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There's no way around it. Life can be hard at times. None of us are strangers to suffering, stress, unease, anguish, and dissatisfaction. The word the Buddha used to describe this experience is dukkha. The Buddha didn't say that life is only dukkha. The written record of his oral teachings are filled of stories of the Buddha and his followers enjoying themselves. He focused on dukkha in his teaching because we tend to turn away from this truth, and he knew that the way to alleviate dukkha was to look it squarely in the eye and get to know it well.
When I first encountered the Buddha's teaching on dukkha, instead of feeling disheartened, I felt relieved. At last, here was an honest and straightforward description of how I felt at some point every day of my life. In addition to feeling relieved, I immediately felt a profound connection to others. The circumstances of our lives may lead to slightly different experiences of dukkha, but beneath the surface, we know what others' stress and dissatisfaction feels like because we experience it ourselves.
Dukkha is often translated into English as "suffering." Suffering is an aspect of dukkha, but it's inadequate to explain this central Buddhist concept. Some Buddhist scholars say we should stop trying to translate dukkha and just let this complex word enter, as is, into the cultural stream in the West.
I describe dukkha the dissatisfaction we feel with the circumstances of our lives. For me, that encompasses the many words that are used to describe it: suffering, stress, unease, anguish. Aren't you dissatisfied with your life in some ways? Your dissatisfaction may be unease over the "big questions" (Does my life have meaning? What does climate change mean for the future of the planet?). It may be tied to the stresses of everyday life (tension in a relationship, difficulty on the job). It may be due to mundane discomforts and irritations (the dog barking next door, the lost sock in the dryer). Reflect on your day-to-day life. Notice how there is an ongoing effort (subtle or intense) to adjust its circumstances to be more to your liking.
There's a tendency to deny the presence of this dissatisfaction with what I call an "if only" mentality: "If only I had the latest smart phone, I'd never want another electronic device"; "If only my friend would call, I'll never want anything from her again"; "If only I weren't sick (I suffer from chronic illness), I'd be happy from now on."
Who would I be kidding? If all my "if only's" came to pass, I'd soon find they didn't bring lasting satisfaction and happiness. A smart phone is no fun without all those cool apps. I doubt one phone call from my friend would lead me to give up all expectations about her. And, although I'd be glad not to be sick, my life would still have its share of stresses and suffering.
The good news from the Buddha is that we can take control of our lives by working with our minds to cultivate the wisdom it takes to alleviate dukkha—this dissatisfaction with the circumstances of our lives. Notice I said "by working with our minds." We were born into bodies and they get injured, sick, and old. The Buddha endured great bodily pain at times, but he did so without suffering in the mind. I think of the Buddha as a scientist of the mind. Indeed, the Dalai Lama called the Buddha a great psychologist, saying that he had a keen understanding of how the mind works.
The first step in alleviating dukkha is to understand its source. The Buddha identified its source as our self-focused desire to get our way, whether it be (1) to get something—a material thing (that smart phone), a particular sensory experience (the taste of ice cream), an identity (acclaimed author); or (2) to get rid of something—an illness, the outside temperature being too hot, the politician we don't like. The Buddha didn't mince words when he told his monks: "Dukkha is not getting what you want and getting what you don't want."
The second step in alleviating dukkha—our dissatisfaction—is to bring it and its source—our desire to have life conform to our liking—-into mindful awareness. This gives us the opportunity to make a choice. One choice is to persist in our fruitless desire to change those circumstances in our life over which we have little or no control (our inability to afford those smart phone apps, the behavior of a friend, the state of our health). The result of making this choice is an intensification of dukkha.
The second choice is to acknowledge, without judgment or blame, that this desire intensifies our dukkha, and then to just let the desire be. To let it be, we mindfully observe that it has arisen, but we don't feed it with our thoughts or by acting upon it. We also don't push it away in aversion. Feeding it or trying to push it away both only serve to strengthen it. Instead, we watch it arise and we watch it pass. Like all mental states, desire is subject to the law of impermanence and so, with time, will pass out of our minds.
Every day, I work on bringing into awareness the self-focused desire that underlies each feeling of dissatisfaction in my life. Then I try to make the conscious choice to accept what I cannot change and to be happy with my life as it is. I'm inspired in this practice by a quotation from the Buddha in which he said that the mind is as soft and pliant as a balsam tree. This means that change is possible—in this context, changing our knee-jerk response to desire.
Don't confuse accepting life as it is with indifference or resignation. I haven't given up looking for treatments that might improve my health. And occasionally the thought still arises: "If only I weren't sick, I'd be happy from now on."
But I have given up the constant craving for my life to be different than it is. When I'm able to open my heart and mind to how my life is right now, sickness included, I feel content and at peace. It's a taste of the freedom that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was referring to when he said: "I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind."
© 2011 Toni Bernhard. Thank you for reading my work. I'm the author of three books:
How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide (2015)
How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow (2013)
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You might also like "When Desire Becomes Obsessively Tied to Your Happiness."
