Suffering Starts Before Life

That old belief that “life is suffering is the first noble truth” keeps coming back from the dead, even though people keep pointing out the fact that the Buddha never said that. If life is suffering, then what’s the cure going to be? Dying? Actually, the Buddha’s definition of suffering was more specific and much more helpful: Suffering is the five clinging-aggregates. This is something you can deal with, because clinging is something you do. The aggregates are things that you do as well. Which means if you want to put an end to suffering, you stop clinging to the aggregates. It turns out that the aggregates without the clinging are not suffering. So you can still live and function after the end of suffering.

Still, there is some confusion around the topic. It seems to be in the texts, but if you read carefully, you realize that the texts are not confused. There are passages where clinging is defined as passion and desire for the aggregates. There are other passages where craving—which is the cause of suffering, the cause of clinging—is also defined as passion and desire. Where is the line between the two? There has to be a line because the two have different duties associated with them. Clinging is to be comprehended. In other words, you have to understand that the clinging to the five aggregates is the suffering. Craving is to be abandoned.

Here it’s helpful to think about the Pāli words for clinging and craving. Clinging, upādāna, can also mean feeding. Craving, taṇha, can also mean thirst, which is a stand-in for hunger. The hunger is what drives us to feed. And as we’re feeding, it’s not the case that the hunger goes away immediately as we start feeding—the hunger is still there in the act of feeding, pushing us to keep feeding more. So there will be craving in the clinging.

As the Buddha points out, where there’s passion and desire for the aggregates, the passion and desire is to be abandoned. So that part of the complex is the origination of suffering. That’s what has to be abandoned. The whole complex of feeding on the aggregates is to be comprehended.

This is something you can investigate now, because if you don’t investigate it now, it’s going to drive you from this life to the next one. When they say that life is suffering, they’ve got it wrong in the sense that the suffering actually happens before life begins. You’re stuck in your old body. You can’t stay there any longer. As the Buddha said, at that point, what are you clinging to as you leave? You’re clinging to the craving itself.

The image he gives is of a fire. In those days, they felt that fire needed something to cling to in order to keep burning. So the question was, how does a fire get from one object to an object far away? The answer was, it clings to the wind. In the same way, you cling to a craving that drives you to a new birth. As long as you haven’t learned how to abandon that craving, it can take you anywhere. You’re not safe.

So you want to look into how this all functions together right here, right now. You’ve got a hunger, the craving. As the Buddha said, it’s around that hunger, around that desire, that becoming forms.

Now, clinging is the intermediate stage between the craving and the becoming.

As we mentioned the other day, there are four kinds of clinging. Even though you’re clinging to the aggregates, you’re often not aware of the aggregates themselves. You’re more aware of what you’re creating out of those aggregates—in the same way that when you’re drinking water, you’re drinking hydrogen and oxygen, but you don’t feel hydrogen, you don’t feel oxygen, you feel the water. Water is what you see. But the hydrogen and oxygen are in there.

Now, as you crave, you’re looking for something. There’s a desire for pleasure there. So you cling to your ideas of how that pleasure can be found: This is clinging to sensuality, your fantasizing and planning for sensual pleasures. Then there’s your view about the world in which that object can be found: That’s clinging to views. You cling to your ideas about how you should act within that world in order to get what you want: That’s clinging to habits and practices. And then you cling to your idea of your self, who’s capable or not capable of finding that pleasure, and who wants to enjoy it when it’s found: That’s the fourth kind of clinging, clinging to ideas of self.

These are things with which we’re very, very, very familiar. We hold to them very tightly, because if you’re going to find your pleasures, you want to have a clear and confident sense of what the world is like, how you have to act in that world, and who you are in terms of your abilities to get or not get what you’re looking for. These are precisely the things that constitute becoming—a desire, the world in which that desire can be fulfilled, and your identity within that world—which is why they say that craving conditions clinging, clinging conditions becoming, and it’s from becoming that birth happens. In other words, you actually go into that world and that identity. You go into that act of feeding. You take in that food. That’s when there’s birth. That’s when life begins.

So life comes about as a result of suffering. But once we’re here, we don’t have to continue suffering. Our problem, though, is that we keep up the process all the time.

