Is everything suffering?

本站添加: 2026-05-12

[00:00:13]Is everything suffering? Even if old age and sickness and death are inevitable for all beings, what about the majestic beauty of nature? How can a river or a beautiful sunset be suffering?

[00:00:30]Very common question this one.

[00:00:33]So, suffering comes in different flavors in different forms.

[00:00:37]>> [snorts] >> Three main flavors, let's say. The first flavor of suffering is like suffering suffering, obvious suffering. Old age, sickness, death, torture, all all of the things where everyone would agree, yeah, that's a definite form of suffering.

[00:00:55]These things that as humans we often have to experience or sometimes experience or at least we are vulnerable to experience these kinds of suffering.

[00:01:04]So, that's one very real kind of suffering and the Buddha did speak about it.

[00:01:10]The next kind of suffering that we have is the suffering of our defilements.

[00:01:16]So, this is the suffering inherent in hating things, craving things, being prideful, being attached to things. It hurts, right? Our defilements hurt.

[00:01:32]And then the third kind of suffering is the suffering inherent in all conditioned things.

[00:01:39]Even the rivers and the sunsets and the babies giggles and all of the things that we would think are like the the high points of of life.

[00:01:50]The inherent suffering of all conditioned things.

[00:01:54]And that inherent suffering of all conditioned things we can see on a basic level, we can also look at it on a Vipassana level. On a basic level, those things are suffering because they don't last.

[00:02:06]So, they give us a temporary good feeling that then ends.

[00:02:13]Would be on the basic level why we can understand This is when people want to translate suffering as unsatisfactory.

[00:02:20]It can never really deeply fulfill us because the nature of those sense pleasures is they temporary hit of good feeling which then passes away and we either need to seek it out again, which is hard work or we're left with the the lack of that good feeling.

[00:02:39]But on a Vipassana level, we see that impermanent nature is actually runs far deeper and in fact, all of these things, the river and the sunset and the baby's giggle are all made up of nama and rupa materiality mentality that are momentarily arising and passing away.

[00:02:58]So, impermanent here doesn't mean changing state and coming and going, means momentarily coming into and out of existence.

[00:03:06]And because it's momentarily coming into and out of existence it's inherently suffering. This coming into and out of existence can never ever be peaceful. It's always aggravating compared to the peace that would be there in its absence.

[00:03:23]And so, we have the suffering the suffering inherent in all conditioned things because of its impermanent nature.

[00:03:31]And so, we can get confused which one of these types of suffering we are talking about. If we imagine that and the suffering of all conditioned things is the same as the suffering of defilements, then we'll get confused.

[00:03:44]We'll imagine that when we remove the defilements, all of a sudden we don't suffer anymore.

[00:03:51]But it's not true, no. We experience it in the temporary absence of defilements.

[00:03:57]This body and mind are still going.

[00:04:00]We're still here existing.

[00:04:02]And we've still got that suffering inherent in existence.

[00:04:06]Right?

[00:04:08]Even the Buddha, even the arahants, they still have to They don't have the suffering of the defilements, but they still have to experience the suffering of their body getting old, of physical pain.

[00:04:18]For example. And they still have to deal with the inherent suffering of existence.

[00:04:26]Most of the people in the world, they don't concern themselves with that last kind of suffering.

[00:04:34]The suffering inherent in all conditioned things.

[00:04:37]They think, "All right, the suffering suffering, the death and the torture and the old age and the sickness, it's horrible, but it's a part of life. I'll do my best to accept it. And the suffering of the defilements, I'll change my habits gradually.

[00:04:52]And the things like the rivers and the sunsets and the babies giggles, that's the high point of life and we'll try and get as much of that as possible."

[00:05:03]That's sort of as good as life gets when we're in the flow of our defilements.

[00:05:09]These temporary little boosts of of good feeling that we get of the sense pleasure. That's That's as good as life gets.

[00:05:16]Or some short exposure to wholesome states when we're in loving kindness, when we're giving a gift, for example.

[00:05:24]So really this turns when we first start to experience sustained periods of time free from defilements.

[00:05:34]When we start to experience sustained periods of time free from defilements, you know, like the sūtra where the Buddha is talking to King Ajātasattu, and he explains, "When you're without the five hindrances, it's like you were always sick and now you're healthy.

[00:05:48]It's like you were in prison and now you're free. You didn't even know you were in prison.

[00:05:52]It's like you were a slave and you didn't even know it and now you're free.

[00:05:56]Right?

[00:05:57]And so we get this sense of such massively increased well-being.

[00:06:01]And it hasn't come through seeing the sunset for a moment or a beautiful river or the baby's giggle. It's come through our freedom from defilements.

[00:06:12]Then we really understand, okay, that temporary happiness of conditioned things is very small. There's no point in me giving my energy to chasing after that stuff. Feels good for a moment, but it's nothing compared to the pleasure of the purity of mind that I can develop.

[00:06:29]So we develop that purity of mind and what suffering remains?

[00:06:33]The suffering inherent in all conditioned things.

[00:06:36]And then we want to do something about it, right?

[00:06:39]The suffering of just the presence of nama rupa.

[00:06:42]It remains.

[00:06:44]And then we want to do something about it. So this is the way that the Dharma path unfolds and that is how even the What was it? Majestic forest or something like that.

[00:06:56]That's how the majestic forest is also suffering.

[00:06:59]It's not suffering in the way that torture is suffering or sickness is suffering.

[00:07:05]It's not suffering in the way that the defilements are suffering, but it's suffering in that it's a small happiness that keeps us trapped in the paradigm of our defilements.

[00:07:14]Robs us of the big happiness of wholesome states and blinds us to the suffering inherent in all conditioned things.