Ch.2 - Was The Buddha Right? Is Life Just Suffering

The First Noble Truth
Written By Burgs

Why do we Find Life Hard?

So why do we find life hard? Why do we find it such a struggle? Twenty-five centuries ago the Buddha made an assertion: 'Truly this life is suffering.' He had searched for, found and experienced every sensual peak experience there was to be had and every possible expression of good fortune that could come one's way. He was born a prince, growing up in the most extraordinary environment, never wanting for anything, never sick, indulging in the most exquisite of sensual pleasures and yet he still came to the conclusion: 'Truly this life is suffering.' Why do you think he did that? He was the most exalted and fortunate human being you could possibly imagine and so we would think he was in a position to easily avoid suffering.

There are things involved in being alive in this human body, exquisite and extraordinary though it is, that are suffering. Getting sick, growing old and dying; that is suffering. Not getting what you want; that is suffering. Getting want you do not want; that is suffering. Or is it? How much of life is actually suffering and how much do we turn it into suffering?

He went out in search of the end of all suffering, having had the pinnacle of all sensual pleasures, the peak of sensual experiences and indulgences. There was nothing left for him to dine on that would have been more exquisite than the things he had already experienced. He left behind the material and sensual experiences of pleasure in search of something else. And in his pursuit of the cessation of suffering he pursued all kinds of spiritual practices.

He pursued the yogic practices of the age to the very highest levels of concentration practice, the most profound experiences of peace and serenity that the human consciousness is capable of experiencing. There was not a peak experience that the Buddha did not experience and then he reflected: 'No matter how awesome, extraordinary and amazing these experiences are, they do not last forever, and if I long for them when I do not have them, I am left with a feeling of tremendous lacking.'

So he gave up all sensual indulgences, including the pursuit of the peak pleasures of mind that come about through deep meditative practices such as the meditative pleasures of bliss, rapture and joy and the profound states of serenity which had surpassed all the material and sensual pleasures he had experienced.

We are all Subject to Old Age, Sickness and Death

Yet he still came to the conclusion: 'Despite all this I'm left facing old age, sickness and death. There is no guarantee whether or not I can attain these levels of pleasure; they are unreliable; they are not the end of suffering, even if momentarily, while I am experiencing them, I am completely free from suffering.'

What he realised was that he had taken refuge in the pleasurable, and the pursuit of it, and came to understand that he could not guarantee that he would always find the pleasurable or be able to surround himself with it.

We do not know when misfortune is going to come our way. We do not know when we are not going to be able to get the things for which we long. The Buddha realised that those sensual pleasures to which he had grown accustomed could one day have been stripped away, that one day he may not have had access to them, and then what?

With this reflection, having left his royal palace and gone off in search of whatever peak experiences remained through the practices of concentration and meditation, he rejected them all and he strove on. He lived as an ascetic in the forest for six years, looking for what he called the causal cessation of suffering: the state, condition, place or wherever it is and whatever it is where suffering ceases to arise.

He tried all kinds of things. He tried to stop breathing; he shut his senses down so he could not feel anything any more; he stopped himself from thinking; he starved himself; and he very nearly died. He lived in a forest with five other ascetics, all ardently practising the most austere yogic practices of the time, and yet nothing, no breakthrough emerged. He was almost dead from exhaustion, not eating enough and pushing himself too hard. This glorious human being who once was the most handsome of princes, desired by all the damsels of the day, was now a waif by the side of a river, skin hanging off him, almost dead.

Then one day a maiden from the nearby village came down to wash dishes in the river that he was bathing in and saw this pitiful creature. Yet she saw this diamond shining in his eyes, frail though he was and close to death, and she took pity on him. She went back and she made him delicious, sweet rice pudding, and she took it back and begged him, 'Please eat this!' He had hardly been eating anything for a long time, a few grains, nuts, seeds and he was wasted.

He saw in her eyes the compassion that she felt for him and he took the rice and ate it, and it fortified him. And he made the reflection: 'These two extremes that I have pursued: this extreme pursuit of pleasure and sensual indulgence never satisfied me, always left me wanting more, but these austere practices that I pursued to cut off at the sense doors all capacity to experience suffering, I still struggle to forbear the aches and pains of my body; I get exhausted; I need to sleep at night; it is painful to sleep on the dirt. I am racked with pain; I am exhausted; I can hardly walk; this also most definitely is not the causal cessation of suffering'.

