Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The Tibetan folk story of a woman driven to despair by her crowded house — until a Lama has her add a goat, then chickens, then a cow, and remove them one by one — anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s 40-minute talk on why we persistently mislabel suffering as happiness. He clarifies that Buddhism’s focus on suffering is a corrective method, not pessimism, then walks through the three levels of dissatisfactoriness: the plain pain of physical and mental suffering; the dissatisfactoriness of change (a shiny new car that slowly becomes a burden); and pervasive compositional dissatisfactoriness, rooted in the ego’s endless effort to sustain an illusion of selfhood. Thai master Ajahn Buddhadasa’s “fish bone in every pleasure” and Hitchcock’s manipulation of tension and release appear as illustrations along the way. The session ends with a short guided meditation on all three levels.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 WtWNN 1987 08 30.mp3
UUID: 3a8874f4-2794-43fc-b2a0-8d13deb25464
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.7 minutes
Words: ~4,981
If we don’t develop this perspective, and when the sun is shining, everything is okay, you say If you would go up to this same person, say, Are you suffering? Oh, no, I’m not suffering. Everything’s great. They’re on top of it all, no problems. I don’t need the Dharma.
I don’t need help from anybody. I don’t need any teachers. I don’t need any spiritual friends. Everything’s okay. Then, they’re surprised when the same problem reoccurs again, and they’re back exactly where they were before.
They say, I don’t want to suffer. Again, the same attitudes. You know, people, they change the people, they get a new partner, new husband, new wife, a new job, they move to a new location, new geography, new scenarios, new scripts, but the same attitudes, the same habit patterns. So nothing has really changed at all. And they shouldn’t be surprised if the same problems keep reoccurring again and again.
So we have to recognize suffering as suffering. We have to get some perspective on our problems. If we are ever going to really change, develop determination to consistently work towards an overall solution to our problems and not simply trying to solve one difficulty after another. This isn’t the ultimate use of dharma. We have to see the overall pattern of how we are constantly recreating suffering for ourselves.
In doing that, we have to recognize suffering as suffering. If You know, we’ve been talking about how we mental label things, conception, how it works. If we conceive of pleasure, if we conceive of suffering, if we conceive of pain as being pleasure, then we shouldn’t be surprised that if every time we stick our hand in a fire, we get burnt. What we conceive of as pleasure is, in actuality, painful is actually suffering. But we conceive of it.
We’re talking about the way we conceive of things, we impute labels upon experiences. This is happiness, this is happiness, this is happiness. But perhaps it’s actually fire. And if you keep putting your hand in that fire again and again because you conceive of it as being a source of happiness, But every time you put your hand in that fire, you get burnt because your experience must be in accordance with the reality. Your mistaken notions have no connection with reality.
So we have to recognize suffering as suffering. Quit mislabeling suffering as happiness. In order to do that, we have to begin to gain a perspective on what are the basic problems of our existence. Now, it’s not a theory of Buddhism that life is suffering. In Buddhism we start talking about suffering, are like, yuck, I don’t want to hear about suffering.
It’s just a bunch of hair shirts laying on beds and nails. Again, they’re trying to take away my happiness from me. I’ve got enough problems without thinking about suffering. So people tend to think, well, Buddhism is very pessimistic. And the world is black, and we all have to repent, and the day of doom is coming.
It is not a theory of Buddhism that life is suffering. On the contrary, all sentient beings will achieve perfect happiness in Buddhahood. That’s it. We use suffering in order to finally develop the determination to give up the causes of suffering. So we have to differentiate between theory and practice.
Sometimes they call it the metaphysics and methodology of Buddhism, wisdom and method. It’s not the theory of Buddhism that life is suffering. We make use of contemplation of suffering as a practice in order to bring our mind into accordance with the reality, in order to bring our mind into a balance into a balance. For example, there’s a condition called anorexia, where it’s difficult for people to eat food for one reason or another. They find they have no appetite.
