This episode is the second part of the sixth chapter of my book-in-progress, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners. In the last episode, I offered seven points about the role of Dukkha in our life and practice and discussed the first five points. In this episode I’ll finish the discussion with point #6: Buddhism offers a holistic approach to alleviating Dukkha, including maximizing our overall spiritual health, working with our karma, and curing its ultimate cause, and point #7: Even when our Dukkha is not extreme, it is a sign of lingering false views, so we continue to pay close attention to it and seek to end it.
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6. Buddhism offers a holistic approach to alleviating Dukkha, including maximizing our overall spiritual health, working with our karma, and curing its ultimate cause.
Maximizing Our Spiritual Health
Working with Our Karma, or Managing Our Symptoms
Curing Dukkha’s Ultimate Cause: Our False Views
7. Even when our Dukkha is not extreme, it is a sign of lingering false views, so we continue to pay close attention to it and seek to end it.
To briefly review, here are the seven points:
Seven Points about the Role of Dukkha in Our Life and Practice
- The primary purpose of Buddhist practice is to end Dukkha (Dukkha is a really big deal).
- Dukkha has a range of manifestations from subtle uneasiness to acute anguish.
- Physical and emotional pain, discomfort, and longing are an inevitable part of human life, while Dukkha is existential angst we add to our experiences.
- Dukkha is caused by your mental resistance to the way things are.
- Dukkha is a symptom of underlying spiritual illness that can be cured because the cause of such illness is false views.
- Buddhism offers a holistic approach to alleviating Dukkha, including maximizing our overall spiritual health, working with our karma, and curing its ultimate cause.
- Even when our Dukkha is not extreme, it is a sign of lingering false views, so we continue to pay close attention to it and seek to end it.
6. Buddhism offers a holistic approach to alleviating Dukkha, including maximizing our overall spiritual health, working with our karma, and curing its ultimate cause.
Buddhism is pragmatic and holistic. Whatever works to alleviate our Dukkha is fair game. You’re not limited to meditation, Dharma study, or even explicitly “Buddhist” or “Zen” practices. The three kinds of approaches to liberation from Dukkha – maximizing our spiritual health, working with our karma, and correcting the false views at the root of our Dukkha – interact and support one another.
Maximizing Our Spiritual Health
Naturally, your spiritual health is intimately connected to your physical and mental health, so this approach includes everything you do to take care of yourself and your life. No matter how strong your Dharma practice is, you’re likely to experience more Dukkha when you’re not getting enough sleep, when you’re sick, when you’re stressed or overworked, or when you haven’t been maintaining supportive relationships. Taking care of yourself and your life is part of your practice. Without a strong foundation, it’s much more challenging to work with your karma or examine your false views. Sometimes your practice might be to rest, relax, spend time with loved ones, seek counseling, or take medication.
Part of maintaining your spiritual health over time is building up a habit of practice you can rely on when things get stressful or difficult. Regular zazen, participation with Sangha, Dharma study, retreats, and daily mindfulness practice are things that can sustain you if you build them into your life and prioritize them. It can help to remind yourself that these practices aren’t self-indulgent but can increase your ability to be present for others.
The value of positive human relationships to your spiritual health can’t be overemphasized. From the beginning of Buddhism, it’s been taught that it’s very difficult to practice without the support of others. While the Sangha is recommended as source of such support, it’s important to pay attention to all your relationships: Where do you feel encouraged in your aspirations? Where do you feel safe enough to let your weaknesses and doubts show? Where are your good habits supported? This is not about judging or rejecting the people in your life when they aren’t perfect, it’s about recognizing how other people influence you.
Finally, moral behavior – following the Precepts to the best of your ability – is an essential aspect of maximizing your spiritual health. Moral, generous, kind, patient behavior tends to lead to more peace and stability in your life. Precept practice can help you avoid moral quandaries and regret, not to mention the practical turmoil that can result from actions like lying, stealing, or abusing intoxicants.
Working with Our Karma, or Managing Our Symptoms
In the Introduction to this book, I explained:
Karma is the law of cause-and-effect as it applies to human experience and actions… If you live by karma, the sum of all the causes that have led to your current state at this moment, you will often be propelled toward choices and actions that lead to stress, suffering, craving, ill-will, and delusion. Of course, not all your karmically conditioned behavior will be negative. Enough of it will be, however, to keep you trapped in patterns you would rather escape… All the elements of Zen practice are aimed at increasing your ability to live by choice instead of by karma.
When we apply the possessive to karma – “your karma” – we’re referring to the whole unique karmic package you’ve ended up with as a result of an infinite number of causes arising from your past actions of body, speech, and mind, and from the actions of others. You are a bundle of physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional conditions and conditioning, habits and habit energy. This bundle is both the result of the past and the cause of your future.
