noticing suffering
Jeffrey
Veteran
For the longest time I was waiting to feel better. When was the meditation going to lead to bliss?
Lately though I think in meditation I am just noticing a persist quality of 'thirst' or suffering. I am not sure if it is a matter of 'not doing the meditation skilfully' or 'not enough time on the cushion'. It may be a persistent suffering that I have simply started to notice. It is this thirst that makes us have addictions to feel better even if some of the addictions are wholesome such as art, friendship, and so forth. We live our lives trying to make choices to ease this suffering or thirst. Some of us are less skillful such as doing drugs or sexual addiction.
So if I am not doing the meditation right or I have not had enough practice to mastery then it is straight forward that I need to change methods or wait for mastery of meditation.
But I am suspecting I am just noticing suffering more than I ever had, but that it had always been there. So what can I do if that is the truth? It is such a surprise to think that there is just this suffering and I have no idea how to make it stop. Of course I know Buddhist teachings, but I have practiced over a decade and just trotting out '8FP' or 'ignorance' is not that powerful apparently in the face of 'thirst'. Which is not to say that I am not on the path or that I haven't had some real mind training.
Comments
You have a teacher, dude. She is there for you . . .
You have 'noticed'. Some people never do . . .
Nobody 'masters' meditation, they merely notice it's attendance . . .
Onward.
@lobster, it often takes me awhile to formulate a question clearly for my teacher. Also it is a courtesy to my sangha not to stretch the resources of asking the teachers time. I try to answer my own questions. I did send her an e-mail last week, but she doesn't always answer. Often my questions are just passing and I forget them in a week. That indicates to me that they weren't very important questions!
Those could just be 'curiosities'. If I have a question that persists that doesn't get answered then I try to e-mail again and see if she notices.
Just do the see saw breath. It will give you energy. Don't do it in the hospital as there bells go off.
Teacher busy. OK.
The path of tantra is about increasing wholesome addictions. What does that mean? Perhaps you can quench our thirst on that one? Hope so.
What's the see saw breath? Could you briefly explain it?
Yes inhale with a count of 3 hold for a count of 3 exhale with a count of 3 hold with a count of 3 -keep repeating
Ok, thanks. I just wonder if you're supposed to breathe deep and fast or more of a normal speed.
comfortable it is awkward at first but the length of time is up to you. Just be consistent.
@Jeffrey
I actually think that a closer examination of all the spokes of the Dharmachackra, keeping in mind that the weakest one for you is what limits the strengths of all the others, is an effective way of objectively illuminating what really needs to be attended to next.
But to explain it another way without using the 8FP......
Thirst right now is your koan in life.
Calling it your Koan is saying that it is a difficulty which is almost beyond your capacity to address. Most of us just nibble around the edges of our koan as it is all we feel we are capable of facing but it sounds like your practice efforts are taking you closer towards the heart of your difficulty.
Being able to successfully persevere in this regard seems largely a question of how high of a priority you can make of addressing this thirst over everything else.
Good travels
Howard
Two stray thoughts coming to mind...
If this question and answer is within a Sangha venue, then you could consider your question and her answer as actually a teaching for the whole community, not just a personal stretching of the teachers time.
A teacher may not answer your question, not because she thinks the question is not important but because she sees your own ruminating through it to be more valuable than having it answered.
There is a component of suffering implicit in the business of living and that won't change by wishful thinking.
It will always be there.
Meditation has consistently brought to your attention that the way you relate to suffering needs some finetuning.
Perhaps you have not addressed your thirst issues properly.
You need to work on it and find the way to tackle the issues that trigger your thirst, your craving but which in the end, once explored leave you unsatisfied.
Every time you feel this thirst arising, what other avenue can you explore?
I don't think there is bliss as the result of meditation.
Rather a feeling of complete acceptance of the way things are, inner truce with one's foibles.
Life is what it is.
We must find the way to make peace with it.
^^^ two good posts from @how.
Providing the answer is often a disservice. Facililitating our capacity to find solutions, far more useful . . .
If 'noticing the thirst' is your mandala/koan then who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?
It is why your solution is our potential sharing/learning . . .
I don't know about you, @Jeffrey.
I might be talking for myself here, but I usually find that whenever I have an issue with the suffering conumdrum, it is more about me having a problem dealing with suffering than the inevitability of suffering itself.
Which narrows the solution down to the less daunting task of working on myself, rather than trying to fix the world outside.
As Chögyam Trungpa said, it is easier to put on leather shoes than trying to wrap up the world in leather...
We wish for things to be different, we wish for life to be pure bliss 24/7, we wish reality were more permanent...
We develop unrealistic expectations, cravings, attachments...
