Are you suffering........?

If I say "world is full of suffer" would you be able to take that word? your most likely answer would be 'No'. Because at some point we all have experienced joy in our lives and more or less all of us have been through the joyful times since we were born up until this very moment. You feel happy when your loved ones are around you. You feel the joy of winning when your favorite team win a sport. You felt top of the world when your first baby was born. And Lord Buddha has also told his followers that there is a joy in this world that makes living beings happy. And Lord Buddha has never told his followers "don't be happy, be sad". As lay people we all are ought to live happy life and there are duties in our lives that we need to fulfill during our lifetime and those actions may eventually bring joy and happiness into our lives. Similarly, there may be occasions in your lives that you had to shed tears and suffer. When your loved ones died, apart from you how sad were you? when you failed an exam, when you lose your job, when you are sick and there may have been lot of other incidents that brought grief in to your lives. So, with these life long experiences we all know both joy and suffer are part of our lives. But, the question is that all those joyful moments in our lives going to last forever? all that worries came into your life going to last forever? what if there is only joy in our lives and not the suffering? why it doesn't work in that way? what brings sadness, suffer, grieves, anger into our lives? This is the question 'Bhodhisattava' (Lord Buddha before enlightenment) wanted answers and that's where he started exploring the truth to eliminate the suffer (dukka). Lets don't go into details of how 'Bhodhisattva' became self-aware about what is suffering and how to cease suffering by attaining nibbana in this discussion and we will cover that topic in another post. But, it's important to know that the suffering that we feel and experience during our day to day life is not the only suffering Lord Buddha understood from his enlightenment and there is far more complicated constant suffering all living beings endure every moment in their lives - which is worldly suffering (being in samsara) caused by the constant change. In fact, the happiness or the joy in life is a 'relative suffering' and because of our delusion (avidya) we consider the happiness as real and truly exist in our lives. For an example - a beggar's biggest worry is his poverty and not having a shelter above his head and not being able to make his bread and butter. So, from his point of view he is the one who suffers most and others are fortunate and living happily. Now if you take few people who are fortunate from the beggar's point of view, do they not have any worries in their lives? they do have, and those aren't same as beggar's. It may be maintaining their house and paying mortgage, fear of losing income, fear of theft, getting sick, family issues, not having enough money for the next holiday and many more. It's true that they are happier than beggar in terms of what beggar doesn't have in his life. But, they have different things to worry. In fact, both are suffering but the intensity of suffering is vary between the two. And if you compare those middle class living people with few billionaire's, from the middle class people's point of view billionaire's have nothing to worry at all. Is that true? no, they have different reasons to worry - maintaining their status in society, fear of losing businesses, global economic changes, competition, threat to their lives and many more. Again, it's true that they are relatively happier than both the beggars and middle class families. But, if you properly examine it's rather a difference of the intensity in suffering among those different levels of living have been deludedly described as 'Happiness' in life. Now don't misunderstand it as there isn't a thing call 'Happiness' at all. In fact, there is a sense of happiness in life and it's derived from the relative suffering in the state of mind. Then it's worth to learn how this suffering arises and what cause the suffering. With his enlightenment Lord Buddha understood that the cause of suffering is the 'craving' (thanha). and because of the craving there arise attachments (badima). How attachments create suffering? As I mentioned earlier losing our loved ones make us suffer, that we all know. In fact, this is the suffering we know and aware to be existed in our minds according to the level of our understanding of suffer. But, the truth is that the cause for the suffering of losing loved ones were actually began to exist when the loved ones were with us. The mental sorrow, sobbing and tearing once they depart are all part of the effect of the cause that created since the day we attached to them until now. The attachment produced the defilement (akusal) thus came into effect (karma) so we have to suffer now when they depart. When closely looking at this situation, the loved ones once brought us 'happiness' when they were with us and the same loved ones now giving us grief when they are apart from us. Does that mean the suffer we experience truly lies with in loved ones? No, what really happened is that 'loved ones' were the abstract of the external object (sanna) that we came to know (supposedly a consequence came in to effect in mind as a result of five senses (pancha indriya) interacting with the external object) and the craving that exist in our mind produced the attachment for the abstract of the object. The attachment generated the clinginess (aleema) for their presence and now the state of the object has changed from presence to absence but craving and attachment still exist in mind and the new state (absence) is no longer favorable for clinginess to continue thus as a reaction to the situation the state of mind has also changed from clinginess to collision (gateema) (note - collision is not for the physically exist loved ones but for the change of state in ones own mind for the abstract version of the object of loved one. In other words, you started sobbing or weeping because now there is a reluctance arise within your mind for the new change of state and the result is collision - reluctance for the abstract of the object of absence of loved ones) and as this collision in your mind grows you start shedding tears instead of smiling. But, in real world we relate this to the physical existence of the loved ones and tell that we feel sad because they are not there with us - this is known as the delusion. Lets discuss and try to understand these mental defilements in detail in the next post - "The Advancement of Virtue".