Podcast

Taking happiness and suffering on the path (part 4)
by Lama Tsering Everest

So, ego is all there, self is there trying to be real. I need approval, I don’t want disapproval, I need to be recognized, not be overlooked; I mean how do you feel if somebody doesn’t say thank you; you greet them and they just walk by like you are dead meat; this is the sensation of self; self is wrapped up there. And then what you do to get approval, to avoid disapproval, the self is all wrapped up there; I am this and I am that, because I am going to be, my mother is going to approve of me, my boss, my peers. And it’s not only approval that we use, praise we use, if someone would just praise me, can’t you like give me some praise, I did a good job, why don’t you give me the credit for that? If someone steals our credit, it’s absolutely unacceptable; if someone steals the credit and takes it, they don’t really deserve it, you really did it and they really worm in on the credit, this is absolutely not acceptable.

So we want approval, we want praise, we don’t want disapproval and we don’t want criticism; even our self, criticism, we do most things to avoid it although it gets worse and worse. And then there is gain, if I could just have more I would be real, and if I loose anything this means I am less valid, less real, less important, less zeros and it’s a real crisis. So gain and loss is another way that ego is wrapped up in me and mine; and we suffer loss, we can’t bear it when we loose something, if somebody takes something, even we don’t like it very much, if somebody takes it away from us it’s just not acceptable. And then there is happy and sad; I am really invested in being happy because I am really happy I am real, and I won’t and don’t like to be sad. So we have…(4:50)

This is self, self operates with these sensations, praise, criticism, recognition, lack of recognition, gain and loss, happy, sad, and we are busy, we are busy for “I” and you are not the only one; everybody is busy for “I” and it isn’t absolutely true but it causes all kinds of suffering because you can’t reify it and you can’t keep anything. You can’t make it true, it always slips away.
And so Lord Buddha said: “Life is suffering” and he didn’t point that out because he just was, you know, sadistic, but he knew that if you could face that and realize that, and this is where I think we are as a culture; we know that it is suffering, we have always known but we thought that we could distract ourselves; we have always thought we didn’t have enough, so then we spent centuries getting more; we finally got more and then we spent some time entertaining our self with the stuff we have got; and then we couldn’t keep it very long but we kept thinking another thing would do it, something else would do it, something else could make me happy. So we hoped and now the hopes are starting to crack; we can entertain ourselves for short periods of time, we can distract ourselves from suffering but still suffering just walks in the door. So it seems to me, right here, if we understand and face the fact that it is true, this is suffering; but why? You have to ask why; if you just think, ok, this is suffering and that’s it, you are just going to be depressed and of course, why not? That would be intelligent, better to medicate.

But what Buddha said is yes, it is, it’s terrible, but there is a reason and it is because of the way the mind is working, so change your mind. Now we know that, that’s why we want to medicate; we don’t know how to really change our mind so we just want to change it so that we can feel better about the miserable way it all is. And that is not going to work, if you do that you don’t have the opportunity of actually breaking through; the actual breakthrough to the realization of the true nature of your mind comes by understanding something is wrong here, this is not working right; otherwise you are just going to keep being invested in it and it’s going to spend your life and you are going to die; you are going to die anyway, but you are going to die with distraction and false hope and filling the blank, happiness again and again and again and your time is going to be wasted because as human beings you have an opportunity where you could realize the true nature of the mind; your intellect, your intelligence is enough that you could look at what your mind is doing, you could use your mind to look at your mind, to actually let go of it and experience what is greater than your dividing mind.

This is your opportunity as humans; the human potential is enlightenment; but then if you keep filling in the blank, then you just loose your chance because you die. But here, in this body, if you give so much power to suffering that you can’t let go with it, and you are just compulsive interactive-reactive with suffering, your whole life will pass; if you are just so preoccupied with happiness, active, reactive, hunting, finding, again, loosing some, finding some more again, interactive with happiness, your compulsion for happiness, then your life is going to go like that and you die.
What Buddha is pointing out is that life is suffering, so ok, ask why and then check your mind, train your mind; the mistake of the mind is self-absorption; we are so self-absorbed, we are completely self-absorbed; me, my, mine, where I am going, what I am being, who I am going to be, what I can’t be, what I can’t have, you know, we don’t drop it for a minute. Do they love me? We are completely, pathologically self-absorbed and self is not absolutely true, so what are our options? We are going to be depressed and eventually, we panic.

