Expert: Joe McSorley - 6/27/2005

Question
Hello- I have had problems with the first noble truth in the past (all life is suffering). I felt this a negation of the human experience. I now understand that this is just a mental attitude that can be overcome.  My problem lies in the idea that even after conquering our earthly desires we still seem to be left with the need/desire to escape from this cycle of existence all together. Traditionally,that is what Nirvana is right? Well, now I see all of the commentary that talks about Nirvana equaling Samsara and that the first noble truth needs revision as it is too strongly worded. For them it seems that the reason for being a good Buddhist is not about avoiding rebirth and letting the flame blow out, but about understanding that Nirvana exists within your suffering and therefore, there is nothing to transcend. Understanding this makes your life less a ordeal of suffering (that needs to be surmounted) and more an experience of beauty that can be enjoyed. Is my view of this correct at all? I realize that each sect of Buddhism is very different but how literally is the first noble truth taken these days in your experience? Thanks-Terry  

Answer
Dear Terry,
  I can't tell you how other sects look at the first Noble Truth or how others take it but I can tell you that the idea that it should be revised is nonsense.  I don't recall the word ‘all' in the first truth, all life is suffering, it says “ Life is dukkha' and it implies that human life is suffering.  I had a Theravada priest from Sri Lanka give me his interpretation of the Pali for the first noble truth and he said this:” Life is anxiety (duk) with no foundation (kha), in other words, no matter what good comes to us or what happiness it can always be usurped by tragedy.  There is always an underlying anxiety to human life and this is our suffering.”  It is a good way to put it.  It's not a mental attitude; in fact, it is the normal every day mind that is the problem and source of this suffering/anxiety.  No simple mental attitude is the solution to dukkha.  There must be a radical and thoroughgoing destruction/reconstruction of the self that overcomes the dualistic mind.  The word nirvana means extinction, it is the extinction of the self that awakens us to the reality of the true self.  The historical Buddha realized that it is the mind itself and all of its manifestations that is the problem.  Neither hedonism nor asceticism will overcome this.  In realizing this he sat under the Bodhi tree knowing that is was the extinction of his dualistic mind itself that must happen to ‘see things as they are'.  To conquer all earthly desires does not accomplish this because that desire to conquer all desires will remain after it all.  That which desires to conquer desires is itself the creator of the desire.  We see birth and death as a process, two things that are opposed to each other; in fact, we see all things this way, one thing as opposed to another.  We see Nirvana as opposed to Samsara but we don't know whom it is that is making these distinctions in our mind.  So we say ‘ I am suffering and I want relief' but who is it that is saying this?  That which is making the distinction is creating the distinction.  If we are grounded to and defined by this idea of self, we suffer.  If we die to this self to be awakened as true self, we are no longer grounded to this individual perspective and thus free from suffering even when in pain.  If you only know yourself as Terry, then whatever happens to Terry makes you suffer, but if you know yourself as the universe/nature expressing itself as Terry and as everything else, then you are free from the suffering.  It is not to see the positive while Terry suffers but to overcome who Terry is that is important.  If a leaf on a tree is suffering is the whole tree suffering?  The leaf never had a life of its own; it was expressing the life of the tree.  If it only knows itself as leaf, then it lives and dies as leaf, but if it overcomes the distinction between leaf and tree and knows the very root of its being as tree as expressed by leaf then individual suffering is overcome. A leaf that knows itself as the tree is no longer just a leaf but an expression of the entire tree, likewise, a person that knows themselves as the entire universe is no longer just a person but the full expression of the universe.  Please don't look at this as a psychological state for that completely misses the point.
 I hope this helps you, take care,
          Joe