They look at food and it just makes them nauseous. In that case, a good Buddhist psychologist might say, We have an imbalance here, let’s try to correct the problem. Let’s look at the food and look its texture. See how luscious it looks, how delicious it looks. And you smell it, ah, smells good, doesn’t it?
And you’re trying to work up some appetite. How nutritious this particular food is, how it’s going to nourish your body and strengthen you. You put a little bit of food and you taste it in your mouth, you really get into the taste, how delicious it is. In order to correct an imbalance which has been created through this aversion to food. Now, on the other hand, most people have attachment to food.
When I was in Thailand, we would come back from our alms round with our alms bowls full of food. Most of monks, you’re supposed to look in your alms bowl. You’re supposed to think how disgusting everything in this bowl is. I don’t know, I used to think, well, I’m going eat that first and then I’m going to eat that. I had to space myself out.
One place I stayed for quite a while, we ate one meal a day there. One meal a day, you have to be careful about what you eat. You have to make sure that you get nutrition. If you fill up on rice, then there’s not enough room for more nutritious food. But of course, have to leave room for your sweets and cakes and things like that.
So I was thinking, I need a little vitamin C, I’ll a little bit of that. I need B, and then the sweets. While they were thinking how disgusting it is, was ordering out my menu plan. They look at food in a disgusting way in order to bring their mind to a balance, as a way of counteracting attachment. In the case of anorexia, we look at how delicious the food is in order to counteract the problem of aversion to food.
So these are the methods. We’re looking at a method in order to bring the mind to a balance, a balanced point of view, where there’s neither aversion nor attachment. So it’s not a theory of Buddhism that there’s anything wrong with fear. There’s nothing wrong with fear. There’s nothing wrong with anything.
You know, whatever it is, relationships, money, sex, if they’re not used to fulfill neurotic needs. We can make use of anything, we can enjoy things, there’s no problem. Actually, in some ways, we could talk about the theory of pleasure and pain. There’s always this duality. Without knowing what far is, we cannot know what near is.
Without knowing what high is, we cannot know what low is. Without knowing what light is, we cannot know what darkness is. So these things are always relative to one another. Pain is relative to happiness, isn’t it? Pain is relative to pleasure.
Without knowing pleasure, we don’t know what pain is. Without knowing pain, we don’t know what pleasure is. If we’re going to seek pleasure, we have to accept pain. There would be no way of conceiving pleasure without understanding pain. It’s our reference point.
The far side, the far mountain and the near mountain. If we go over there, what was near the near mountain becomes the far mountain. And then what was the far mountain becomes the near mountain. It’s purely relative to your position. There’s a story that Doc told me.
It’s about this woman in Tibet. She was living in her family, and in the family there are the husband and his family and his brothers and his sisters and his father and grandfather and grandmother and a few great grandchildren. Of course, her family was there too, brothers and the sisters and the father and the great grandmother. It was just living in this little house in Tibet. It was very crowded, very noisy, and very dirty.
And she was just freaking out. She couldn’t stand to stay at home anymore. She was always constantly going outside. Was too noisy for finally one day, she was just overwrought, she couldn’t handle it anymore, and she started running away. And this Lama, he saw her running and said, Wait, wait.
She said, Come, come. And she came over. He said, What’s wrong? You seem very troubled. She said, Oh, Lama, Lama, I can’t stand my home anymore.
So many people, so much noise, so much confusion, I just can’t stand living there anymore. He says, Don’t Just relax, I’m going to help you, and there’s nothing to worry about. So he said to the woman, Do you have a goat? She said, Yes, yes, I have a goat. It’s okay.
I want you to take that goat and put it inside the house. She had a lot of faith in this monk. She said, Okay, I’ll try. She went home and she put the goat inside. The goat, of course, started chewing up the mattresses and using the place for the toilet, you know, everywhere.
Was getting worse, the situation. The goat was crying all night long as she couldn’t sleep. A couple of days later she ran back to the Lama, Lama, it’s worse. I can’t stand it. The goat has made things worse.