That image of the fire going from the house also applies to the mind in this body, in this life, right here, right now. We keep going for this, going for that. We get frustrated here, frustrated there, so we try something else. If we get what we want, we consume it, and then we’ve already started looking for more. That’s what we’re going to see as we meditate: these things that we’re doing right here, how our thirst leads us to come up with ideas about what we want, where we can find it, what we have to do, who we are. We keep on doing those things. That repeated doing is the clinging, which creates the becoming, the world in which we’re going to be born. And then the birth happens.

This, by the way, helps to answer a question that sometimes comes up. The Buddha’s teaching us all the time to be focused on our actions and discourages people from speculating about the world. Some people say that the idea of a Buddhist cosmology is thus a contradiction in terms: We shouldn’t be speculating about where we could be reborn or what kinds of levels of rebirth there might be. Just focus on what we’re doing right now.

Well, yes, we focus on what we’re doing right now, but the reason why we’re focusing right here, right now, is not because that’s the only reality there is. It’s because what we’re doing right now creates new worlds. It creates saṁsāra. Saṁsāra is not a place, by the way. Saṁsāra is an activity by which we create places into which we go and then throw away as they fall apart so that we can create new places. So the distinction between action and worldviews is not absolute. In fact, they’re very much connected. It’s how you act that creates a world and a worldview. The Buddha does discourage speculation about karma, speculation about the world, but that doesn’t mean he throws both concepts aside. He’s giving us the views we need so that we can know how to act get out of this whole process, as when he introduces right view by saying that there is this world and the next world, and they’re related to our karma.

We want to know how they’re related, so that we can have some idea about what we should and shouldn’t be doing, where our desires should and shouldn’t be focused. If you focus in the wrong places, you can create worlds that are full of suffering. Even though they’re your creations, the fact that you get in them and experience them: You’re responsible for that. You intended that, not knowing what you were intending. That’s all relevant to the teaching on karma.

When the Buddha discourages speculation about karma, he’s discouraging the kind of speculation that says, “Why did this particular event happen right here, right now, to me?” If you try to trace things back, you go crazy. Karma is very complex in its working out, but simple in its basic principle: that if you act on skillful intentions, you get good results; if you act on unskillful intentions, you get bad results. And you can learn how to make your intentions skillful by acting on the best intentions you can think of. When you find the results are not good, you talk it over with those who are more advanced on the path. You reflect on what you did, where it might be wrong, where there was some delusion even in your good intentions. That’s how you learn.

This is what the Buddha taught to Rāhula and it applies all the way along the path. That’s the kind of thing you need to know about karma.

It’s the same with worlds. The Buddha lays out the fact that if your actions are totally pure, you go to the really high levels of heaven. If they’re mixed, it depends on the mixture. Some mixes will take you to the animal realm. Some mixes will take you to the lower deva realms, depending on how many skillful and unskillful actions are mixed in your background. The totally bad mixtures take you down far into hell. That’s all you really need to know.

When the Buddha talks about the universe and the cosmos, he rarely goed into a lot of details. There are a couple of gruesome passages about hell that tell you it’s not a place you want to go. But passages about heaven are very vague. There are a few details here and there. Sakka’s palace is one of them, and he’s not even on the highest level of the devas. All we really need to know about the levels of the cosmos is what will guide us to do good things and avoid bad things, and eventually do things that are so skillful that we can avoid rebirth altogether. Those complete maps of the Buddhist cosmos don’t come in the suttas. They come later.

The fact that the Buddha discourages speculation about the world and about karma means that he discourages speculation beyond what he teaches. All you need to know are the basic principles. That’s enough to guide you.

So what you’re doing is creating states of becoming. You start out with a thirst for pleasure, and then based on that thirst you find something to feed on. The way you feed is what creates the four kinds of clinging. Those four kinds of clinging then will create the becoming, the world in which you want to act in order to find that pleasure. Then comes birth as you go into that world. You do this as you go from life to life, and you do this as you go from thought world to thought world right here and now. In fact, it’s the habit of going from thought world to thought world right here that prepares you for the kind of life you’re going to go to when this life ends.

So the suffering is in the clinging to the aggregates. That’s what has to be comprehended. And in that clinging to the aggregates, there’s passion and desire. That’s the craving. That’s what has to be abandoned.

When you comprehend all this, you know precisely what needs to be abandoned. That helps keep your practice on target. The rest of the information the Buddha provides gives you a sense of the importance of keeping your practice on target, because it literally makes a world of difference.