New Dharma Talks
The Second Noble Truth: the Cause of Suffering
Updated 07 April 2004
# 6
The Second Noble Truth:
the Cause of Suffering
Last week I started talking about the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path (the eight principles of enlightened living), looking into Buddhism in an American way from the ground up. The First Noble Truth or fact of life being dukkha, dissatisfactoriness — that all conditioned things are just a little off the mark, a little bit unreliable and ultimately dissatisfying. Etymologically speaking, dukkha means hard to bear, off the mark, hollow. The outcome of that means that the more we are invested in those created things, the more we suffer. Therefore, the first fact of life is sometimes called suffering, but I find that a slightly pessimistic interpretation. Personally, I think the message of the Dharma is a lot more optimistic than that.
These four facts of life are meant to be known, understood, and realized, seen as they are. Knowing the bare fact that things are dissatisfying won’t free us from dissatisfaction. The crucial part is knowing the Second Noble Truth, which is the cause of that dissatisfaction — not the things themselves, since the things themselves don’t suffer; it is we who suffer. The cause of that suffering is clinging, attachment, greed, desire, resistance, fixation — whatever you want to call it. It is often called craving. The word literally is tanha in Pali (samudaya in Sanskrit), which suggests thirst. Because we crave, continually desire and thirst for various experiences and things, and because created things are never ultimately satisfying, we suffer. That’s where the chain of suffering can be addressed: whether or not we cling to things and crave for experience. It’s not that we have to get rid of the things themselves. Things are not the problem. It is the attachment, the identification with things that causes suffering. Tilopa wrote, “It is not outer objects which entangle us. It is inner clinging which entangles us.”
This clinging takes many different forms, as we all know. We might well examine in our own lives what forms this attachment takes, but traditionally it is laid out as taking three different aspects: One is craving for pleasurable experiences, what we want. Second is craving to get rid of what we don’t want. This is also a desire, of course (although in the form of aversion). This is interesting, because here we see how attachment (or desire) and aversion (or anger, aggression) are actually the very same movement, a craving for something other than what is.
The third aspect is also very interesting as we go a little deeper into it: Craving or desire to become something or someone, that is, egotism itself. It fuels the whole process of rebirth, of wanting something and becoming that. So there is a lot of dissatisfaction in that, since whatever we can become, however we can seem, whatever we get or achieve, doesn’t last forever; yet we exhaust ourselves and absorb ourselves in getting it; we are invested in it and identify with it. That’s why clinging or attachment can also be called identification. If we identify with things — if we identify with our body, if we identify with our mind, if we identify with our self-concept — since they are not ultimately permanent or satisfying, it is very trying. We never quite get what we need out of this incessant clinging and demanding. It’s like drinking salt water, which cannot alleviate our thirst, but just makes us even more thirsty.
Tanha is thirst: thirsting for pleasure, thirsting to be rid of pain, and thirsting to be or become something or someone. Like drinking salt water, tanha never alleviates our inner thirst. The more we drink, the thirstier we become, ultimately to die of thirst. So in Buddha’s analysis of suffering, and its cause and its end — the Third Truth — and the path to the end of that suffering — the Fourth Truth — it is very clear that here is where the chain can get cut: by looking into what we cling to, what we crave, what we demand, what we identify with, and what we get out of that attachment. Let’s explore and see for ourselves whether we are really getting what we want out of it, or not. That could be quite revealing.
I think if we ask ourselves honestly, we might be surprised to see how deep this goes. How hard it is to really know how addicted and conditioned we are! Can we acknowledge how ill at ease, how dis-eased we actually are? What is this incessant irritation gnawing at us? That is why we are always gnawing — sort of like Pac Man gobbling — always gnawing at things, always seeking, always shopping and questing and consuming, because this dissatisfaction is in us, gnawing at us like a hungry ghost within our psyche. This incessant gnawing is the truth of dukkha. Maybe that’s a good translation of dukkha: gnawing dissatisfaction. The cause of it is this craving, this thirst for pleasure, this desire to avoid pain, and longing to be or become someone or something.
