Last Saturday’s talk, “End of Suffering Is Now” was by Sister Rachel Lim.
‘Suffering’ – English translation of Pali word ‘dukkha’ which is more accurately translated as dissatisfaction (includes subtle dissatisfaction, not just great misery).
Examples of dukkha are aging, sickness and death.
Sister Rachel made this really insightful point that when things happen to other people we may think “Never mind, there are still other good things” whereas when they happen to us the misery is very real.
We desire pleasure and do not want to experience pain. We experience dukkha whenever things fall short of our desires.
The roots of dukkha are greed, hatred and delusion.
Greed (Desire)
- Plays up when there is something we like a lot eg an expensive bag. We experience dissatisfaction when we are waiting to save up enough money, and also after we get the bag when others may not take as much notice of it as we would like.
- When the situation falls short of our desires, we may have a lot of self-centred thinking e.g. I deserve to be happy; I am a victim; why me?
- We lose sight of the big picture when one thing consumes us.
- To put things more into perspective we can look at people who are worse off than us; this reminds us to be appreciative of what we have.
Hatred (Anger/ Aversion)
- To help ourselves, we can reflect and be critical of our actions eg question ourselves why we lose our temper.
Ignorance
- It is difficult to understand reality and see things as they are
- We are in total control of our dukkha
- We can remove it by cultivating wisdom which is by practising the Noble Eightfold Path
o Wisdom aspect: Right View, Right Intention
o Morality aspect: Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood
o Concentration aspect: Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration
- The morality aspect enables us to live in accordance to the middle path i.e. in between indulgence and self-mortification
- We tend to indulge more rather than self-mortify
- A quote by Matthieu Ricard (happiest man in the world) likening the wise mind of a cultivated meditater to a deep ocean: “Sometimes the ocean is calm, like a beautiful mirror; sometimes there are storms and high seas. These are the ups and downs of life—joys and sufferings, difficulties and successes, destructive and constructive areas of your life—but the depth of the ocean always remains unchanging. If you can free yourself from being the slave of your own thoughts, even in the midst of sorrows, you have a much better chance to live a flourishing life. That’s where real happiness lies.”
We then played a game where we had to make a tennis ball roll for as long as possible on a flip chart paper after releasing it. The meaning behind the game is that we are the owners of our own karma, like our method and force determines how long the ball moves. The flip chart paper is likened to our afflictions and the moving ball is one who is not at peace. Through this activity, we question ourselves what keeps our ball moving? Our piece of homework is to work on one affliction that we would like to get rid of.
- Pei Si
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