So what Buddha is suggesting is to think of others as more important than you. Interesting thought… Well, we do it with our kids, sometimes we don’t on a bad day; but generally we love our kids. Love, joy, equanimity, compassion, these are called the four immeasurable qualities. Equanimity means really understanding that just like you, everybody wants to be happy and just like you, nobody wants to be miserable and suffering and lonely and afraid and powerless. And compassion means that you understand that they are going to experience suffering, and that you would do whatever you could do to reduce the suffering of others; not just the people you prefer, but really anyone, everyone. And love means that not only would you reduce their suffering, but you would have them be happy. And joy is the feeling of when it is accomplished; that the suffering is gone and the happiness is accomplished for all beings.

So now, as we move in our life, you are going to have suffering, I don’t have to be a prophet to tell you that; we all have karma, we have all behaved in selfish ways towards others, we have all prioritized our self and our own over others, and we have hurt and harmed others with our thoughts, our words and our actions not only in this life, but just if you think about this life, plenty of times. And what Lord Buddha is saying is that every life is valuable; I mean, you know that your life is valuable, but not only your life and not only human life; every life is valuable specially to the one who has it, that’s their life; but I am so important that it doesn’t matter if I take their life; but it does matter. This is why Lord Buddha said, if you don’t want to suffer, don’t hurt anybody, don’t hurt them, it’s not worth it to hurt them for any reason; it’s not worth it to hurt them because that comes right back on your head. You may think it is justifiable and we are so fast; we already did it, we already said it, but every thought, every word, every action produces karma, positive, negative or neutral; so it comes back.

So you will have suffering and it is really nobody else’s fault; so as long as you have suffering and you know that you have suffering and it is nobody else’s fault, think about the other ones: Uau, I had no idea that they felt like this, I had no idea. You really know what it is like to suffer, but you are not the only one; every being feels that and worse than that. So don’t divide and separate yourself and think: “Oh, I am so unique, I am so different.” Synthesize and understand that you are not alone; this is the way every being feels; they feel lonely, afraid, they feel hopeful and disappointed, they feel sickness and aging and death, they feel birth and it feels true, all of it. But you know from your own experience; that’s what is authentic, so think about them. I wish they didn’t suffer, now that I know how they feel, I really wish they didn’t suffer. This is so different than: Oh, I am suffering, poor me and now I am suffering more, poor me and now I am noticing how bad I am suffering, really, poor, poor me. It’s a different way to look, it’s a different way to use your mind and it is going to take a really big effort because we are so self-absorbed. If it is too hot, if it is too cold, if it’s too loud, if it’s too quite, if we miss lunch by an hour we can’t be pleasant, we are very fragile.

So rather than just be using the suffering for another reason to be self-absorbed, for another reason to blame, for another reason to cultivate resentment and upset and anger and misery; instead of using that moment for your own self-interest and misery, use that moment to understand the suffering of others and cultivate a quality which is called compassion; this changes your mind. Your suffering is your life, that is your path, you don’t get some other go live in a cave thing; your life is your path; it’s your life that needs to turn into the qualities that cause you to realize the true nature of reality; your story. With the niggle-naggle issues, look, look at your day, what is your big complaint for today? Those people want to be happy, they don’t want to be miserable and what are their chances? They are not any better chances than you, what are your chances? You don’t have a chance; even if you get it, you will loose it.

This is depressing, but it’s really the cause of compassion. Compassion is the wish that the suffering of beings could be reduced, that it could be eliminated; and we feel that way for a few people; we feel that way for our kids, we feel that way for our friends, we really feel that way for somebody we read in the newspaper, a story about a kid who really got a bad burn, we really, really feel like, so sad, so sad, so tragic, I really wish that didn’t happen to him; but we have to do that with everything and everyone; there is nobody that isn’t worthy of your compassion, even if they are the king of the world, it’s impermanent.

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