Live Session Summary, Sunday, August 24, 2025: It was good to be with you for our live session today. The focus of the session was on how we can get caught up in suffering and the Buddha’s teachings on how to get unhooked and find freedom from suffering.
Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from today’s Live session:
I began by reflecting that the central teachings of the Buddha on suffering and ending suffering are relatively easy to understand but are harder to put into practice on an experiential level.
In his teaching on the two arrows, the Buddha pointed to the first arrow as the inevitable pain, discomfort, or difficulty that comes as part of human life. The second arrow, he taught, arises from our unwillingness to accept and be with difficult, challenging or unpleasant experiences. We seek ways of escaping from what we find unpleasant, and this resistance manifests as suffering. While the pains of life are inevitable, suffering—our resistance to life as it is unfolding—is optional. When we see clearly the price we pay for resisting, we can let go of the clinging that leads to suffering.
But even when we see clearly the wisdom of learning to be with our experience and avoiding the second arrow of clinging or resistance, we can still get caught up in resisting our experience and creating unnecessary suffering in our lives.
I discussed Pema Chodron’s teachings on the Tibetan Buddhist term Shenpa, which is often translated as attachment, but has a stronger meaning of being ‘hooked’, like a fish on a hook. We can be hooked on drink or drugs or anything that we want badly. We can experience shenpa when we are in conflict with a person or disliking something that is happening. We can get hooked in stress and worry, fearful about what might happen, or in guilt or shame about something we’ve said or done…
The way out shenpa, of being hooked, begins by learning to stay with our experience: “The sad part [of being hooked] is that all we’re trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and the urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don’t keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by. Someone once sent me a bone-shaped dog tag that you could wear on a cord around your neck. Instead of a dog’s name, it said, ‘Sit. Stay. Heal.’ We can heal ourselves and the world by training in this way.” (Pema Chodron, 'Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears')
I spoke about the way these teachings—on the two arrows and on shenpa—are essentially teachings on the four noble truths. The first noble truth is the truth of suffering—and our task is to see clearly when we are suffering and to acknowledge it. The second noble truth is the truth of the cause of suffering, which lies in clinging. Our task is to acknowledge our own role in creating or perpetuating our suffering—through adding the second arrow of resistance or scratching the itch of shenpa—and to let go of clinging. The third noble truth, the truth that there is an end to suffering, which comes from letting go of clinging, has to be attained or realized in practice. And the fourth noble truth is that there is a path to the end of suffering—a path of training in living ethically, training the mind, and cultivating wisdom: the noble eightfold path.
Poems I shared: ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver; ‘The Way It Is’ by Lynn Ungar; ‘The Guest House’ by Jellaludin Rumi; and an excerpt from ‘Peace is this moment without judgment’ by Dorothy Hunt.
Wishing you a good week ahead. I look forward to seeing you for our next live session on Sunday, September 14 at 9am eastern and on the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of the month through the end of 2025. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