So he gave it all up, and he left the five ascetics that he had been with in the forest. And when they saw him eating this sweet rice pudding they thought, 'Oh Siddhartha, he's become soft, he's given up!' And they all just rejected him, turned their backs on him and walked away and left him.

I am Going to Free Myself of Suffering and its Causes This Very Night

So there he was on his own, on a May's full-moon night, when he made a strong determination: he sat under a tree and said to himself: 'I am going to free myself from suffering and its causes this very night or I shall die trying. I shall sit here and I shall cross my legs and I shall cross my arms and I shall close my eyes and I shall not cease until either death comes upon me or I free myself from suffering.'

That night he brought to bear all the training that he had received as a yogi. He had been taught by the greatest masters of India, and he had attained more swiftly than they had the highest levels of Samādhi and meditation. On that night he worked his way through these attainments until his mind was supremely bright and clear. Emerging from Samādhi and its deeply peaceful state, he reviewed this body, looking through it to see what it was and how it was the way it was.

To understand how the Buddha was able to perceive so clearly the intricate workings of the body and mind, we have to understand what happens to our faculty of perception when we enter into a profoundly concentrated and focused state. Our ordinary conscious mind perceives only around ten per cent of reality. Our ordinary bandwidth of perception is quite limited and narrow, and we tend to be fixated upon the physical appearance of things. Even when we concentrate, with an ordinary level of mental focus it is only like looking at things through a magnifying glass. There is no significant increase in the depth of our perception.

But once we become deeply concentrated, the mind gradually becomes able to perceive the multi-layered nature of reality with ever more clarity. Not only does the lens of our mind become more akin to a microscope, but the subtle material and energetic fields of reality gradually come into focus, revealing more of the multidimensional nature of reality.

In such a way the Buddha was able to look beyond the veiled appearances and glimpse the causal or creative process at work in the background. One of the most significant realisations we come to when we do learn to perceive reality at this level is that this is a conscious universe out of which material phenomena are arising. This is in opposition to our tendency to assume that the universe consists of material phenomena within which consciousness is an occasionally arising by-product.

He reviewed what were the causes for the arising of the body and material states, the causes for its passing away and why it was so prone to suffering. And then he reviewed the mind, having reviewed the body. In doing so he saw how the body arises dependent upon the mind. It was while reviewing this that he came to see that consciousness is the primal cause for the arising of materiality and not the other way round. He saw that in the absence of consciousness new material states do not come into being.

He watched the mind arise and pass away, he watched the cause for its arising and passing away and the cause for the arising of affliction, both mental and physical. Then he reviewed the causal process, the creative process by which this life comes into being. He reviewed it with this eye of wisdom, a supremely concentrated mind that is utterly focused and undisturbed. Free of any mental elaboration and the tendency to formulate ideas, he was able to observe the true nature of these things and see them for what they are in their nakedness.

He reviewed what were the causes of this perception of suffering. Obviously there is that suffering that is caused by physical affliction alone, but beyond that there is mental suffering. In fact most of our suffering is mental suffering. It is the experience of not being able to bear or be with the experience we are having in some way.

Now let us be clear about what we mean: suffering is to not be happy. Happiness is to be free of mental suffering. Happiness is contentment. Suffering is discontentment, on whatever level.

What he realised was that this suffering is not brought to an end through the pursuit of pleasure. The desire for pleasurable indulgences leaves us only with desire, to the point that when we fulfil our desires, we are left only with a sense of lacking something to desire. This desire chases its tail, it never ends and it is never satisfied. Its very nature is to need.

He realised that the chasing after sensual pleasures never satisfied itself and this could have raged on until he had consumed everything that was available to him, until nothing was left, and he knew he would never have been happy. He realised that it is not these pleasant or unpleasant experiences themselves that cause us suffering, although the experience of pain is an affliction. The real suffering is our inability to be with what is. He realised that it was clinging, that it was grasping, that it was trying to hold onto or reject an experience that is in the process of constant change, of constant arising and passing away – that that is the cause of our suffering.

He reflected, 'I never appreciated any of these extraordinary things that came my way because I always wanted more. What if I was to just appreciate the exquisite for what it is and allow things to pass away as is their nature, without clinging to them? Then these things would not have been the cause of any suffering in me. If while I was sick, full of fever and close to death I had realised that this is the momentary affliction of a body that is out of balance, and not rejected that experience, not worried about what was going to happen to me, fraught with fear and loathing, I would not have experienced a proliferation of suffering in my mind. What if I had just realised that this is what happens, that sickness is a part of life, but it does not last forever, that everything changes? If I had been with those experiences, both pleasurable and displeasurable, without grasping or rejecting them, they would not have caused me mental suffering.'