Of course, you are not just your karma; you have the ability to make choices, and then there are inexplicable phenomena within the human experience like Bodhicitta. However, no matter how rarified your spiritual experiences, you still have to deal with karma. Karma unfolds like Newton’s first law of gravity when applied to behavior: Something will remain at rest or continue moving in a straight line unless an outside force acts on it. It will take time and work (literally, force applied to move something) to change your behavioral momentum by starting a new habit or ending an old one, no matter how high your aspirations or profound your spiritual realizations. One of my teachers told a story that illustrates this truth: The back door of his house was replaced such that it opened on the opposite side from where it had before. He was perfectly aware of this fact, but it took a couple of weeks before he would reach for the correct side of the door – exactly as long as it took for his cat to go to the correct side of the door to be let out.[i] His understanding of the change to the door did not eliminate the need for a gradual behavioral adjustment.
Working with your karma to alleviate the symptoms of Dukkha requires you get to know yourself – in this case, your karmic package – intimately. You have your own special brand of neuroses and tendencies and will need to experiment with your own mind to discover what works to alleviate Dukkha for you. What works is likely to change depending on the circumstances, and over time. Getting creative is encouraged, although simply distracting yourself from your experience of Dukkha is generally only a temporary fix.
In general, it’s helpful to pay attention to Dukkha when it arises for you and learn to differentiate between your “first arrow” experience – encountering something that causes pain, stress, or discomfort in a fairly straightforward and natural way – from your “second arrow” addition to it. Sometimes this is best done as a reflection, after a triggering situation. Can you discern your mental resistance? Often, just this is enough to relieve some of your Dukkha, as you dis-identify with it and see it as a phenomenon of your mind. You may be able to let go of your mental resistance, recognizing its futility.
Beyond the initial recognition of Dukkha, there are infinitely many ways to relieve it in the moment at the karmic level, including:
~ Reasoning with yourself. Once you identify some of the Dukkha-causing stuff going through your mind (such as, “Why me” or “How dare they?”), you talk yourself out of those thoughts based on past experiences. For example, you might remind yourself that someone who just seemed to act rudely might be having a terrible day, or that you’ve felt depressed before and come out of it.
~ Giving yourself an appropriate teaching. This may be a spiritual teaching from somewhere, or something you have realized for yourself. It may take the form of a verse or simply be a general aspiration, like “be here now,” or even, “don’t pierce yourself with a second arrow.” The teaching encourages you to let go of your mental resistance or to prioritize a virtue like patience or kindness.
~ Redirecting the mind. This is akin to making yourself go exercise when you’re feeling lethargic – it takes effort at first, but you are rewarded with feeling better. You recognize you’re going down a Dukkha-generating path and make a choice to take a positive path instead – perhaps sending loving kindness to others (metta practice), calling to mind what you are grateful for, or mindfully performing an act of generosity. Redirecting the mind isn’t pushing your Dukkha away by dwelling on a distraction, but mindfully interrupting your mental resistance in favor of something that results in a more positive state of mind.
~ Centering yourself in your body. Chronic Dukkha can have physical manifestations, but for the most part it’s a mental phenomenon. Therefore, awareness of your breathing or physical sensations can help shift your attention away from a reality created by your mind toward the practice of Mindfulness.
Curing Dukkha’s Ultimate Cause: Our False Views
If all you do for the rest of your life is maximize your spiritual health and work to alleviate Dukkha at the karmic level, that’s great! The whole point of the teaching of Dukkha is that no matter what happens to you, your experience of life is strongly influenced by the state of your own mind. You can liberate yourself from Dukkha in the moment and can gradually transform your karma through thoughtful choices. It’s not easy or quick, but no matter how challenging your circumstances are, you can do something to improve your experience of life.
If you feel called to go deeper, though, you have the opportunity to cure the spiritual illness – false views – which is the cause of your mental resistance to the way things are, and therefore the ultimate cause of your Dukkha. There are two reasons to do this. First, you have a chance to substantially decrease the arising of Dukkha in your life. While it’s true that karma will still play itself out for a while even after you ferret out the false view that’s causing your Dukkha to arise, you will have stopped adding fuel to the Dukkha fire. Second, you have a chance to learn absolutely invaluable things about yourself and the nature of Reality! Your false views obstruct your Awakening, so they are your gateway to freedom.