You have been grappling with some important addictions which seem to have resurfaced lately.
What is triggering this anxiety or this thirst? Get to the root. You have some excavation work to do here.
But be realistic too: we always will have some issues with suffering.
It would be unrealistic to think that you will come up with a permanent solution to the problem.
I think it means you have made some progress with the Noble Truths, ie seeing more clearly that suffering exists and how it arises - this can be uncomfortable. Keep your practise going and have some faith in your ability to get through the difficult periods. It could be an opportunity to review your approach to meditation and practice, but that's probably best done with a teacher.
Have you been on a retreat recently? And do you attend any meetings or is it just online communication?
Jeffrey, I think I relate to this. For a while I've noticed the baseline 'dissatisfactoriness' of samsara, but lately that awareness has grown some specific heads. For one, I'm noticing, as they occur, these VERY negative toned feelings as they attach to some thought I have or thing I see or experience. The pessimism/negativity is out of proportion to the arising of whatever. And they don't occur every single time. It's like weather. If it's raining, everything is wet and kind of watery grey. So it's like internal 'weather' is coloring the arisings.
I can get very depressed very quickly when that particular weather pattern comes through, and it's trashed me off and on my whole adult life. I just never knew it wasn't 'true', but simply a pattern of thought moving on through.
Sometimes there is no answer that can be given to anyone in a satisfactory manner, and as @how said, your rumination is what is important, it is you who has to decide what you find acceptable, and what you don't!
Of course it is, That is why the truly wise have a hard time sharing it. Like the Buddha. Take refuge in the Buddha and doubt everything including what the Buddha says. It is what he said to do. verify everything and make it yours
Can't disagree with my own statements...
Good point. This is often the result of creating head/body/emotional space or awareness through practice. It means we become aware of what is now within our knowing rather than part of our ignoring/ignorance.
Good, I must have made sense at some level.
A couple of days ago I was noticing this happening over and over again. I'd gotten way outside my comfort zone (long story) and was back at home after being gone for about 24 hours. The intensity of the negative 'weather' was a little shocking. Perhaps I wouldn't have noticed it at all if it weren't so exaggerated. The most neutral spontaneous memories were suddenly cloaked in despair or disappointment or shame -- completely inappropriately. And it was crazy how just 'noticing' cancelled most of the energy. For the next two days it was like I was crawling up and out of that horrid weather. I don't think I can put into words what a difference it made having that space between phenomena and the reactivity to it. I could see it, and by seeing it, I was never overwhelmed. It just went away on its own, and this time I didn't get dragged through the mud.
I am sensing that I might not have been clear. I think I am just feeling a tone to my nervous system of having a body.
Hi I am taking an internet course with a sangha in Wales. I did one course over 8 years; that's how long it took me. I have the materials for a second course, but I have been studying Trungpa Rinpoche's book Training the Mind for the past 6 months along with increasing the amount of meditation I am doing up to one hour every day.. I also have transcribed a number of my teachers talks into text so that is another way to study.
That sounds good. I've found though that face-to-face contact with other Buddhists can be really helpful, even if it's only occasionally.
Yes, thanks. There is a Zen sangha that I attended once back before I was on a high dose of medicine. Unfortunately I have trouble sitting for 30 minute stretches because my medicines now make that uncomfortable (nerves). But my medicines are always changing and maybe later I can. Or maybe they will allow me to stand up and go in the other room when my nerves get unbearable. I meditate 1 hr/day alone, but I split it up into 2 x 10 minute walking, 2 x 5 minute walking, 2 x 10 minute sitting, 2 x 5 minute sitting.
So yeah in the long term a goal is to get sitting meditation up to 1/2 hour which I need to sit with the sangha (or else be able to walk around when my nerves get uncomfortable). I think anti-psychotic meds affect prana and thus my nerves.
Oh you could say you could sit through the uncomfortable feeling but that downplays how excruciating it is. For example it would be hard to ask someone to do sitting meditation while eating a whole habanero pepper each 5 minutes!!
Outstanding.
Incredible 'right for you practice'.
Euphoria is temporary. It is also 'the Buddha that has to be killed on the path'.
However more to the point . . . After that meditation lot I think I would go and find something's that 'smelt of bliss . . .' In other words smell the pleasant objects but find the bliss . . .
Today I received this quaint, tiny volume published by the Buddhist Lodge (nowadays, Buddhist Society) in 1928, entitled "What is Buddhism?"
When they describe the kernel of the Buddhist philosophy they state:
Yes, we have a body. Yes, we have some cravings. Yes, we suffer.
We probably would suffer less if we accepted that the business of wading Samsara entails suffering.