When you first get into learning about Buddhism, it can be overwhelming. There seems to be a lot to know, including the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the three refuges, the five aggregates, the six sensory objects, the four components of karma, the ten non-virtuous and ten virtuous actions, the three poisons, the six realms, the four reminders, the four common preliminaries, the twelve branches of dependent origination, and…well, you get the idea. A tall order of bullet points and concepts, all with their own texts and commentaries.
Of course, this is to be expected. Buddhism is often put in the category of the major world religions, along with Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, and Islam. It has also been around for almost 2,000 years, so it has had many centuries and millions of followers to develop new theories and understanding.
Fortunately, we have the Buddha’s very own words to simplify it down for us. Many followers of Buddhism do not think of it as a religion at all. The Buddha did not spend a lot of time talking about the afterlife, presence or absence of God, if there is a creator to the Universe and what is right, or what is wrong. If we want to learn what the Buddha taught, we can turn to his own words:
“Know this, O Monks: Now, as formerly, I teach only of suffering, and the elimination of suffering.”
That’s it. Full stop. If you want to know what the Buddha taught, there it is: suffering and the end of suffering.
Don’t believe me? In a talk by the Buddhist monk Luangpor Pramote Pamojjo, he reiterated the exact thing. “We study the teachings so that we can free ourselves from suffering,” and followed it up soon after with “the highest goal in our practice is to free our mind from suffering, otherwise we are drowning in suffering for all time.”
Since the Buddha taught such a basic thing, he is often described not as a God or a even Saint, but as a physician. He diagnosed the human condition, identified its cause, and spent his life teaching the cure. In doing so, he did not ask his disciples to follow anything in blind faith. Rather, all the principles he taught were based on logic and reasoning, and he encouraged anyone following his teachings to see for themselves. What is the true cause of suffering, and what is the solution?
Now you may be wondering, what does suffering mean, and what drew the Buddha to his conclusions? For that we can investigate the life of this man and why he taught what he did.
The Prince who awakened
The story of the man who became the Buddha is well known. Born a prince by the name of Siddartha Gautama, he spend the first 27 years of his life in luxury inside the palace walls. Wanting to see more of the town, he asked for a tour. All the palace attendees organized the perfect parade route through the town square, and put only the best, most beautiful townspeople along the parade route.
However during the procession, the Buddha felt deep down he wasn’t seeing the real thing, so he snuck out of his chariot and went down an alleyway. In this alleyway, he met three people that would change his life forever: a sick person, an old person, and a dead person. This shocked the young prince, as a sudden realization went over him. Every single human being suffers from sickness and death, and if they live long enough, old age. No amount of wealth will protect you from it, and there is no avoiding these realities. This meant he, too, would experience this suffering.
Upon such a realization, the Buddha left his palace, his wife, and son to embark on the path of freeing himself from this suffering. He soon became a practicing ascetic, completely renouncing the material pleasures of life. However, the path of complete renunciation did not work out for him either, as embracing suffering seemed just as bad as running from it. One night, he sat down underneath the Bodhi tree and meditated. During that night, as the legend goes, he “awoke” to the truth of suffering, which in turn showed him the true nature of reality and our role in it. Becoming “awakened,” Siddartha was then referred to as the Buddha, meaning ‘awakened one’.
The Buddha’s realization freed himself from the trials and tribulations of this world, and he spent the rest of his life giving the teachings of his realization: suffering, and the end of suffering.
Dukkha
What did the Buddha mean by suffering? This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts to his teaching, and one of the biggest blocks to people exploring the teachings. After all, it seems pessimistic to focus on suffering. But understanding suffering is only step one. Buddhism ends up being a very optimistic religion that promises an end to one’s suffering and the capacity to lead a happy, peaceful life.
Again, the Buddha was a physician. Just as a doctor will tell you what disease you have, what causes it, if there is a cure, and what the treatment is, that is exactly what the Buddha did. He said that the human life contains suffering. There is a cause to the suffering, suffering can end, and there is a path to free oneself from that suffering. These are the four Noble truths: suffering, cause, end, path. Thousands of books and commentaries have been written on the profundity of this finding because getting to the nature of suffering tells us more about ourselves and about life than anything else.