[The following section I included in the last episode, but I’ve moved it here in my book chapter because I think it belongs here]
Curing your spiritual illness – addressing the underlying cause of your Dukkha – first requires you to uncover your false view. Of course, it’s rarely a single, isolated view; it usually relates to other false views. But still, it’s very valuable when you discover a view that’s causing you Dukkha. Buddhism promises us that if the view is causing Dukkha, it is false. Remember, there’s a difference between first-arrow pain and Dukkha. For example, you may feel pain or distress when you think, “There is so much injustice in the world!” There is lots of injustice in the world, and it’s natural you should feel distress on account of it and want to help change things. However, you could add Dukkha to this, based on a view that the world should not be this way – as if this life came with a set of contractual promises about universal peace and justice, and it turns out you’ve been lied to.
After you identify a view that is causing you Dukkha, you investigate it and question it. Is it true? Where did you get the view? What are the consequences of holding the view? What assumptions are the view based on? Sometimes a view you uncover will seem so obviously false you will be able to drop it immediately, like a butterfly shedding its cocoon. This can relieve much Dukkha. Other times, you won’t be entirely convinced the view is false, but you’ll realize it’s causing you so much misery you’d be better off without it, and you’ll be able to experiment with what it’s like to live that way. Sometimes you will see the view clearly, but you can’t let go of it yet. Then it becomes a koan for you to lean into, keeping in mind that if the view is causing Dukkha, it is false. What is true?
When you have uncovered a Dukkha-causing view that you can’t let go of, it’s important to stay aware of it. Then, when you’re able, you investigate with curiosity, seeking to know as much as possible about it. Is it related to other views? Is there a view under the view? What fundamental fears or desires might be leading you to cling to this view? Are you afraid to face the alternative? Can you even imagine an alternative?
Dharma study is extremely beneficial when investigating our tenacious false views, because our Dharma ancestors repeatedly pointed to the truth. You might find a teaching that claims Reality-with-a-Capital-R is exactly the opposite of your Dukkha-causing view, such as the teaching of Buddha-Nature if you remain convinced there is something wrong with you, or the teaching of Suchness if you think there is no alternative to constantly trying to improve or fix things. You let the teaching in despite your opposing view, asking, “What do I not yet see?” If you keep up the effort, at some point there will be a shift in your perspective, and you will recognize the falseness of your view. Mental karma means the view will arise again, but once you have seen through it, it will never again have the same power over you.
7. Even when our Dukkha is not extreme, it is a sign of lingering false views, so we continue to pay close attention to it and seek to end it.
There is a Zen saying: “First we practice for the sake of our own suffering. Then we practice for the sake of others. Finally, we practice for the sake of the Dharma.”[ii]
You may have started Zen practice because your Dukkha took the form of real suffering, such as depression, anxiety, despair, or anger issues. Over time, by caring for your spiritual health and working on your Dukkha at the karmic level, you may find you are not suffering so much anymore. Your remaining Dukkha may manifest in milder ways, such as periodic irritability, stress, or judgmentalism. These milder experiences of Dukkha are things you can probably live with; you’re unlikely to be terribly motivated to end this kind of Dukkha for your own sake, because it takes a lot of work!
If you continue your efforts to end your Dukkha, then you’re probably doing it in order to be of greater benefit to others. This ties right into our Bodhisattva Vow to free all beings. The more Dukkha you’ve released, the more of your false views you’ve seen through, the greater your capacity to be patient, non-reactive, attentive, perceptive, and compassionate toward others. The more work you’ve done on yourself, the more your energy and talents are freed up for selfless service and authentic participation in life.
Eventually, your life may feel full and rewarding, including Bodhisattva activity. At this point, why would you make the necessary commitments and sacrifices to seek out your remaining, subtle Dukkha and bring to light the false views underneath it? At this point, your Dukkha rarely feels like “suffering” (although life circumstances can always change in a way that triggers more acute Dukkha – a very humbling situation if you see yourself as having “progressed” in spiritual practice). Subtle Dukkha manifests as a low-level, background sense that things aren’t quite as they should be, or you are not acting or living quite as you should, or some kind of freedom, intimacy, efficacy, certainty, or solidity continues to elude you. This kind of Dukkha is easily ignored. It rarely even makes you unhappy!
You keep up the diligent search for subtle Dukkha and seek to cure it not because you’re trying to become a perfect person (that’s not going to happen in any case), but because any Dukkha, however subtle, is the sign of your lingering false views. You want to identify and correct those false views because of your love for the truth, or the Dharma. You want to know Reality-with-a-Capital-R for its own sake. The Dharma is infinite; even fully enlightened Buddhas, if such beings exist, can’t comprehend it all. There is always more to awaken to, always ways to more fully embody and manifest the truth. As you seek to open to what you have not yet realized, you are limited only by your imagination.
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Endnotes
[i] This story was related by one of my teachers, Kyogen Carlson.
[ii] I have not been able to find the source of this saying, but it was taught to me by my teachers and is true in my own experience.
