Comprehending Suffering
February 06, 2023

When the Buddha taught the four noble truths, he taught that one of them has a duty. The first noble truth, the truth of stress and suffering, is to be comprehended; the second, the cause of suffering, is to be abandoned; the third, the cessation of suffering, is to be realized; and the fourth, the path to the cessation of suffering, is to be developed.

Now, those duties are not totally independent of one another. The more you develop the path, the easier it’s going to be to comprehend suffering and to complete all the other duties. That’s because as you develop the path, and particularly as you work on concentration, you get to see what’s going on in the mind a lot more clearly. If you ask the right questions, which is what right view is all about, you’ll come to understand things that have been happening in your mind all along that you simply haven’t noticed or haven’t looked at in the right way. When you look at them in the right way, you can put an end to suffering.

And the fact that we’re developing the path gives us some insight into the truth of suffering in particular because we’re going to be engaged in what the Buddha calls five aggregates:

There’s form, which is your body sitting here right now.

There are feelings. You’ve got feelings in the body right now, and you’re trying to generate feelings of ease, feelings of well-being. It’s by trying to generate them that you understand them. You don’t simply watch them come and go. You’re trying to develop what the Buddha calls feelings not of the flesh. There’s the pain not of the flesh, which is a realization that there are people who have gained awakening but you haven’t gained awakening yet. So there’s work to be done. That’s a painful thought. You can’t just sit around and relax. But even those this is a painful thought, it’s that’s. It’s like the tension on a bow in a bow and arrow. If there’s no tension on the string, the arrow’s not going to go anywhere.

There’s also pleasure not of the flesh: the pleasure that comes when the breath is comfortable, and you can spread that comfortable sensation throughout the body.

Then there are perceptions. These are the labels the mind uses, which can be either images or words, saying this is this and that’s that. This looks like this, this looks like that. Here you’re going to apply perceptions to the breath. When the breath comes in, where does it come in? When it goes out, where does it go out? What’s happening as you breathe in? What’s happening as you breathe out? What’s a good perception to hold in mind so that you can get the mind to settle down?

You’re trying to develop right concentration through right mindfulness and right effort, and concentration is going to require a perception that you hold in mind continually. You want to hold in mind a perception that allows the breath to feel comfortable, because you’re trying to create those feelings of pleasure, feelings of ease. So think of the breath as a whole-body process: all the nerves, all the blood vessels are breathing together. Every little muscle, down to the tiny muscles inside the walls of the blood vessels, are all working together as you breathe in, as you breathe out. Wherever you feel any tension or blockage, just think of it dissolving away. If it won’t dissolve, think of the breath going around it, going through it.

The thinking you’re doing is not just perceptions. You’re going to be talking to yourself. That’s where fabrication comes in, which is the fourth aggregate. You’re directing your thoughts to the breath and you’re evaluating how it’s going. You evaluate the breath. You evaluate the state of your mind right now. Is it ready to settle down? Work with the breath for a while and see how it feels. If the mind refuses to settle down, maybe the problem is not with the breath, maybe it’s with the mind. This is where you may have to do a little detour. Think in ways that incline the mind to want to settle down.

If you’re carrying issues from the day about who said what to you and how you don’t like it, just think thoughts of goodwill. There’s no need to carry those narratives into the meditation right now. May that person be happy; may you be happy.

If you’re feeling discouraged, think about all those stories from the Theragatha and the Therigatha, of monks and nuns who were almost suicidal sometimes, so frustrated that their minds wouldn’t settle down, and yet they were able to come to their senses and get their minds to settle down and gain awakening. So even when things look bleak, they’re not always going to be bleak. Remind yourself of that. And remind yourself that every little chip you can take out of this wall of defilement is a chip in the right direction, so that the mind will be more confident that “Yes, this is something that can be done. It may take time, but it’s an important task, and it’s worth giving time to.” It’s not the kind of task where you say, “Oh, I only have so much time to give to this because I’ve got other responsibilities.” Those other responsibilities pale in comparison to the need to train the mind. This should come first.

So you learn how to think in ways that allow the mind to settle down. Then you go back to evaluating the breath. What kind of breath would feel really good right now? Satisfying. Gratifying. Which parts of the body seem to be starved for breath, thirsty for breath? Well, give them a good nourishing breath. Think of the breath going to those parts of the body until you find a part of the body that’s extremely sensitive and is very gratified when the breath feels good there. Focus there. Let that be your gauge for what kind of breathing would be best for the body right now. Then think of that sense of well-being spreading from that spot with no boundaries.

And, of course, you’re aware of doing all these things. That’s the fifth aggregate, which is consciousness.

So you’ve got all the aggregates right here. That’s an important step in learning how to comprehend suffering. As you develop concentration, you’re getting ready to comprehend suffering more and more. Because the Buddha didn’t say something useless like “Life is suffering,” or something bland and also useless like “There is suffering.”

Sometimes you hear people say, “Well, all you have to do is acknowledge the fact that suffering is there, and that’s what it means to comprehend suffering.” That’s not the case. The Buddha said suffering is the five clinging-aggregates, which means not that the aggregates are clinging, but the act of clinging to the aggregates. So when there’s pain, that’s a feeling, but that’s not necessarily the suffering that’s going on in the mind.

The suffering the Buddha’s talking about is the suffering that comes when you cling. And you maybe be clinging to your sense of the body. You may be clinging to a particular feeling. And to cling, you need to have certain perceptions and certain thoughts. So, a lot of times, the clinging comes down to perceptions and fabrications. And, of course, you may be clinging simply to the fact that you want to be aware of something, anything, so you grab at whatever you’ve got. You can either cling to things as they are, or cling to the idea of how you would like them to be. But it’s especially good to look into how you perceive things as they are.