Said, no, just relax, don’t worry about it, it’s going to get better. Do you have chickens? What do you call them? Chooks. Do you have chooks?
Yes, yes, I have chooks. But what? No. Put all the chooks in your house. Still she had faith.
So she went home, put all the chooks in the house. Now the chooks are on the rafters, you know, going to the toilet, over the place, picking and walking around. People are tripping over the chooks, and they’re clucking all night, she can’t sleep at all. She’s really freaking out, so the next day she goes running. She goes back to Lama, I can’t stand one more night in the house.
I said, Relax. It’s okay. It’s okay. Do you have a cow? She was about ready to give up.
I’ll keep trying. I have a lot of faith. Yes, I have a cow. Take the cow and put it in the house. She went home, put the cow in the house.
She got all these people, the goat, the chickens and the cow in the house. And the was mooing them all night long, using it in places that filled with stool, know, the place is just a nest, you can’t even walk on the floor anymore. It stinks. It’s just a lot of confusion, it’s just too much. So she decides to completely run away.
And she’s running away, and Lama sees her, Wait, wait, come, come. She stops, Mama, I can’t stand anymore. It’s too much for me. It’s going to be okay. Just relax.
Take the cow out of your house. She said, Okay. So she goes back to her house, and she takes the cow out. That night, things are a little bit better. It’s not quite as noisy, it’s not quite as smelly without the cow in the house, not quite as confusing.
She comes back the next day to the Lama and he says, Well, how are things now? She says, Well, it’s a little bit better. I still can’t stand it, but it’s a little bit better than it was. I said, Okay. I want you to take the chickens out of the house.
She said, Okay. So she goes back to the house. She kicks all the chickens out of the house, cleans up a little bit. It was pretty quiet that night. No chickens in the house, and it wasn’t as smelly as it was before.
It wasn’t quite as confusing. She didn’t keep tripping over the chickens anymore. She goes back to the lama the next day, and the lama says, Well, how are things now? She says, Oh, they’re getting better. Things are a lot better than they were.
It’s okay, now take the goat out the house. She goes home, takes the goat out of the house. Now there’s no bleating all night long, the floor is clean for once, and she gets a good night’s sleep. She goes back to the Lama the next day and says, How are things now? She says, Oh, Lama, I can’t believe how wonderful my house is.
It’s so clean and so neat and so quiet. I don’t know why I ever wanted to leave home in the first place. So it’s our conception. It’s our conception. All these values are purely relative.
What was confusion before is now, you know, a very quiet, peaceful atmosphere compared to something else. What was pain, what we what we call pleasure is merely being labeled and what we conceive of as pain. If we begin to understand this, begin to understand that it’s the nature of the mind, the nature of what it means to be alive, that it seeks happiness, it will seek to avoid suffering naturally. It’s our basic sanity. We don’t have to think at all about it.
What causes this suffering, we will move away from naturally. It’s a dynamic quality of the mind. What we conceive of as happiness, we will move towards that naturally. We don’t have to think about it. So it begins to become very important to understand what actually is happiness and what actually is suffering.
Because if we understand if our happiness, what we conceive of happiness, if it actually is happiness, then our mind will begin to tend toward that direction. But if we misconceive of what happiness is, if we keep labeling pain as pleasure, we’re going to get hurt again and again and again. Our mind is naturally going to go towards peaceful, happy states. So, we want to know what are happy, what is in reality happiness, what is in reality peace, what is in reality pain. If we understand that, we will quit mislabeling suffering as happiness.
We will know happiness as happiness. And our mind will naturally tend toward that direction. This is the basis of renunciation, knowing what is happiness and what is suffering. So we have to recognize what is suffering as a method. We talk about various levels of suffering.
There are three levels of suffering. We call it dissatisfactoriness. Perhaps dissatisfaction is a better word. The dissatisfactoriness of pain, the dissatisfactoriness of change, and the dissatisfactoriness of pervasive composition. Pervasive compositional dissatisfactoriness.