The End of Suffering; Rest Effortlessly with Things as They Are

So he came to the understanding that it is the quality of mind with which we meet our experiences that is the cause of our suffering, not the experience itself. We create in our own minds our own misery through not being able to be with things as they are.

Happiness is not just a mental experience, it is a deeply embodied one; a 'sense' of happiness, a 'feeling' of happiness. Joy arises in us under certain circumstances and only under certain circumstances. It does not arise in our mind when we get what we have been longing for, strange though it may seem. After a brief moment of elation that may arise followed by the passing of it, the mind immediately looks around for something else to pursue. So the fulfilment of our desires does not equal happiness.

Happiness arises in the mind under one circumstance. When the heart is undisturbed by the experience we are having, a feeling of joy arises within us, a feeling of happiness spontaneously arises. It arises as a deeply felt experience. It arises directly in our awareness at a level that is beyond the thinking mind. This deeper aspect of awareness arises in the heart in a way that bypasses our analytical mind. This process the Buddha called direct perception, or direct knowing.

We can watch the arising of this sense of joy when we get really concentrated and equanimous and we are really able to rest deeply within ourselves, undisturbed by anything. We will witness this sense of happiness arising in the moment when our mind is not disturbing or smothering or grasping or rejecting our experience. This happens spontaneously and regardless of what it is that we are doing. It can arise while we are doing anything, even something as mundane as watching our breath.

If we watch we will see a feeling of happiness arise in us when we are able to simply become absorbed in what we are doing. When we know that we can be totally with our experience without being disturbed in any way, the most extraordinary feeling of profound relief and joy arises within us, and these are the conditions under which real happiness arises.


There is no end to what humans have done in the pursuit of pleasure over the centuries, yet only a handful of beings die truly happy. There are few who end their lives deeply content, at peace and accepting of everything that has been. So our real challenge is not to orchestrate our lives so that we get all the things we want, but to open up completely to what is already there and allow it to be what it is without conflict. All of our mental suffering is at some level a result of either our efforts to grasp and cling to things or our efforts to reject and deny them.

Mental suffering is to experience conflict through either grasping or rejecting our experience. Our suffering ends when our conflict ends; when we can accept things as they are. When we finally get to the place that we can be with our own suffering, the next thing that arises in us is a feeling of bliss. The profound relief that I am no longer in conflict with that, that 'I can be with this'. This is the cessation of suffering.

The cessation of suffering is not making sure that you always get what you want. Sometimes the very effort to do so is what brings us to suffering. There is no greater misery than the unbearable vexation that we experience when we have fought tooth and nail to make the world go our way, knowing that if we relax for a moment it may all fall apart. That is a great misery and vexation and certainly there is no peace to be had in such accomplishments.

So if you can find an inner stillness within you in the face of all things that come your way a tremendous relief comes upon you, and out of that comes an inner joy. In a state where you can truly be with yourself without needing to add anything to the ordinary moment, you become a happy human being. And in that moment you realise, 'My needs are few. I can step lightly on this world and not be too much of a nuisance to others any more'.

Now, what happens to us when we actually get to the place where we know that we can be with what is? What happens when we stop all that grasping and rejecting of our various experiences? When the simple things in life that we took for granted suddenly become the source of profound gratitude. When a quiet moment with nothing in it is a blessing, instead of something that we would shrink from and seek to avoid. Then we start to be close to experiencing the cessation of suffering.

Something happens to us that changes everything. What we thought we had to do to please ourself is gone. Instead of our life being this pot that we are desperately trying to fill at great expense to the world around us, we realise that our pot is something that is full to the brim. And now we can start to pour back in all kinds of directions the things that we have to give. It changes everything.

When we reach the place where we can be with each moment and everything in it completely, we realise, 'Wow, I'm alive! What could I possibly add to this that would make it more exquisite than it already is?' You cannot. We have tried to add everything we could possibly think of but nothing yet has left us ultimately satisfied.

In that middle ground between the extremes, resting quietly within yourself, you find your peace and you realise it did not stand upon or depend upon anything else at all coming your way. You just had to find it within yourself to really turn up and recognise it.