Say there’s a pain in the body. How do you perceive that? How does your awareness relate to the pain? How does the pain relate to the body? We’ve been dealing with pain ever since we were little children—in fact, so little that we had no language at all when we first encountered pain. We knew we didn’t like it. Our present-day sense of how to deal with pain, to keep it from overcoming the body, can often date back to that pre-verbal time. So you’re going to have to ask some questions that are kind of pre-verbal to get at your pre-verbal assumptions. Is the pain the same thing as the body? And part of the mind, of course, will say, “No.” But there may be a part of the mind that says, “Yes,” which is what the problem is. You’ve got the body and the pain glommed together. So learn to see them as two separate things.

Then there’s your awareness. How do you perceive the relationship between your awareness and the pain? You have to remind yourself the pain is not aware of anything at all. It’s just the result of certain events in the body, events in the mind. But it’s not aware of anything. It has no intention.

So you try to ferret out your perceptions around the pain until you can see exactly what it is you’re clinging to. Especially when you’re trying to see what kind of perceptions you’re clinging to, propose different perceptions. If you have a sense of the pain as one solid block, say in your hip or in your knee, ask yourself, “Is it really all that solid?” This is where you start using the Buddha’s three perceptions. Is there some inconstancy to the pain? Does it go up? Does it go down? And if it does, what did the mind do when it went up or down? And how about the sense of being pained in the mind? Does that go up and down too? Well, yes, it certainly does. Why is that? Sometimes it may be because you paid attention someplace else. Sometimes, though, it may be because you had a perception in mind, and the perception happened to pass away. Before you pick it up again, you might notice: There’s a sense of ease that wasn’t there when the perception was in place.

What you’re trying to do here is to figure out which aggregates you’re clinging to, or which types of aggregates you’re clinging to. Are they perceptions? Are they thoughts? Are they feelings?

Then you can ask yourself, “Why would you want to cling to them?” This is where you begin to see the cause of the suffering. Again, you may have certain perceptions about your perceptions, or perceptions about your feelings. These things can have many layers, which is why comprehending suffering is not something you might do in just one hour of meditation. It takes time to ferret these things out.

It’s when you’ve seen precisely where you’re clinging that you can begin to understand, “Okay, exactly what kind of craving is driving that clinging?” Craving has a location, but it often lies to us about its location. It may tell us that we crave x, but we actually crave an idea about x, or we have something we’d like to see happen to x, to have x be something different from what it is. Unless you can pinpoint precisely what it is you’re clinging to, then you’re not going to see precisely where you’re craving. And when you don’t see precisely where you’re craving, you can talk about how craving is the cause for suffering but without knowing anything at all about what’s actually going on in your mind. You have to see the specifics. You have to see the details: this act of clinging; this act of craving. Once you can pinpoint the clinging, then you have a better idea of what kind of craving it is you’re dealing with, and that’s what you let go.

So these duties are all connected. It’s simply a question of learning what the duty entails. Comprehending suffering is not simply acknowledging, “Okay, there it is, there it is, that’s suffering.” Ask yourself, “Precisely, how is the mind suffering? And what acts of mind are you clinging to that keep the suffering going? And how can you see that they’re really not worth it?” That’s where the three perceptions come in.

I received a letter recently from someone who’s been sick for the past couple of weeks. She had gotten it into her head somehow that she shouldn’t be analysing things in terms of the three perceptions, but she should be analysing in terms of the four noble truths instead. Well, the four noble truths form the context for what we’re doing, but then within that context we bring in those three perceptions—inconstancy, stress, not-self—where they can be useful to help us see that the things we’re clinging to or craving are not worth it. Things are a certain way. We want them to be another way. Or the way they are right now may be suffering. As for the way we would like them to be: well, you get what you crave sometimes, and then there’s still going to be suffering. So you have to see that these things are not worth holding on to, because whatever way you want to analyse these things, it has to come down to seeing that they’re not worth clinging to, they’re not worth craving, either because they’re not under your control because they change, or because they’re stressful, or for any other reason. They’re just not worth the energy that goes into them. That’s when you let go. It’s a value judgement. You see that you’ve been holding on to something that’s not worth holding onto.

The image the Buddha gives is of a blind man who’s been given a piece of cloth. It’s a dirty old rag, but he’s told, “This is a nice white piece of cloth. Take good care of it. It looks really good on you.” So he’s very protective of it, takes good care of it, thinking he has a nice white cloth to wear. Then his friends and relatives take him to a doctor who can cure his blindness. He looks at the rag and says, “This is not what I thought it was.” He lets it go.

That’s what clinging comes down to. You’re clinging to something. You think it’s one thing, but it’s actually something else. You think you’re clinging to it because it’s going to be worth clinging to. But then you realize it’s ephemeral, there’s stress involved in it, it doesn’t lie in your control, and you have better options—that’s the other part of letting go. There are better options, better ways of finding happiness.

So, this is how you go about comprehending suffering, your duty with the first noble truth. But as you can see, it involves engaging the other duties as well.

This is the Buddha’s most basic teaching: the duties of the four noble truths. They tell us what to do. They give us guidance. It’s simply a matter of learning how to tease out precisely what those instructions mean for us right here, right now. A good first step is figuring out, “What are these five aggregates the Buddha’s talking about?” You get the mind into concentration and you’re going to see them in action, and you’re going to see how you learn to do them skilfully. The more skilfully you can do these aggregates—because they are actions, they’re not things—the more skilfully you can do them, the more you’re going to understand them. You don’t let go just because the books tell you to let go. You let go because you’ve made them as good as you can make them, and they lead you to a place where you realize there’s something even better when you totally let go.