How Suffering Leads to Bliss

How Suffering Leads to the Cessation of Suffering 

By Sara Dechen Lhamo

 

So I thought I would write a little bit more on my article from the other day, on The Essence of Buddhism, and expand a bit on the part where suffering leads to negative emotions, and explain how this eventually leads to training, which of course leads to the cessation of suffering itself.

The actions that create harm for ourselves and others, set up the klesha avarana (emotional obscurations) and jneya avarana (thought obscurations) that block us from seeing our True Natures (our tathagatagarbha). This experience of not seeing our True Natures is painful, because the intuitive flow of our True Natures is Pure Love, and the illusion of being cut off from that love scares us, and leads to fear. This fear that we are “cut off”, or somehow separated from that love, is the primary confusion. And because we are afraid, we go into “fight” or “flight” mode, and immediately start trying to cling to it, or fight things in a desperate attempt to get back to that love. But what we’re not seeing, is that we never left the love. What is happening is an illusion is arising, that *fools* us into thinking we are cut off from that love, but we are actually not. And it is for this reason that meditation helps us: because when we meditate, what we are doing is sitting STILL, and allowing those tendencies of confusion, and fight or flight to flow past us.

Instead of acting on them, we exhaust them by letting them burn out, like a fire running out of fuel. As long as we don’t put more fuel into it, we are fine. And what happens is it burns down and starts to go out, our confusions (of a lack of love) and fight or flight response starts to calm down. As this occurs, we feel more and more peace, and of course, in the process of this, we become less emotional, and erratic in our thoughts, and less stressful. If we keep this up, as a regular practice, we eventually start to get through all of it; all the karmic tendencies we’ve carried with us over all the lifetimes. While it might be painful at first to sit there with that, what we start to see over time, is that the painfulness becomes less and less, and we truly start to get some lasting peace as we finally calm down and start to feel that connection with our Tathagatagarbha again, our True Natures.

"[The] experience of not seeing our True Natures is painful, because the intuitive flow of our True Natures is Pure Love, and the illusion of being cut off from that love scares us, and leads to fear."

As we start to relax into our True Natures more and more, we still get bouts of unpeace coming as emotions and disturbing thoughts do still come up regularly. But we also start to connect to our True Natures more and more, and this starts to build up faith for us, as we start to have faith in the process and realize that this is in fact working to get us to our True Natures once more. As we see that the process works, we start to have ever-stronger faith in it, and this in turn leads to our doubling-down on the process and putting more and more energy into our training, which in turn leads to more and more result, compounding the healing process. And thus, eventually we hit the cessation of suffering itself, and complete it. And be at peace. And this is how the process works, and it’s important to know that the suffering does end.

"Finally, it builds to the point where they just can’t stand it anymore, and are willing to do anything, and so sit down and give Buddhism, or meditation a try."

But what about the start of this process? The start of the end of the cessation of suffering so to speak? How does that come about? Well it comes about when a being truly has enough. They have suffered enough over many lifetimes and realized, truly (often the hard way) that running and fighting really does not work. They have fought their battles, and fled for ages, and it just made them more and more miserable. Finally, it builds to the point where they just can’t stand it anymore, and are willing to do anything, and so sit down and give Buddhism, or meditation a try. Initially, they may have a few tastes of peace and then leave again to go back to their regular habits. But those memories of peace stick with them and as they try their old ways again, eventually they remember that the one thing that actually gave them peace was Buddhist training, or sitting down and meditating, and so they try it again. And so on, and eventually it just becomes enough of a positive force, over many lifetimes that they don’t leave the path and truly dedicate themselves to their alleviation of suffering through their training. And this eventually leads them to true and lasting peace.

Incidentally, the name of this process, when someone has a first taste, is called a Stream Enterer. When someone decides to train for a while for a more extended period, it’s called an Enterer and Abider. When that person eventually returns to the world again to go back to their regular habits, they are called an Enterer and Abider with the Result of Once Returner. When they finally realize that training is the only thing that will bring them peace, they are called an Enterer and Abider with the Result of Non-Returner. And when they finally, truly hit Nirvana, they are called An Enterer and Abider with the Result of Foe Destroyer: having destroyed the True Foe, the negative thoughts and emotions. So this is how the cycle and process of training works.


