Suffering

Suffering is mainly associated with physical pain, but what I am dealing with here is the mental suffering we endure.

Mental suffering is the problems we have throughout our lives, whether it be anger, lust, envy or greed. This mental suffering permeates our entire being, which reflect onto daily life, and compound the original suffering. It is a vicious circle that just keeps spinning.

We can deal with this suffering, however, it is a difficult path to walk. We have had these problems since birth and are engraved into our being. Eradicating those many years of conditioning can be a long and arduous journey. But if we remember that what has been created, can be uncreated, we can stay focused on the task at hand.

Western psychology looks into our being to discover our problems and then applies a treatment. Buddha recommends that we look into ourselves to discover the problems and apply his teachings to eradicate our suffering. Western psychology believes that our suffering is individual, whereas Buddha discovered that our suffering is universally common. The only difference between us, is not the suffering, but the degree to which we suffer.

If you believe that we have individual problems, then you are deluding yourself. When we look within ourselves and explore our entirety with focused attention, we quickly learn that our problems are all based on the same things. No one is different when it comes to why we suffer, again, the only difference is the degree to which we suffer.

Desire and ignorance are the causes of our suffering.  Neither can bring comfort to our lives, but only bring suffering. The desire to have something is fraught with danger. A teacher of mine once asked, "What do want the most?" "Money, of course", I shot back. He said that if I have money and not happy, then getting more of it is not going to help! If we think we are not happy and don't have enough money, then how is getting more money going to solve the problem?

Ignorance stems from our lack of understanding about how things are. The lack of understanding the truth about the world. We are ignorant of what effect our behaviour will have on everything around us and ourselves. Ignorance causes us to suffer greatly throughout our lives. The only way we can see the real truth is by looking within ourselves. Single-pointed meditation is our salvation to removing desire and ignorance. Desiree and Ignorance are created conditions, and as I said before, created conditions can be uncreated.

Don't think that desire and ignorance can be removed overnight. But by chipping away at the walls of craving and ignorance you will slowly, but surely, reveal the truth about they way things really are, in glaring detail. This is our goal in removing suffering.