Q44. Where can we quench suffering?
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
We don’t quench suffering in a monastery, in the forest, at home, or on a mountain. We have to quench suffering right in the cause of suffering itself. We must investigate and find out how suffering arises in us each day and from what roots it originates. Then we cut off that particular root. Yesterday’s suffering has already been and gone. It can’t come back, it is over and done with. The suffering that arises today, right now, is the problem. Suffering that may arise tomorrow isn’t yet a problem; it hasn’t happened yet. Rather, the suffering arising and happening right now must be dealt with quickly. Where, then, is it to be quenched? It must be quenched at its root. We must study life until we realize that, as the Buddha said, suffering arises simply from grasping and clinging.
That birth, aging, and death are suffering is usually proclaimed eloquently, but ambiguously. However, birth isn’t suffering, aging isn’t suffering, and death isn’t suffering where there’s no attachment to ‘my birth,’ ‘my aging,’ and ‘my death.’ At the moment, we are grasping at birth, aging, pain, and death as ‘ours.’ If we don’t cling, they aren’t suffering, they are only concoctions changing (saṅkhāra). Conditioned things change in a certain way and we call it ‘birth’; conditioned things change in a different way and we call it ‘aging’; conditioned things change in another way and we call it ‘death’; but we fail to see them as just concoctions changing. We see them as particular realities happening and, what is more, we consider them ‘my birth,’ ‘my aging,’ and ‘my death.’ This is a multilayered delusion because ‘I’ is a delusion to start with; so seeing a bodily change as ‘my birth’ or ‘my aging’ is yet further delusion. We fail to see that these are simply bodily changes. As soon as we see them as only changing conditions, birth, aging, and death disappear, and ‘I’ disappears with them. There’s no longer any ‘I’ and such changing conditions aren’t suffering.
The Buddha said, ‘Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, and death is suffering,’ yet the majority of people, almost all in fact, misunderstand him. They point to the condition of birth, the condition of aging, and the condition of death as being suffering itself. Some can’t explain it at all. Some, hesitant and uncertain, explain it vaguely and ambiguously, evasively hemming and hawing. This is because they forget that the Buddha concluded his description with ‘In summary, the five clinging-together-aggregates are suffering.’* The aggregates are body and mind operating together as a person. If there is grasping at anything as being ‘I’ or ‘mine,’ the five aggregates are suffering immediately. Those five aggregates are the burden, the suffering, the fire and brimstone. All the suffering is in the five clinging-together-aggregates.
Now suppose these five aggregates are in the condition known as ‘aging.’ If mind doesn’t grasp at and cling to them as ‘aging,’ or as ‘my aging,’ there will not be suffering. Seeing body as empty, feelings as empty, perceptions as empty, activities as empty, and cognition as empty – seeing the whole flowing and swirling conditioning of everything as empty – there’s no path for suffering. Such are pure pañcakkhandha, aggregates freed from grasping. These are what we presume to call the five aggregates of an arahant. Actually, arahants can’t be described as being the owners of any aggregates, but we look on those aggregates as being the receptacle of the virtues of arahantship. That type of mind can’t grasp at the aggregates in any way as being ‘mine.’ Still, we speak of them conventionally as the pure pañcakkhandha of arahants.
Once again, where is suffering quenched? We quench suffering at the root of suffering, namely, grasping and clinging to things. Suffering due to attachment to wealth must be quenched there in that attachment. Suffering due to grasping and clinging to the illusions of power, prestige, honor, and fame must be quenched there in that grasping and clinging. Then wealth, power, and prestige will not be in themselves suffering. So find out where it arises and quench it there. In the words of the old-time Dhamma experts, ‘whichever way it goes up, bring it down that same way.’
(*) Saṃkhittena pañcupādānakkhandhā dukkhā.
(From “Buddha-Dhamma for Inquiring Minds”)
- - ❖ - -
Buddha-Dhamma for Students (title of original translation) was composed of two talks given by Ajahn Buddhadāsa in January 1966 to students at Thammasat University, Bangkok. It was translated from the Thai by Rod Bucknell, and revised in 2018 by Santikaro Upasaka. To read/download as free ebook (pdf).
- - ❖ - -
For all English retreat talks, visit Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu.
For more information and free ebooks, visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation.
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives D-125