), or after we've lost it (separation from the loved).

Basically, there is a dependent co-arising of both happiness and stress when we get what we want.  

One place one can often see this clearly is in our romantic relationships.  The very thing that attracts you so much to a person is usually the exact thing that is particularly annoying later on.  For example, you are attracted to someone because of how flirty he is?  He won't stop being flirty after he's with you, and then you might not like it as much.  You are attracted to how free-spirited she is?  It will be annoying when she doesn't fit neatly into the little box you would like to keep her in once you're together (c.f., the home for manic pixie dream girls video).  You are attracted to how smart someone is, and what a great probing intellect he/she has?  You might not like it later when he/she turns that probing critical mind on you!

The point is that we continually believe that getting what we want will make us happy, but that's clearly not true.  Most of the time, getting what we think we want just maintains our suffering.

The good news is that the next three Noble Truths help us to understand why we suffer and how to stop.

Working with Anger (and other Strong Emotions)

On the American Buddhists group on the Insight Timer app, a question came up about dealing with strong emotions.  In particular, this colleague asked,  "How do I apply the peace of mind I feel while meditating when I finish my session?  I have anger issues."

There's obviously not one single answer nor is there a simple answer (well, there is - it's practice and time, but that's not a very satisfactory answer at the moment you're feeling the anger). 

In the Buddhist view, emotions have two properties that are co-emergent - wisdom and confusion. That is, when you are feeling an emotion, there is an aspect of wisdom behind it. With anger, it's usually the recognition that something isn't right. The problem is that co-emerging with the wisdom is also ignorance/confusion/clinging - we feel the anger and then (1) believe we have to DO something because of it, (2) believe that our story about it is somehow "real," and (3) our clarity of thinking often gets impaired, so we act unskillfully. So when you are seized by anger, can you separate the wisdom part out from the ignorance part? Can you allow yourself to feel it but not feel the need to act, at least until you've considered what would be a skillful action?

Another way of thinking about using what you find in meditation in the moment may be to focus on the gaps. This is kind of hard to explain in words, especially if you haven't really noticed it in your practice yet, but one thing many people notice in their mindfulness meditation is that there are actually spaces between thoughts, feelings, and impulses to act. In our normal lives we usually just let them run together so that they not only feel continuous, but they feel causal - you said that which caused me to feel this which caused me to say that. But in truth, there can be a gap between all of these parts. Can you find it in the moment? Focusing on that gap can greatly lessen the intensity with which you feel the anger, or can lessen the intensity with which you feel you must react to the feeling or the other person.

These are not the only approaches one could take (e.g., you could try to find compassion for the person annoying you, but I think that's really not realistic for someone struggling with anger issues). You also might want to stop trying to achieve peacefulness in your meditations, and instead begin to do mindfulness of feelings, seeing where anger comes from and where it goes. If you're only using meditation to try to achieve a special state (i.e., peace of mind), then you're not getting everything out of it that you could.  In a sense, meditation doesn't really get "rid" of anything we feel, but it can help us to not be so caught by the feelings that we feel trapped into a habitual pattern.

There's a Lojong slogan that is sometimes translated as "Don't be so trustworthy."  I like this because it encapsulates very simply how we are such creatures of habit.  Something triggers our anger, and we already know how we're going to feel, how we're going to react, and what will come of that - it has a feeling of destiny like a rushing freight train.  This is especially true in our relationships, where we've often spent many years practicing the patterns.  That may be where the real fight is with your anger issues -- there is a habitual trigger and a habitual response.  These conditioned states are the hardest to break, and yet they're so central to our peace (or lack of it).  So the slogan is meant to help us realize that there is a gap between trigger and response, and we don't have to be so trustworthy - don't do what you and everyone else expects you to do.  Do something different.  Maybe it will turn out badly, but maybe it will just be surprising enough to derail the rushing train of habitual events, or at least push it onto a new track to see where that goes.

Ultimately, this isn't the path just for anger issues, but for all of our habitual emotional reactions that keep us stuck in bad patterns (the kleshas).

Why Be Afraid of Meditation?

I sometimes help to lead a mindfulness and meditation group, although I am not a formally trained meditation instructor.  We are currently going through a six-week introductory session about Buddhist basics, and it seemed like it might be of benefit to a broader audience to post some of the issues here.

Why are you interested in meditating?  What made you start?  People in our group had answers such as wishing to connect the mind and body, to gain peace and calm, to connect with the subconscious, to lessen the hold that thoughts have on us, and to cope with suffering.  It interests me that each of these answers has an aspect of noticing that the "normal" state of being can be unsatisfactory, and that there is an aspiration to work with that (as well as a belief that Buddhist meditation may provide a helpful path).  With such noble goals, why do we often fear meditation?

One of my teachers, Ethan Nichtern, says that in his experience, people are really glad that he meditates.  We want to have meditated, but we often feel discomfort about actually sitting down to do it.

I certainly felt this at one point in my practice about seven years ago.  I had just gone through a difficult divorce, and although I knew that participating in the local sangha that was just beginning would help me, I also was terrified.  I went to one of the leaders (a Unitarian minister) to try to understand.  There wasn't a good way to explain in words the terror I felt, but I knew that meditation would bring me into contact with what might be an endless pit of pain.  He assured me that it would, but that it wouldn't be anything I couldn't withstand and ultimately work with.  He was right. Nonetheless, for that first year or so, most sessions I sat there with tears streaming quietly down my face for reasons I couldn't explain.  So I certainly understand that although we may want to have meditated, there is often resistance to doing it.