© 2019, Sara Dechen Lhamo

What past lives are for.

(Note: This article was originally published December 6, 2016)

What past lives are for.

by Sara Dechen Lhamo

 

 

I thought I would write this article on what past lives are pragmatically useful for, in the context of spiritual training. Specifically I am writing this from a Buddhist perspective, but presumably since these experiences are universal, this would be just as useful to any spiritual trainee, regardless of tradition. The reason I am writing this, is because I’ve often seen, especially in Buddhist circles, the question of “why should I believe in past lives?” And/or “what practical use is it for? This teaching?" Indeed, it is perfectly true that one can go years, a lifetime even, without having any past lives come up, and do perfectly good training. In fact, I’ve known many monks who have done so in just that way.

However, there IS a point, to past lives, and for those of us who have had them come up, they can be an invaluable aspect to our training.

The purpose of past lives, is to show us WHY we are suffering, and *what* specifically happened, so that we can learn not to repeat it again. This is *very* important, because what most people don’t realize who are doing spiritual training (even for many years) is the mistakes we make, we tend to make over, and over again, from life to life. In a sense, what we do is oscillate back and forth between opposite reactions and extremes. Going from one extreme of one bad habit to the opposite other extreme, and back and forth again from life to life.

The *reason* why seeing past lives is important, and why it’s *very* helpful to us in spiritual training, is because it allows us to get a glimpse into this larger pattern that we have done, over life to life. This allows us an incredible key, a key insight that allows us to then see a larger, macro middle path if you will, that allow us to notice that when we engage in certain behaviors, we are engaging in a pattern similar to what we have done before, and that by doing so, we are starting to swing the pendulum from one side to the other again.

In my own life, this has been extraordinarily helpful. It has allowed me to see insights into behaviors, fears, and tendencies that I normally would not have seen, and start to “get the larger picture of things." In a sense, it opens up our memory to not just this life, but to others as well, which allows us to see that we are much older beings than we imagined.

Part of why, this life is considered like a dream state, is because each life we go through, is not separate. They are really one life. Death as we know it is really just like going through a sleep/wake cycle that we do every night. Only its like every day, we wake up with amnesia of the previous day. As though we are trapped in the movie Groundhog Day.

When we start to experience previous lives, it is the same as though we start to remember what we did yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. When we start to see the longer term picture, it allows us a perspective on our own lives, and we can see that the consequences of our actions effect us not only in the immediate future, but also years and lifetimes down the road. I can say with personal experiences, that intense, deep sufferings that I had, were not caused in this life. And when I experienced this, and saw that much older cause, it amazingly opened up a wider view.

One of the perspectives of this, is it takes away a victim view. As we come more and more to see that we ourselves are responsible for many of our own circumstances, (due to our choices in previous lives), what remains is not blame of other people, but rather compassion for them, humility, and a deep desire to train to root out the habits and klesha that caused us to do those choices in the first place. We begin to see, that “Wow, I really was an ass, in that life, and that anger carried forward and caused me to continue to make angry choices in this life, and that’s effected me here, and that’s why this situation with this specific person went down the way it did, because I was an jerk and was perpetuating a karma from a previous life that had nothing to do with this present situation."

We learn that a lot of our negative emotional states, really have nothing to do with this life at all. And are simply perpetuated habit energy left over from conflicts, choices, and confusions from previous lives. And this is incredibly liberating. Because it means, by seeing it, and understanding it, we can do something about it. And prevent it from happening again, not only in this life, but in future lives as well. Which really, are all just the same life. Just with different bodies.