That blind drive, that conditioning, perpetuates itself and proliferates into all of our activities: always trying to make something happen, become something or someone, get something, get rid of something. It’s endless, isn’t it? The entire treadmill of conditioning under which we are staggering most of the time. Staggering or jogging, whatever we do — like gerbils spinning the wheel in their gerbil-cage. Marathoning, walking slow motion, meditating, whatever — still we are on the treadmill trying to get somewhere, to become and to be something. Even idealizing the Buddha and the way to Buddhahood is another treadmill when looked at that way — a great effort to be or become Buddha. Yet in terms of trying to be or become something, that should probably be one of the last ones to go! We can raise our sights a little bit, but still it is the treadmill of becoming; there is desire or craving there. There is a lot of suffering in that.
Therefore, we find the Dharma teaching is about inner peace, expressing a knowledge that everything is available within the natural being, our spiritual ground, the Buddha-nature — as it says in the Dzogchen teachings. This message, this truth is so liberating. We don’t have to just change our desires over to “now we want to become Buddha” and spend infinite lifetimes craving for something different called “Buddha” and trying to reach the so-called other shore — which seems never here, always somewhere else — that place called Nirvana. That’s just more becoming and craving to become something different. How to become just what we are? That is the conundrum, the koan of spiritual life.
When we look with the Dharma-eye of spiritual practice, we see that if we settle back into the beingness of Buddha, which we participate in even now, we can experience and delight in, celebrate and affirm, this beingness of Buddha. Ultimately, peace is within. We can see through this incessant chain of craving and clinging, of wanting and not wanting, the multifarious afflictions of this thirst that brings so much dissatisfaction and pain and, even worse, creates suffering in the world and in ourselves. We can really ease back and reconnect with the component of being, rather than being lost so much in doing, achieving, and becoming and staying disconnected from being. We can ease back and experience a little more balance with the totally complete and innate being-component, in which there is nothing missing and we can just be as we are. From that everything can spontaneously proceed. Then all the doings, all the achievements, and so on, take on an entirely different meaning. They become the art of living instead of the drudgery of reactivity and conditioning; creative and proactive rather than reactive.
If we can step off the treadmill of conditioning — cease staggering forward under the momentum of our conditioning — with a big outbreath, a Dzogchen sky-breath, we might find that in truth nothing is missing in that exact moment. As all the mystics say — though it still remains for us to confirm — nothing is missing and nothing is in excess. We don’t have to try to become Buddha, desiring something higher, trying to get rid of something lesser, while striving blindly to become. We can afford to actually be as we are, since we already are, anyway. It is not so far. That’s why the Dzogchen teachings talk about the ground or basis, and the fruit or result. It is really a rainbow bridge. The ground and the result are not far at all, so the path joining them isn’t very long. It is much more a matter of recognizing who and what we are than of desiring something else, for that thirst continuously perpetuates our pain.
Therefore, I feel that if we really look into the most basic teaching of the Dharma — suffering or dissatisfaction, and its real cause — we might actually find, even here in our own simple, boring old sitting practice, the panacea, the antidote, the ultimate answer to those questions that all of the 84,000 Dharma teachings are built upon. We don’t even have to study them, thank God! We can actually practice them in essence and realize their essence, even right here, even without using the word Buddhism, without converting to anything, without believing any dogma or received teachings, but directly through our own personal experience. We can cut through the tangled knot of conditioning, of becoming, of craving, of clinging, of aversion, reconnecting deeply and rediscovering our pure beingness in whatever form it takes. If we really look in our daily lives and examine how much this tanha, this thirst, drives us, I think we would be amazed at how little peace we have, how we are always plugged in, driven, compulsive, dependent, and ill at ease in ourselves. We are often plugged in through every sense: ear plugs, nose plugs, something in the mouth, watching something, listening, feeling, the seat vibrating while we’re watching television and talking on the phone with the radio or stereo as background music. Whatever we can get, we try to experience, rubbing our feet on the foot roller while the beer rumbles in our stomachs with the TV on, and so on. We can’t just be, without being a little high, and on and on and on. You know how it is. None of us are an exception.