Some of this resistance can come from our own misperceptions.  Some common ones include:

1. The belief that there is a "right" way to meditate.  There are many postures and many styles of meditation, each of which has a function.  We're often (especially as beginners) too worried about getting it wrong. 
2. The belief that the goal of meditation is to empty your mind.  It is clear when one first sits in meditation trying to count breaths that we can hardly stop our minds for even four breaths.  But in fact, the goal is not to stop thinking.  There are different methods of meditation, only one of which focuses on trying to settle the mind.  Other methods actually use the mind actively.  The ultimate goal is not to stop thinking, but to stop believing that our thoughts are the same as reality.  They are thoughts about reality, not reality itself.
3. The belief that the goal is to get rid of something we dislike, such as our temper, our sadness, our addictions, or our ex-partners (I suppose moving to a monastery might actually be successful at that last one...).  In fact, the goal is to learn to become skillful with all parts of our lives - to become skillful with what is, and not with the story we tell ourselves about it.

These misconceptions can hamper our enthusiasm to meditate, because if we expect them to be accurate, we can't help but be disappointed when we try to achieve them.

Beyond misconceptions, however, meditating is difficult.  Why?  It should be simple.  There are really only three steps to a basic breathing meditation.  (1) Sit.  Easy enough for most of us.  (2) Breathe.  Good, you're already doing that.  Two-thirds of the way there!  (3) Now, do nothing else.

...That third one is always the tricky bit.   

Meditation goes against our conditioning in many ways.  

• First, we tend to spend most of the day in our heads, telling ourselves stories about what just happened, what we want to happen, how we should feel about something, and planning for how to make it happen.  Meditation tries to get us to step back from the story, because the story is not really what's right there in front of us.  
• Second, we spend the day feeling like we should multi-task, and we often get rewarded for doing it.  Meditation tries to get us to focus on only one one thing for an extended period of time, without constant distractions.  
• Third, we generally seek excitement and stimulation and avoid discomfort, which is like closing off part of who we are.  Meditation tries to get us to see all of who we are and learn to be comfortable with it. 
•  Finally, many of us spend a lot of the day trying not to really feel our emotions.  Meditation tries to get us to be in touch with what is really happening in our lives, including our feelings about it.

Stephen Batchelor is quoted as saying: 

The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.

We routinely practice dissatisfaction and distraction, all day long (really, how much do you think negative thoughts and complain about your job, partner, body aches, friends, co-workers, and other annoyances in a day?).  Basic meditation can help to begin to break these habits, and some types of meditations actually work to give practice with joy, comfort, compassion, and ease.

Live in joy, 

In love, 

Even among those who hate. 

Live in joy,

In health,

Even among the afflicted. 

Live in joy,

In peace,

Even among the troubled. 

Look within.

Be still.

Free from fear and attachment,

Know the sweet joy of the way.

from the Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byrom

Healing the Mind for Lasting Happiness

The last two posts have discussed where we mistakenly seek happiness (outside ourselves), and how we often seek types of happiness that can't last, to which we cling which ultimately causes more suffering.  Yet, happiness is possible even if we can't change our outside circumstances or have previously been traumatized.

Consider how fragile the body is.  You can get a simple paper cut, and if it isn't cared for properly, it can get infected and you can die from it.  You can sprain or break your ankle and end up with a permanent disability.  Although true, the body is also remarkably resilient.  If properly cleaned and cared for, such as putting a splint on the ankle, the body can heal the most horrible wounds.

Does the mind have a similar ability to heal its wounds?  It can certainly be injured.

The sprained ankle keeps getting worse even while it is trying to heal itself if you don’t splint it and you keep repeating the actions that damaged it.  Similarly, the mind can’t heal properly if you keep doing the same things over and over.  Unfortunately, this is what we usually do.  

Have you noticed how problems seem to repeat in your lives, especially with our families and the relationships we care the most about?  We maintain the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that keep us locked into an unhealthy pattern, continually re-injuring ourselves.  We can either practice these thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and therefore strengthen the bad habits, or we can practice with them and gain insight, wisdom, and ease.

Meditation is the splint for our injured minds – it helps to clean the wound.  It provides support for changing the habits, which gives the mind the rest, the time, and the stability it needs to begin to fully heal.  But just like a sprained ankle, the mind does not heal immediately.  It can be re-injured easily.  Like the ankle, even after it is healed, it may always be weaker in one direction.  By knowing that, however, you can take steps to keep it from getting re-injured in that direction.  

We spend a lot of our time practicing dissatisfaction, so it's no surprise we have gotten so good at it.  Meditation not only can help to break that pattern, but to retrain new positive patterns.  It is important for new meditators to realize that there are many types of meditation, and there is a progression that can be followed.  At first, we usually focus on breathing or calming meditations (sometimes called shamatha or mindfulness meditations).  These can certainly help us to reduce our feelings of stress.  But ultimately that's not really enough.  We really want to get to a place where we don't get stressed out but feel a sense of calm and ease even when stressors are present.  Mindfulness is just the first step to that goal, although it is a necessary one because it helps us to achieve the clarity and stability to go to the next steps.  Contemplative meditations (sometimes called vipassana or insight meditations) help us to retrain our habitual reactions.  Meditation, however, is still only one third of the Buddhist path, which also includes ethics and philosophical/psychological practices.

Deep down, we know that seeking happiness outside ourselves will never be fully successful.  Buddhism has many techniques, practices, and paths to help us find the ability to live with ease through all of our stresses.  The goal becomes having a deep sense of well-being even as we experience the full range of human emotions, rather than trying to reject "negative" feelings and grasp after ecstatic feelings.  Not every approach will be right for everyone, but that's one of the great things about Buddhism - you are encouraged not to believe in anything until you try it to see if it works for you.