If I were to use more of the Buddha’s words, I would say that he taught “dukkha, and the end of dukkha.” Dukkha is most often translated as suffering, but there are other interpretations for what this word means. I prefer referring to it as “chronic dissatisfaction.” Just like Mick Jagger sang, “I can’t get no satisfaction,” the human experience is full of unhappiness and unease. Suffering isn’t just dying of cancer and getting Alzheimer’s when we get old. As soon as we wake up in the morning, we are suffering. Our alarm didn’t go off and we are late to work. There is an accident on the highway, so traffic delays us even more. We spill coffee on our new pants getting out of the car and go into work to find our boss already yelling at us. Our computer crashes taking our work with it, and our lunch order is wrong. I could go on, but you get the idea.
The Buddha taught that suffering is an inextricable aspect of life, and we make doomed attempts to avoid it. This teaching is just as relevant 2,000 years ago as it is today.
So, if we are all suffering, what is the cause, and what is the solution?
The Cause of Dukkha
I have always found cold symptoms to be quite interesting. When a small, microscopic virus has invaded our upper respiratory tract, we don’t quite experience it that way. Instead, we notice the fatigue, the cough, the sore throat. In the same way, our suffering is a symptom. It is a consequence, and in order to eliminate the consequence, you must know the cause.
This is the Buddha’s most important insight because it can be very easy to blame the external world for our problems. Whether it’s war, famine, or an oppressive government, the cause of our suffering definitely seems to be the world that we live in.
However, the Buddha said no, the cause is not external, it is internal. The cause is our own minds. Suffering is a psychological issue: the issue being that we are always wanting things to be different. It is the desiring mind. If we had no desires, we would not suffer.
Desiring manifests in two ways: craving and aversion. Craving is wanting something, aversion is not wanting something, which is basically same as wanting the opposite. The Buddhist Psychologist Mark Epstein put it this way:
Craving is at the root of suffering, the Buddha taught, and desires are endless. Indulging them keeps us in their grip and traps us in a never-ending cycle of brief satisfactions followed by the relentless pursuit of more.
In their extreme forms, craving and aversion turn into greed and hatred, greed for the things in life we want, and hatred at anything and anybody standing in the way.
We could go further into the root of this desire and why we are never satisfied with what we have (hint: it has a lot to do with impermanence), but even the Buddha did not expound on this point too much: he said it was a useless mental exercise. He likened it to being shot by an arrow that is currently in your leg. You can spend a lot of time thinking about who shot the arrow, the trajectory that made it hit, what the arrow is made of, and more. You could even wallow in self-pity and all the reasons you should not have been shot by the arrow. Or you can remove the arrow and tend to the wound.
That is exactly what the Buddha says to do. So, what does removing the arrow look like, what is the end of suffering?
The End of Dukkha
Hopefully by now you see the simplicity and elegance of the Buddha’s teaching. Again, for the end to our suffering, we have the beautiful advice from the Buddha himself,
“Nothing whatsoever should be grasped at or clung to.”
There it is. Again, so simple. Clear as day. All you need to do to free yourself from suffering is let go. Hence, the equation: pain times resistance equals suffering. If you stop resisting, both sides of the equation turn to zero. Your suffering turns to zero.
Nothing? Nothing at all? That’s correct. Not your thoughts, opinions, judgements, or attachments. In fact, not even you at all. “Nothing to cling to as I, me, or mine” was the Buddha’s way of encouraging us to drop out of our selfishness and thinking the entire universe should go exactly the way that we want it to. This is why the Buddhists are such a fan of non-words: nonjudgment, non-harming, non-striving. We are not clinging to any extremes or concepts in life.
Of course, with these simple ideas, there is so much more to explore and unpack. No doubt these very simple teachings have brought up a lot in you to think about and mull upon. If you want the absolute essence of what the Buddha taught, it is quite simple: Dukkha, and the end of dukkha.