All this stimulation and incessant searching for sensual gratification is like drinking salt water. The more we drink, the more we seem to need and want. I think this enlightened vision that the Buddha offers us to inquire into is something else entirely. It is very profound: What is bugging us? It seems like everything bugs us. Dukkha. How come nothing doesn’t bug us, really, in the ultimate analysis? Everything is off the mark. What is the cause of that? It’s this clinging to things; craving for something; holding onto that which dissipates, which falls apart, which is impermanent and ungovernable; identifying with things that are not true, illusions like our self-concept, which is also just a fleeting, hollow fabrication. We resist; we are stuck with our self-image, our ego, invested in our time-worn persona and personal act, which severely conditions the limits we place on our own possibilities. You might think your name is Allison and you probably have some other concepts, some delusions — like that you’re a woman, you’re American, and so on — but are you just that? Are you not also Buddha, a goddess, a global citizen, male/female energy? As long as you think you are just Allison, a graduate student who has no power over what you do, you limit your true possibilities.
Take Mother Teresa, for example. She is four and a half feet tall and comes from Albania. She is a female nun in the Roman Catholic order. Where did she get the idea that she could go and save the world, that she could transform Calcutta and take on all of India? She just reinvented herself instead of being a disempowered, neglected nun in Albania. She blossomed. She had a different self-concept, or maybe she had less self-concept; something else flowed through her and she became something completely different, like the Dalai Lama. Nobody found Mother Teresa when she was born and said “you should work to save the world.” She reinvented herself. She took on that mantle, taking on all the poor street people in Calcutta. She didn’t have much of anything to work with. She didn’t have the Rockefeller Foundation behind her. She just went to Calcutta and started doing it. Her heart provided enough to get her going on such a remarkable way.
The point I want to make here is that your image is totally a hoax. Whether Mother Teresa’s is or is not really doesn’t matter, but what about yours, and mine too? Totally a hoax. But, of course, one has to function, so one has some sort of mask to present to the world, but one doesn’t have to be totally invested in it, identified with it, stuck with it, and deceived by the mask one has assumed. That’s the point of freedom. You don’t have to be stuck with it. We all inherited our genetic makeup from our parents, but that doesn’t mean we have to be particularly stuck with that or overly identify with it. Maybe our parents weren’t very healthy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be healthy. When we take responsibility for ourselves — which is an important part of growing up, both physically and spiritually — we can actually develop better character, more integrity, and even total self-mastery.
But right now we are prey to the hoax and the illusion. We are attached to it because it is familiar, and all that we know — our cozy, familiar-smelling ragged nest. Perhaps that is why we think often of Mother Teresa’s myth. Maybe she is actually like Santa Claus and doesn’t really do anything good; I don’t know. (She seems saintly.) But we all, for the most part, need to have somebody like her to hang our hopes on: Santa Claus for the children, others for us, Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama, Christ, whoever. As long as we need to have hopes, we need to hang them somewhere. But let us not fall prey to too much idealization and give in to our immature tendency to totalize things as either totally black or white. For we are usually disappointed in the end if we place anyone or anything upon a high pedestal.
Thus, the Second Noble Truth is the cause of dissatisfaction, which is clinging and craving. The Third Truth, which I’ll go into next week, is the dissolution of craving and clinging, the heart’s sure release, the relinquishment of the craving and clinging. The great letting go. Openness and natural purity of heart, which doesn’t need anything any more. “Sems nyi ngalso” in Tibetan, as Longchenpa advises, “Rest your weary mind at home and at ease.” This is the phrase Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche always uses, too.
The Fourth Truth — and for us probably the most important — is the path to that release, that freedom from clinging and suffering, called the Eightfold Path, or eight steps to enlightenment, eight principles of enlightened living. They are basically divided into three: self-discipline or morality, meditation, and wisdom.
