Two kinds of suffering -

At tonight's sangha meeting I participated in a confusing discussion, an almost adversarial discussion between CCCC and me, with CCCC stating that they feel tonight's discussion around self-reflective attitudes on suffering doesn't really help them.” ... that “They are far more interested in how this practice can help the suffering outside in the world…out there as it were”  ...that "they don't worry too much about how they practice mindfulness...eg, the minutiae of noticing their 'expecting mind'...(as I suggested is an important practice for moving me forward throughout the day); they said they dont need this angle on meditation support to notice their desiring mind...their mind of expectation...(I think they misunderstood the point about the nature of suffering, the benefit of non-judgmentally noticing The Desiring mind or noticing of the gaining idea) they said they are much more interested in alleviating the suffering of the world. And here's what's interesting about that to me: What is helpful about noticing the gaining idea? How subtle is it? How pervasive? I'm going to need to further articulate how to appreciate and explore the concept of the two kinds of suffering.

To wit: There are two kinds of suffering And the first kind of suffering that we all experience is The suffering that leads to more suffering for me and for you. --> If it's suffering for me there may be direct suffering for you of course, and in the case of your suffering and how it may impact me, your reaction to your suffering can create suffering for me. Looking at suffering in me, initiating in me, for a variety of reasons for example - If my suffering is an anger, a suffering of anger or blame or loathing, you could potentially suffer for that if I pursue blaming and loathing as my conditioned response. 

And then there's the other kind of suffering that we are susceptible to and because of our human nature -  we can choose to experience and process suffering in such a way that this suffering leads to the end of suffering... This kind of suffering is an intentionally 'acknowledged' suffering in that i choose not to medicate, distract, or submit to externalizing the experience...but rather use it as a noble messenger, to observe it. Another way of putting it is that I can attempt to be 'empathic towards my future self'... make that fateful decision to cutoff the grasping for relief from this moment's discomfort in favor of relishing the natural change of all phenomena, including and especially my experience of pain and dukkha in this moment. This is unconditioned, and radical - also called ‘radical acceptance’....A very-hard-to-do kind of suffering but some practitioners say it's critical for my transformation, for the transformation of the suffering (the idea of ‘no mud, no lotus)... that is to say … an acceptance of the pain, to accept the pain... "this is how it is for the moment -- it will pass -- it is impermanent...To accept the mental confusion, to stay with the afflictive emotions (see Pema Chodron): the sadness, the fear… the afflictive cravings, said differently: those desires that when grasped only lead to suffering… that do not deserve to be grasped, the temptations --- And it is that second kind of suffering that leads to the end of suffering for me and for you..this is the suffering that serves our deepest aspiration; we become cognizant of the directions and choices we need to choose to feed the ‘good wolf’...  for example...we listen to the negative self-talk, we notice if for what it is...thoughts and ruminations... and anxieties.. these are essentially food for the bad wolf (the two wolves parable) and we push back by bringing up..well, perhaps curiosity about how these are triggered...but not for even a moment carried away by them. lol, okay...well maybe only for a few moments...

H Byrne - Jun 9

 Live Session Summary, Sunday, June 11, 2023: It was good to be with you today for our Live session on ‘5 Steps to Free the Heart and Mind.’ Here is a summary of the main themes, quotes and poems from today’s session: 

We began by reviewing the first three steps to free the heart and mind that we discussed in previous live sessions: 

1) turning towards our experience—from autopilot, habitual and conditioned responses, and unconsciousness into present-moment awareness of our experience;  

2) opening wholeheartedly to what is present here and now—welcoming the guests, saying ‘yes’ to what is, bringing radical acceptance to what is present; and 

3) investigating and recognizing our suffering—the truth, the reality that ‘this is suffering’ (e.g., a feeling of being hooked, tangled, stuck, wanting things to be different, etc.) This is the first of the Buddha’s four noble truths—the truth of suffering—and our task is to recognize and acknowledge that we are experiencing suffering.

We then discussed the fourth and fifth of the five steps: The fourth step is to investigate and recognize our own role in our suffering. The Buddha taught that the cause of suffering is craving/clinging—wanting things to be a certain way, to stay around if they are pleasant, to be gone if they are unpleasant. 

We often believe that our suffering is caused by a person, a situation, or experience—for example, I’m suffering because this person is acting in a way I don’t like, or I’m suffering because I’m having an experience that is unpleasant or painful. But the Buddha taught that suffering always involves a relationship—an unskillful way of relating to a situation or experience. There is something that we are doing (or not doing) that is creating and perpetuating our suffering—for example, clinging to the belief that I’ve ‘got to have X’ or ‘get rid of Y' to be well and happy. 

It's the craving—the unskillful wanting—that is the cause of our suffering. In the Pali language, the word for this craving is tanha, which translates literally as ‘thirst.’ 

I highlighted the metaphor of the ‘second arrow’—the first arrow is the painful situation, experience, feeling, etc. The second arrow is what we add on—'this pain needs to go away’, ‘this person needs to be/act different than they are,’ ‘I have too much to do and I’m going to fail, let people down,’ etc. It’s often said, ‘pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.’ Our suffering comes from adding second and third arrows—for example, getting angry (second arrow) about a person’s behavior (first arrow) and then judging ourselves (third arrow) for getting angry (second arrow)… and so on.

The way of ending suffering—the fifth step—is to let go of craving/clinging by coming into acceptance of our experience just as it is, learning to stay. 

I shared a number of quotes from Pema Chodron’s discussion of the Tibetan Buddhist concept of shenpa, or being ‘hooked’ from her book, ‘Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears.’ 