The dissatisfactoriness of pain, this is obvious to our experience. These are feelings that we actually experience for ourselves. First was physical: toothaches, headaches, backaches, all the various types of physical suffering, physical dissatisfactoriness that we experience. This is quite an easy level to understand. Actually, it’s interesting, isn’t it, to think about masochism?
Know, being beaten with a whip, for example. Some people experience that as pleasure, don’t they? Is it really pleasure? Is it really pain? Which is it really?
Another level. The dissatisfactoriness of pain mental pain mental pain, our sorrows, frustrations, loneliness, depressions, you know, we’re we’re very familiar with these. Being separated from that which we desire, coming into contact with that which we do not desire, not finding that which we seek. All the various types of mental sufferings that we are constantly undergoing. So these are the simple dissatisfactorinesses of our everyday life.
We’re very well acquainted with these. It’s not difficult to see these. But we also have to begin to examine what we call pleasure. Ajahn Buddhadasa said that we talk about contaminated pleasure. All our various pleasures, they have Ajahn Buddhadasa, he’s a Thai master, lives in southern Thailand, and he lives near the ocean.
Of course, they eat a lot of fish. So He uses these examples whenever he’s giving a talk, somehow connected with the sea. He says that all are contaminant pleasures, they all have a fish bone in them. You’re eating this nice delicious fish and there’s always at least one little bone that gets stuck in the throat. This is the nature of our contaminated happinesses.
They have some little fishbone in them. They’re not completely satisfactory. We have to examine what we mean when we say happiness. Most of our happiness, most of our pleasure is simply the negation of prior deprivation, Simply put, the lessening of tension. We were hurting a great deal before, and now we’re not hurting so much.
We call that pleasure. It’s like an idiot sitting in the corner. He’s sitting there pounding himself over the head with a hammer over and over again. Someone walks up to the idiot and he says, Why are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer? And he looks up and says, Because it feels so good when I stop.
This is, in a great, enlarged sense, the nature of our pleasure. We build up tensions, and we release ourselves from these tensions. This release we call happiness. All of Western music, for example, most of drama is based upon this idea of catharsis, release from tension. If you look at what made Alfred Hitchcock such a great director.
Usually in thrillers, in mysteries, have small buildups of tension, release buildups of tension, release. Hitchcock, he manipulated the tension throughout the entire movie, building constantly, and you become very uneasy, tense throughout the entire movie. Finally, at the end released you from it. There was this great catharsis. We call this happiness.
Some people seek tension, they seek The physical nature of sex is the building up of energy. I’m talking about purely from the physiology of it, the building up of energy. Actually, from the physical point of view, it becomes painful, and then there’s a release of this, and this we call happiness, physical bliss. People fight, husband and wife fight, because it feels so good to make up. Sometimes it’s the happiest moment in their whole marriage, is when they make up after a fight.
So they actually begin to promote fights amongst them, have quarrels, in order that they can make up. Constantly So all of our pleasure is related to pain. What we call pleasure is to someone who has seen someone with understanding. He said that’s still within the area of suffering. It’s not moved out of suffering.
We only call it pleasure, we only label it pleasure because we only have this relative reference point of very severe pain. In meditation, if you begin to experience peaceful states of mind, then what you can conceive of as pleasure moves towards that. It becomes a natural tendency toward peaceful states of mind. In the Thai tradition, the Theravāda tradition, they call this the tendency toward the unconditioned, nirvana. We experience moments of cessation, of suffering, of peace.
Through that experience, the mind begins to restructure its patterns, what it conceives of happiness. We no longer label gross happinesses happinesses anymore. Those become painful. A whole scale begins to shift. What we call happiness becomes more toward actual happiness, the actual piece of nirvana.
And we begin to what was before we thought of as a pleasure, we now see as a type of suffering, constant moving of the mind toward the unconditioned. nirvana is a matter of labeling, isn’t it? Dependent arising. What we called happiness before is no longer conceived of happiness. We see it as actual suffering, coming more and more in contact with the way things actually are by understanding the nature of suffering.
