Dukkha, or some ways in which we make life hard for ourselves - intro

This is the first of six weeks looking at Dukkha from various angles.

So for these six weeks we are looking at Dukkha, or some ways in which we make life hard for ourselves. The word Dukkha is from 2500 years of Buddhist tradition and it can be translated as unsatisfactoriness or suffering. The image (from olden days) is of a chariot whose wheels are out of true. Every time the wheel goes round, you get a jog. Those jogs are like the way life jolts us – we find ourselves surprized, or annoyed, or angry or anxious, restless, wanting food or entertainment, or generally not completely content. Life doesn’t give us a smooth ride.

Let’s consider for a moment how we operate in the world. The brain gets input – colours & shapes, sounds & smells & taste & touch – and that is all - from that it builds up the whole world. It invents 3D and it fills it with solid objects, to make sense of the colours & shapes, and to stop us from bumping into things. It keeps those objects in mind even when we’re not looking at them – so there is a notion of permanence, as well as of solidity.

We interact with things and some things, such as other people, interact back. We learn language and can then assimilate and live by other peoples’ ideas of how the world works, we don’t have to work it all out from first principles.

A basic pattern is ‘is this thing useful or capable of being useful? Is it a threat or capable of being a threat? If neither, it is not interesting’. People often come into both the useful and threat categories. Also, the brain really likes predictability – in trying to get a handle on reality, the best way it can tell whether it is on the right track is whether it can predict accurately what is going to happen. So unpredictability is disturbing and predictability is reassuring and comforting.

So there we have some basic brain patterns; taking things as solid, taking things as permanent, taking things as being the way we expect and being disturbed when they are not; relating to things and people through what we want or what we fear. The brain is incredibly sophisticated, but its rules about reality are sometimes wrong, always too simple, and sometimes lead us to make life harder for ourselves than it needs to be. When the brain gets it wrong is when we get one of those jolts of reality – as in that image of the ill-fitting chariot wheel. And then we can fight what happens.

As an example, suppose I fall off my bike. As well as me on the ground, there may be other things going on – stories I tell myself – for instance berating myself, worry about how badly I’m hurt, fear about cycling off again. Those are understandable, but they are not the same as the original cause, they are add-ons. They are sometimes called ‘the second arrow’. The first arrow is the thing that happens, and the second arrow is the difficulties we make up around it – sometimes they cause a lot more suffering than the first arrow (though not always).

This relates directly to mindfulness – a lot of what we are trying to do is to stay with the original sensation or thought or whatever, the original jolt, without shying away from it, and without adding extra on top.

Suppose I’m able to keep calm, get back on my bike and continue the journey – generally deal with the situation without fighting it – then I am likely to suffer a lot less. I can receive the first arrow without adding a second arrow on top.

In these six weeks we’ll look at some ways in which we make second arrows. We’ll particularly look at some ways in which our brains build up the picture of reality – how they create meaning. So next week we’ll look at interpretation, the following week at expectations and after that at how we act. Then we’ll have a week looking at how the mind likes fixing things and thinking in black-and-white terms, and finally a wrap-up week. At least that’s how I’m envisaging these six weeks at the moment.

[Now we’ll have a reflection, and from that we’ll move straight into a meditation. I’ll talk you through. OK?]

Reflection

For the reflection, we need something recent that happened that felt in some way unpleasant / suffering / dukkha – something where there was it felt like we got a jolt from life. Everyone thought of something? OK.

Closing the eyes, feeling the bum on the seat, the feet on the floor. Feeling that contact and solidity. Perhaps taking a couple of deep breaths and then letting the breath settle into an even rhythm. Tuning into the sensations of breathing. They are always there as an anchor if the thoughts get too scattered or go out of control.

Now bringing to mind the unpleasant thing. Trying to recall separately the immediate effect of the thing itself, and any mental reactions to it. Can these be separated out from each other? Is it possible to see how much of the situation’s effect came from the original cause, and how much from the mental reactions? Were the mental reactions helpful or unhelpful? Holding this exploration lightly, and with kindness – we may get a glimpse of how crazy the mental habits sometimes are.

<give a little time> Keeping awareness of the breath, and letting it anchor the reflection

<a little more time> Now letting the reflection dissolve, and coming into meditation.