• ‘The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully…’

• ‘We are encouraged to get comfortable with, begin to relax with, lean into whatever the experience may be…’

• Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives…’

• Finally, Pema Chodron provides a way of remembering how to work with shenpa, the feeling of being hooked, consisting of four ‘R’s’ for finding freedom from suffering: Recognize the shenpa; Refrain from scratching; Relax into the underlying urge to scratch; and Resolve to continue to interrupt our habitual patterns…

I also shared two poems: Derek Walcott’s ‘Love After Love’ and David Wagoner’s ‘Lost’, a rendering of a Native American elder story. 

I hope this is helpful. At next week’s live session, June 18 at 9 am eastern, the theme will be ‘Always trust in the difficult’. Have a lovely week and see you next Sunday. Warmly, Hugh 🌻 💜 🙏🏻

March 19, 2023 - Hugh Byrne -- Shenpa

 

Live Session Summary, Sunday, March 19, 2023: It was good to be with you today for our Live session on ‘Getting Unhooked.’ Here is a summary of the key points, quotes and poems from today’s session: We all experience feeling that things are not going the way we want them to—we’re not getting what we want or we’re experiencing something we don’t like and want to change or we’re confused, worried, stressed out and want things to be different. The Buddha spoke about this as the first noble truth—the truth of suffering. Helpful metaphors for this experience include getting entangled, being stuck, being attached (in a problematic way) to what we’re experiencing. The American-born, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron uses the metaphor of ‘being hooked’ as a translation of the Tibetan term 'shenpa'. She speaks about shenpa as like poison ivy: “We humans are like children who have a bad case of poison ivy. Because we want to relieve the discomfort, we automatically scratch, and it seems a perfectly sane thing to do. In the face of anything we don’t like, we automatically try to escape.” It’s the scratching of the itch that keeps us tied to suffering—whether it’s the itch of craving something, wanting someone or something to be different, being hooked in stress and worry, or avoiding our experience by checking out or trying to escape what we are feeling. In Buddhist teachings, recognizing our own unskillful relationship to our experience—clinging, resisting, escaping—is a key to finding our way out of suffering. It allows us to let go of clinging and experience greater freedom. Here’s Pema Chodron’s description of how we work with the discomfort of being hooked: “In practicing with shenpa, first we try to recognize it… We do this by not following after the thoughts and learning to come back to the present moment. We learn to stay with the uneasiness, the tightening, the itch of shenpa. We train in sitting still with our desire to scratch. This is how we learn to stop the chain reaction of habitual patterns that otherwise will rule our lives… We label the spinoff ‘thinking’ and return to the present moment.” She describes the process in terms of four ‘R’s: “recognizing the shenpa, refraining from scratching, relaxing into the underlying urge to scratch and then resolving to continue to interrupt our habitual patterns like this for the rest of our lives.” The way out of suffering is ‘through’—being willing to stay with the unpleasantness, to stay with the urge to seek short-term comfort without acting on it, to “ride the waves” of emotional discomfort or unpleasant sensations. This is expressed in these quotes from Frankl, Jung, Ajahn Chah, and Mingyur Rinpoche: • “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” (Viktor Frankl) • “What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.” (Carl Jung) • “There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.” (Ajahn Chah) • “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.” (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche) Poems I shared today included ‘I will not die an unlived life’ by Dawna Markova; ‘Clearing’ by Martha Postlethwaite; and ‘Ten thousand flowers in spring…’ by Wu Men. I hope the summary is helpful. Please let me know if I missed anything important or if you have any questions… I’ll see you for the April Live sessions: Sundays, April 9 and April 23 at 9am Eastern.

Hugh Byrne - Sunday, March 19, 2023

Talk by Hugh on 'Shenpa'

see http://www.tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php/The_Shenpa_Syndrome

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Poem by Dawna Markova

i will not die an unlived life. i will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

i choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

i choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.

Byrne - May 8, 2022 - Freedom of the Heart

Live Session Summary, Sunday, May 8, 2022: The theme of Sunday's Live session was ‘Trusting in the Difficult’. I spoke about the way we tend to habitually respond to difficulties by trying to push them away, avoid them, blame ourselves or others for them, or repress them. While it can be wise to move away from what is threatening to us, often, responding with aversion—for example, anger, judgment or blame—to what we don’t like or want is a way of resisting the experience of unpleasant feelings or emotions. Turning towards and opening to the difficult can be a powerful doorway to freedom of the heart. 

I quoted one of Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ where he advises the young man to ‘always trust in the difficult… Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love…’ 

When we ‘trust in the difficult’, what appears as a problem can be experienced as an opportunity to free ourselves from unhelpful habitual responses. I shared some of Pema Chodron’s reflections on the Tibetan word shenpa, which means a ‘hook’ or ‘being hooked’, and that shenpa is like an itch that we habitually want to scratch—but scratching only makes the itch worse. She says, ‘…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 urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives…’

I spoke of how ‘trusting in the difficult’ is at the heart of the Buddha’s core teaching of the Four Noble Truths—a shorthand statement of this teaching might be, when we cling, we suffer. When we let go of clinging, we experience freedom from suffering—and when we let go completely, we experience complete freedom. Being willing to stay with and experience what is difficult or unpleasant, as both Rilke and Pema Chodron discuss, provides a path to letting go and finding freedom. 

In Zen Buddhism, they say: ‘The obstacle is the path’. If we chose to go through our days treating what’s difficult not as a problem to be avoided or resisted but as an opportunity to open and be present with the difficult or unpleasant experience, this way of seeing can transform our life and lead us to ever deeper levels of freedom. 

The poems I shared included Rumi’s ‘The Guest House’; Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’. and Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’. I also recommended two books on the Buddha’s ‘heart practices’ of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity: Sharon Salzberg’s ‘Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’ and Christina Feldman’s ‘Boundless Heart: The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity.’