So that’s the first level, the dissatisfactoriness of pain, physical and mental pain. We have to look into it, look into actual pleasures, begin to analyze, get some perspective, see what their nature, see what the patterns of our pain are, how we recreate pain. The second level, the dissatisfactoriness of change. The dissatisfactoriness of change. We buy a car, you know, it’s nice and shiny.
Shine it up with a rag. We carry a rag with on around with us to shine it up. And it’s a great deal it becomes a it’s a very great deal source of pleasure, source of pride. We identify with something very beautiful, therefore I am beautiful. When people see the car, they see me.
I am the car. Feeling. But slowly we begin to have problems with the car. Something goes wrong with the car, it gets a scratch on it that doesn’t quite look as nice as it did. We begin to have problems with the car.
Now, if the car were an inherent source of pleasure, it should be consistently bringing us the same pleasure as it did before. But now it’s changing. What was the source of happiness before is starting to become a source of problems. The engine starts, something goes wrong with the engine, you know. Insurance, gas, the price of petrol keeps going up.
But still we hold on to that pleasure as if it was the same car as it was before, because we want to hold on to our source of pleasure. And so there develops frustration, disappointment. We can’t go along with the fact that the car is changing, that it’s impermanent. We want to hold on to that car as if it were that original source of pleasure. In the Tibetan tradition, they use the example of, if you’re in the mountains, if you go up about seven or eight thousand feet in the mountains, the atmosphere becomes very thin.
And at that height, the sun is very harsh, even if it’s not winter, even if it’s during spring. You’re walking around outside at this altitude, and the sun is very hot, very hot, so it’s painful. You go into the shade. Because you’re in the mountains, it’s usually very cool in the shade.
Immediately, to get rid of the hot heat, go in the shade. I feel better now. It feels cool now. It’s comfortable. Slowly.
It’s getting a bit chilly. And you start getting a bit cool and a bit uncomfortable. So, well, maybe I’ll go back out in the sun. And you go back out in the sun. Ah, that feels better.
Nice sun. Feel warm, comfortable. It’s getting a little hot. The sun’s pretty strong. And maybe I’ll move back in the shade.
We’re not talking about the physical suffering of heat and cold. We’re talking about the necessity of having to keep moving on again and again to reestablish these happinesses. The suffering of change, that we can never hold on to the happinesses that we have. They’re always changing into suffering. They’re always changing into something else, constantly slipping through our fingers.
Constantly we have to again create the causes, again try to bring about happiness. It’s like we’re on a treadmill, constantly trying to recreate happiness again and again and again. This is the suffering, dissatisfactoriness of change. We can never rest. We can never have peace.
The third level of suffering, the suffering of pervasive compositional dissatisfactoriness. Is that the third one? That’s the third level. Pervasive compositional dissatisfactoriness. Pervasive compositional dissatisfactoriness.
This can be thought of in a few different ways. The reason it has this name, usually they take Traditionally, they take the contaminated aggregates, the contaminated body and mind, as an example of pervasive compositional suffering. It’s pervasive from this standpoint in that wherever you go within cyclic existence, whatever states, either physical or mental, that you may enter into, you are going to undergo this type of suffering. It’s compositional. That is, we have this body, which is a contaminated body.
It is the result of contaminated actions. That is, actions arising motivated by ignorance, not understanding the nature of reality. Due to having this contaminated body, we not only experience suffering presently and dependence upon that, but because we have this body, we create further sufferings. We create causes for further sufferings in the future. Therefore, it becomes a composite of present sufferings and future sufferings.
So it’s pervasive, compositional, dissatisfactoriness or suffering. There’s nothing you can do about it. If you walk outside, you step on insects, you’re killing constantly. Just to live, you have to kill. Even you have no intention to, the food going to eat today was raised at the expense of hundreds, thousands, millions of sentient beings.
No question about it. Because we have this body, we have to eat that food, and we share in the negative karma which is created in killing those sentient beings. Is to develop some feeling of, Well, I’ve to get rid of this body, this contaminated body and mind. Another way to look at this problem of pervasive compositional suffering, we have a mentality and materiality which is predisposed to suffering. We have a physical body and mind which is programmed to suffer.