So why the amnesia? Why don’t we just remember the previous life at birth? Well some of us do. Actually I know some people who have very good recall of their previous existences, beings we might call “very old souls”. Also many children remember their previous lives better. But for most of us, the reason has to do with kindness. As we become spiritually older beings, (learning and gaining wisdom and experience from life to life) we do start to remember such things more. However, the reason why we don’t remember them so easily at first, is because if we did, we would have an unfortunate tendency to want to repeat the same mistakes again, and try to re-live the circumstances of the previous birth.

And the problem with that, is so many of our tendencies are pure ignorance and fear-based confusion. Forgetting the specific circumstances of our previous lives until we’re ready to remember them, helps us experience those same bad habits in different circumstances, without understanding why we do them. This helps us see that these habits are problematic and don’t really work. Over lifetimes, life after life, we learn and realize that certain kinds of things, just ultimately don’t get us what we really want. They don’t bring us true and lasting happiness.

This gets back to the pendulum. Over time, as we learn and spiritually age, what tends to happen is as we swing back and forth between extremes, eventually we start to back it off a bit in how extreme we swing it. We realize, “going that far with it, really led me to suffering and hurt, so I won’t go that far this time, I’ll just go a little less far, but still indulge it.” Of course, this doesn’t work either, and we learn that indulging those bad habits still causes us suffering and to be dissatisfied.

So the next life we back it off a little more, and a little more. Eventually, we come to stop doing the same things very much at all. And especially, if we are actively engaging in spiritual practice and training, we can greatly accelerate this learning process, in effect, doing lifetimes of training in a single life, gaining huge amounts of wisdom and experience in a very short time. Eventually this leads to Buddhahood, or us evolving into very spiritually advanced beings, such as great Bodhisattvas. This is actually the meaning of the Buddhist symbol Unalome:  

Where the spiral at the bottom represents the aspect of our lives where we spiraled away from harmony with the Eternal; the middle section representing where we have finally had enough and are spiritually training, (yet still oscillating between extremes); and the final section where we are coming back into harmony with the Eternal, leading to full Buddhahood.
 
-A side effect of this also, is that as we stop indulging these habit energies, we become much happier! And much more at peace. Much more centered and at tune with the universe. And so real joy can start to develop, or and real peace and freedom from fear. We start to see, in effect what fools we’ve been, and start to act more sensible! And this is one of the great effects of this.

I will add one note before I end this. And that is that NOT experiencing past lives in one’s spiritual training, is not an indicator of poor spiritual training. In fact, one can be doing SUPERB spiritual training, and never experience this. I know personally many monastics who have been training for over 30 years in a monastic environment. Some of those monastics have had some or many past lives come up over the years, and have talked about them. Others, have had none, and yet are considered some of the most respected monks and nuns in the monastery. If someone does NOT have such experiences come up, they should not take it as an indicator that they are doing bad Buddhist, or otherwise spiritual training. It should just be understood that these things can and do come up with people, and they can be invaluable to spiritual training when and if they do.

So I hope this has been helpful in explaining a little bit about the point of past lives, and what they are useful for, in a pragmatic sense, in spiritual training. I hope you all have enjoyed this, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions that I can.

Homage to the Buddha,

Homage to the Dharma,

Homage to the Sangha.

-Sara  




© 2019, Sara Dechen Lhamo

The Essence of Buddhism

The Essence of Buddhism

by Sara Dechen Lhamo

I thought I would explain what Buddhism is, as simply as possible, and how it works, in plain language whilst also explaining some important key Buddhist terms. So, without further ado, here it goes:

The Three Main things: 

 

• Klesha avarana (emotion obscurations)

• Jneya avarana (thought obscurations)

• Tathagata-garbha (The Buddha Embryo, Our True Nature, and source of Intuition)

In Buddhism, we are taught that our True Nature, our Buddha Embryo, our True Self is already enlightened. However it is covered up, obscured by our emotions, and thoughts. To be able to be enlightened all the time, we have to learn to listen to our intuition, which is that third source of information, and voice of our True Selves, and also purify and master our emotions and thoughts so that they no longer trouble us. To do so, there are three primary ways (antidotes) that we do this. To master our emotions, we do so by seeing that our emotions are not true reality. To master our thoughts, we do so by seeing that every object of our thoughts is actually interconnected. And third, both obscurations can be removed by meditation, on Shunyata, the true underlying nature of reality. And we do this by the regular daily practice of observing everything (including our emotions and thoughts) arise and pass and seeing the interconnected nature of things.