We can all be free. That is the hope in this joyful message of the Dharma path: That there is always that possibility, that nothing is eternally fixed or ruined or hopeless, that everything is changing and not exactly what we think it is. So every situation, wherever we find ourselves, is somewhat workable. Even ourselves — workable! Yet the work has to be done. This work is the true work.
Wisdom and compassion are inseparable. Wisdom is not some kind of abstraction. For example, if you have an objective understanding of reality, then — in the best case — you treat others as you would be treated because you realize the inseparability of yourself and others. There is less selfishness. You realize the interrelatedness of all, that others need the same as one’s self does, so you treat them accordingly. That is wisdom. Its natural outflow is empathetic compassion. Why would it harm that which it is? It is simple. We recognize ourselves in each other.
Enlightenment is not what we think it is. It is such a vast concept, the ultimate flowering and actualization of all that we can be. It is very hard to reconcile that with life down here. I think the real important thing is, how does it relate to us? That can only be realized through your own practice, your own investigation, your own spiritual life. If you say nothing matters, everything is empty, or “I’m practicing crazy wisdom,” and you just drink yourself to death, that is, in fact, an actualization of the inherent freedom of being. You are free to do so. From that point of view, it is freedom in action. But in the conventional sense, it is harmful. It is not very wholesome, nor useful. If you find yourself rationalizing behavior with the crazy wisdom loophole, the nihilistic “everything’s the same so it doesn’t matter what I do” loophole, beware! But if there is a supposedly great master, it is very hard to judge where they are coming from, why they do things. That’s another matter, so it is hard to say anything. Motivation means a lot. Don’t spy out the lice in another’s hair and overlook the cockroach on your own nose!
If we look deeply in our hearts, we will know. It’s not that obscure, really, what’s right and what’s wrong. But when we get into judging other people — and especially so-called enlightened masters — it gets very tricky.
Are you wondering whether enlightenment is enough? Doesn’t enlightenment manifest as compassion? It’s important for us to recognize that there are some doctors, therapists, schoolteachers, and priests who exploit their patients, clients, students, and parishioners in different ways. When we are talking about bodhicitta, selfless altruism, exploitation has no room in that. Let’s not use the word enlightened. What is enlightened supposed to be? It is what in the West we would call a saint or sage or wise elder. Examine the behavior, not just the beliefs and the ideas. What fits and what doesn’t fit? Actually, there are no perfectly enlightened individuals, there is only enlightened activity.
If you realize the nature of your heart and mind, you realize the oneness with everything and everyone. How can you harm or exploit anyone or anything? The way I see it is that if someone seems morally reprehensible or demonstrates addictive behavior patterns, then I would say they obviously have not completed their spiritual work — at least, not from my point of view.
Still, ethics is relativistic. Beyond the mind, beyond dualism, in the absolute, there is no ethics; so what can you say? Yet that’s not where the activity we are describing takes place, in the absolute; it takes place in the relative, here where we live and breathe. Where we relate to each other as separate, where everything is connected but there is karma, cause and effect; that’s all in the relative, horizontal plane where we now all live. The absolute is such a sheer, steep vertical plane that there is nothing to relate it against or compare it to; there is no good and bad in the absolute. That’s not where those activities of the teacher take place. In the absolute, nothing happens. In the relative, everything counts. That’s where everything happens. That’s the Buddha’s understanding: Not one or the other, but both. The cross is a beautiful symbol for that: the horizontal and the vertical, the relative and the absolute, the true joining of heaven and earth. It is that meeting which completes the whole picture.
A natural morality emerges from the experience of unselfishness. So, of course, there are the Ten Commandments in Buddhism also; the ten non-virtues, three of body, four of speech, and three of mind. So when you get to doctrine, it is laid out: not to kill, not to steal, and so on. But out of genuine enlightenment experience comes a natural morality based on sanity and realization of the universal nature of us all, seeing that we all need and want the same. Then there is little question of misbehavior, although anyone can make a mistake. Let’s not be too idealistic.
The question I usually ask myself regarding spiritual teachers is not “Are they enlightened?” but “Are they enlightened enough to help enlighten us?” That’s my true-ing device, my touchstone.