Right? You know, we can take this in a very extremely simple example. It’s almost simple, it’s laughable. If you didn’t have a head, you would never have a headache, would you? Right?
But there’s some basis to that, there’s some thinking to that. If you didn’t have You know, you have the karma to be a woman. You’re going to experience the sufferings of a woman. I am going to suffer the have the karma to suffer the sufferings of a man. So we’re predisposed physically to undergo certain types of suffering.
I am never going to have the suffering of having a miscarriage. That’s not my karma. I can sympathize with somebody who did, but I can never experience that suffering. I don’t have that physical program, that karma. Mentally, we have our programs.
We have certain mentalities. In the sense, we have certain samsaric occupations that we take up. You know, we talk about the six realms of existence, as being actual physical places. We can actually experience these in the course of one day. We can go through these very six realms of existence.
Usually one realm predominates. These are lifestyles, particular versions of reality, certain habitual patterns, how we relate with ourselves, with our environment, from certain perspectives, certain attitudes, either the attitude of a god, attitude of an demigod, as a hell being. So we have these programs, and we’re constantly playing out these programs, which predisposes us to the various sufferings which are particular to each of all the realms. Each program has its particular suffering. You know, whether it’s the constant physical pain of a hell being, where he sees his entire environment as being hostile, where everything becomes aggressive, attacking him, paranoia, or it’s the suffering of a God where he becomes absorbed in a particular blissful state, and then the ending of that blissful state is extreme suffering.
Very much like what happens during the We become absorbed in You just polish the floor. You really got into it. And you polish the floor, and your kid comes in tracking mud on your floor. You activated some absorption and enjoyment in your polished floor, and then you fell from that, and you get angry, and you fall, and you suffer. So there are these various attitudes that we’re programmed for, all these patterns, these neurotic patterns that we’re bringing to our life, passing through these various realms.
Also, this idea of ego. The ego is based on a misconception, isn’t it? It’s not based in reality. It has to be continually reinforcing itself, reestablishing its own existence, reestablishing its territory. This is painful.
Over and over again, who we are, what is our image, how are we going to relate with people. There’s no fluidity, no spontaneity, no openness possible. We are continually having to act out patterns to keep reinforcing this image, this ego, some solidity. As long as we have this ego, we’re going to suffer this composition of pervasive suffering, constantly having to reestablish our existence because the ego, in fact, does not exist. It’s an illusion.
But by perpetuating it, by going fast enough, we give the illusion of existence. You know, when you a film is just single frames, isn’t it? One frame every twenty four seconds twenty four frames a second, I think. But if it goes fast enough, it gives the illusion of life. There’s actually some there’s something moving on the screen.
It’s an illusion. If we move fast enough, if we go through these patterns fast enough, there’s an illusion that there’s somebody there who’s controlling everything, observing everything. This is painful. It’s a very subtle type of pain, but still it’s painful. These are the various levels that we have to consider to gain some perspective on the actual nature of our situation.
We have to recognize suffering as suffering, gain some perspective and begin to understand the nature of our problems. Simply by the process of this investigation, we’re going to tend to move away from what we begin to realize as suffering. It’s the nature of the mind, it’s our own basic sanity. It will naturally move away from suffering. We don’t have to make any effort to do it whatsoever.
When we begin to recognize happiness as happiness, peace as peace, the mind will naturally flow in that direction. It tends toward the unconditioned peace, nirvana. But we have to investigate it. We have to analyze for ourselves. So we’re going to meditate on suffering.
So take a firm but comfortable posture. Be mindful of the breath for a few minutes, and then we’ll begin meditating on the three types of dissatisfactoriness. First, the dissatisfactoriness of pain, physical pain. Let us just recall various physically painful experiences, earaches, headaches, tiredness, heat and cold, thirst, broken bones, bumps on your head, just simple physical pains constantly reoccurring. Just think of some of those, try to experience.