This is why we learn to meditate and practise on a cushion with nothing else to do and no distractions, just us, on our own, making peace with ourselves and finding our own happiness within. So do not reject what arises within you because it is what it is, whether you like it or not. Somewhere down the line there is a cause for it being there.

When we reflect back over our life and all the things we could not be with we realise that it was not these things that happened to us that were the cause of our suffering, it was the fact that we could not be with them, that we could not simply accept that it was what it was.

How does something that happened to us five, ten, twenty, thirty years ago possibly have the capacity to cause us suffering today? It does not. It has no capacity to cause us suffering. It is not causing us suffering. What is causing us suffering is how we continue to react to what we think happened to us, only that. We create our suffering in our mind, because we cannot be with the experiences that we have. They are not all going to be pleasant, but they are all going to pass. How wonderful is that?

There was the Buddha, starting out at the beginning of his life thinking that happiness was the consummation of all of his desires and the pinnacle of his dreams and finally getting everything he wanted. How exhausting that would have been even if he had succeeded in getting everything he wanted.

He realised that he did not have to cut everything off and reject everything and say, 'No, sensual pleasures, they are not to be tolerated!' He realised that you do not have to go off in search of anything. You just have to stop where you are right now and be completely with what is in front of you without being in conflict with it.

That is our challenge. That is actually why we learn to meditate. We sit there, cross-legged: it is uncomfortable; maybe we have not done it before; we are not used to paying attention for so long; we are not used to being that still; we are not used to not being able to do what we want, to check our phone, go and have a coffee or seek other distractions.

First of all overcoming our restlessness, overcoming our laziness, overcoming the feeling of, 'I can't be bothered to keep going', knocking off the rough edges of our mind until there is a willingness to do it. And out of that willingness to do it, we start to engage more completely in what we are doing. And as we engage more completely in what we are doing we become absorbed in it and in that moment we lose or leave behind this nonsense that is our I-making extravaganza.

Finally, and for the first time, we are free of this idea of ourself, the stories we tell ourselves about who we think we are, and all the effort we make to present ourselves to the world in a way that might be approved of. And instead of layering our experiences with this inordinately complex idea of ourself, we just get on with what we are doing. And in that moment, quite unexpectedly, not knowing where it came from, we find ourself feeling more relaxed, more peaceful, more settled, more contented, happier than we have felt in a very long time – doing nothing. And that changes everything.

So instead of asking, 'What's in it for me? What else should I be doing?' we might ask, 'Can I be with what is in front of me now and can I find a joy in it?' That is the real question we need to be asking ourselves.

Learning to meditate is learning to be happy just to be. Just being here is so extraordinary if we can pay full attention to it, and being able to be with ourself is such a relief. So learn to rest effortlessly and calmly within yourself in an ordinary moment and leave everything as it is. What a relief.

What he realised was that this suffering is not brought to an end through the pursuit of pleasure. The desire for pleasurable indulgences leaves us only with desire, to the point that when we fulfil our desires, we are left only with a sense of lacking something to desire. This desire chases its tail, it never ends and it is never satisfied. Its very nature is to need.

He realised that the chasing after sensual pleasures never satisfied itself and this could have raged on until he had consumed everything that was available to him, until nothing was left, and he knew he would never have been happy. He realised that it is not these pleasant or unpleasant experiences themselves that cause us suffering, although the experience of pain is an affliction. The real suffering is our inability to be with what is. He realised that it was clinging, that it was grasping, that it was trying to hold onto or reject an experience that is in the process of constant change, of constant arising and passing away – that that is the cause of our suffering.

He reflected, 'I never appreciated any of these extraordinary things that came my way because I always wanted more. What if I was to just appreciate the exquisite for what it is and allow things to pass away as is their nature, without clinging to them? Then these things would not have been the cause of any suffering in me. If while I was sick, full of fever and close to death I had realised that this is the momentary affliction of a body that is out of balance, and not rejected that experience, not worried about what was going to happen to me, fraught with fear and loathing, I would not have experienced a proliferation of suffering in my mind. What if I had just realised that this is what happens, that sickness is a part of life, but it does not last forever, that everything changes? If I had been with those experiences, both pleasurable and displeasurable, without grasping or rejecting them, they would not have caused me mental suffering.'

Burgs https://www.theartofmeditation.org
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