The Cause of Suffering (the Second Noble Truth) in Buddhism is that from lifetime to lifetime, we inherit klesha avarana (negative emotions) and jneya avarana (negative thought patterns), through karma from this and previous lives. Karma refers to actions, and by this we mean volitional actions (actions we chose to do) through our body, our speech, and our mind. Because actions have consequences, some actions lead to the cessation of suffering (enlightened, or meritorious activity; willing actions) and some actions create harm for ourselves and others (willful actions). Notice that the commonality here, is the positive or negative use of our free will.
 

The actions that create harm for ourselves and others, set up the klesha avarana (emotional obscurations) and jneya avarana (thought obscurations) that block us from seeing our True Natures (our tathagatagarbha). This experience of not seeing our True Natures is painful, and is what we experience as negative emotions and thoughts in this and future lives. One might think of this as a kind of karmic “PTSD” as it were, that is passed down from past to future lives. The main form that this takes is fear, which leads to confusion, aversion, and clinging (the Three Poisons), and these later compound and complicate themselves into all the negative emotions and thoughts that we see people having with all the mental illnesses, and stresses, and neurosis we see forth. All of these things are just different types of klesha avarana and jneya avarana.
 

To undo this pattern, to undo this suffering, requires implementing the three antidotes to the avarana, (the obscurations) that were previously mentioned. In the process of doing this, we may have past lives come up, or see many other insights. But the important thing is to purify and remove the obscuring kleshas and jneyas (the negative emotions and thought patterns).

"[When the] obscurations are removed, the intuitive knowledge of our True Natures, our tathagatagarbha can flow freely..."

To help prevent new karmic obscurations from forming, there are lists of certain actions which are particularly known for causing suffering. These are usually shown in the form of the Ten Precepts, or Ten Unwholesome Actions, or other lists. But these are not a hard and fast rule, and while they are helpful, ultimately we have to trust our own intuition, as well as remove the obscuring avarana, so we may be free of the klesha avarana and jneya avarana (emotion and thought obscuration) that block our view of our True Self. Once those obscurations are removed, the intuitive knowledge of our True Natures, our tathagatagarbha can flow freely, and with our thoughts and emotions completely at peace, we have true happiness. A happiness beyond “happiness". True Tranquility and Rest. And real Peace. And we call this Nirvana, or the Cessation of Suffering.
 

Once Nirvana is reached, since there no longer is any klesha avarana, and jneya avarana (obscuring emotions and thoughts) that obscure our view of our True Natures, we also no longer create any new negative karmic obscurations (because there is no more fear and other negative emotions and thoughts that would lead us to do unwholesome actions, or anything blocking our intuitive flow of our True Natures), and thus there is no more karmic obscuration that is reborn and passed on to future lives. Thus at the time of death, we enter parinirvana which is the final nirvana of the time of death. Thus breaking the wheel of the cycle of suffering, and preventing new suffering from taking place in the future. We are freed.
 

Also, one final very important note: When talking about a “self” in Buddhism, you’ll often hear people talk about how there’s no "self” or no “ego”. What is actually being talked about here, is the klesha avarana and jneya avarana. It’s not referring to the True Self, our tathagatagarbha. Because people often mistake their emotions and thoughts for their True Self; as a short-hand, Buddhists will often refer to these things as the “self” or the “ego” in Buddhism, and say there’s no “self” or no “ego”. But it’s very important to know what this means, and that it refers to the fact that the klesha avarana and jneya avarana are not our True Self, and are actually what is obscuring our view of our True Natures. And this is a very important point.



© 2019 Sara Dechen Lhamo