Noble Truth I — Suffering

What drew us to a meditation/spiritual practice in the beginning?

What enticed you to go to your first meditation sit?

What caught your attention on the flyer or email that you saw?

What were you looking for that you thought you would find in meditation?

I know what mine was. I thought I would be able to understand how the world worked after I was enlightened. (Still working on that one.)

I think we would all like our lives to be better in some way and maybe we thought meditation would help with that. Our life experience is not always roses and lollipops and rainbows. Sometimes it is just down-right unsatisfying.

Ultimately, I think we are all looking to relieve the suffering we feel in our daily life. We want to find some way to release the stress and tension we feel when things don’t go our way. Yes, we do have some happy and joyful times, but they don’t seem to last. It seems like there should be something we can do to make our happy times last longer; some way to be in and with the world that works better than what we are doing now.

After a few years of meditation practice, I came to realize, that it is not about finding out how the world works ‘out there’. It is all about realizing how the mind works ‘in here’. If we can understand how our mind works, see clearly all of the habitual patterns of thinking and reacting that we have been stuck in for years, then we can begin to work to loosen the patterns of thinking and open the mind to a clearer and more balanced perception of our life.

This requires that we actually become intimate with our suffering. We can’t shy away from our internal thoughts and expect to understand how they are affecting our lives. We need to find ways to turn toward our difficult thoughts and feelings. Turn toward them in a way that we feel safe, supported, and, if not with fearlessness, then with the awareness that we can work with whatever arises; that our thoughts are fleeting and cannot really harm us if we befriend them with an attitude of compassion towards that part of ourself that is present in the moment.

When we learn to work with our thoughts and feelings in this way, we begin to see our mental activity as just part of a greater awareness that holds all of our experiences. We can learn to relax into this basic space of awareness, the natural openness of the mind, and release our clinging to our habitual thoughts and feelings. This can open us to a new wisdom; a new way of being in the world with less suffering.