Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 57-minute guided meditation session, Ven Thubten Dondrub leads practitioners through an analytical contemplation of the three kinds of suffering. After preparatory posture work and a purification practice using breath and refuge visualization, he guides the group in developing bodhicitta before turning to the core meditation. The first kind of suffering—obvious pain—is discussed through physical and mental examples, including the observation that mental suffering often exceeds physical pain. The suffering of change, harder to recognize, is explored through the insight that what we call happiness is actually unsatisfying impermanence in disguise: a simple illustration uses sitting versus standing to show how apparent pleasure masks subtle discomfort. Finally, the pervasive compounded suffering of samsaric existence is addressed—the fact that delusion and karma shape our body and mind across all six realms, ensuring suffering at every level. The session closes with a determination to use this human birth to achieve lasting liberation. Pitched at practitioners in an organized retreat or study context.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 26. Day 4 Meditation Suffering.mp3
UUID: 8719b0e9-de04-4e6d-b040-29e293ae34b1
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: KI Retreat (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2005 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 57.1 minutes
Words: ~3,403
For this session we’ll do some analytical meditation on different kinds of suffering. Another fun topic. So we start by sitting comfortably as much as possible in the correct posture and checking our posture by starting from being aware of our body from the top of the head, the top crown of the head, moving the awareness down through the body, so noticing any tension existing. Then we begin to prepare our mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise, and with each in breath, breathing in the blessings of the Buddha in the form of very soothing, joyful white light, and with each out breath of the cycle, breathing out all our disturbing thoughts, the negative imprints and especially all the obstacles we have to meditating correctly, particularly on this topic, breathing all of that out in the form of black smoke that dissipates and completely disappears, becomes nonexistent. So on the basis of that calm, clear mind, we cultivate a virtuous mind of refuge in the Triple Gem, which simultaneously helps us develop a strong refuge in our own pure nature, our own Buddha potential.
So allow that mind to arise. The mind that is not identifying oneself as this disturbed mind and so on. But recognising that there is this pure mind, this pure blissful mind that is always existing, that is in the very nature of wisdom and compassion. If we can realize it, then we experience everlasting, peerless happiness of enlightenment for ourselves and can be of perfect benefit to others. And the way to realize this mind, its potential, is to rely on the Triple Gem.
So we visualize Śākyamūni Buddha as the very embodiment of the Triple Gem in front of us. Śākyamūni Buddha having realized that pure mind is continuously abiding in that mind always. So we generate the mind of bodhicitta aspiring to achieve those same qualities so that we can have all the tools necessary to benefit other sentient beings, to guide them away from the causes of suffering, to guide them towards the causes of everlasting happiness, of liberation, the peerless happiness of enlightenment. So think of all these kind, suffering, mother sentient beings surrounding you, starting with your parents on either side, family and friends behind, antagonists, who, as we’re learning through the practice of the chapter on patience, these so called enemies, in fact, from a Dharma point of view, are our best friends. So for all these beings, whether they appear as friend, stranger, or enemy, we dedicate our life, this precious human rebirth, to achieving enlightenment for them.
We dedicate this practice right now for all these beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. Reverently I prostrate with my body, speech and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and imagined.
I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time and rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment. So then the Lamrim prayer. And as we say this, remember to try to do the visualisation, the appropriate visualisations as we recite the text.
The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable guru. Correct devotion to him is the root of the path. By clearly seeing this and applying great effort, please bless me to rely upon him with great respect. Understanding that the precious freedom of this rebirth is found only once is greatly meaningful and is difficult to find again, Please bless me to generate the mind that unceasingly, day and night, takes its essence. This life is as impermanent as a water bubble.
Remember how quickly it decays and death comes. After death, just like the shadow follows the body, the results of black and white karma follow. Finding firm and definite conviction in this, please bless me always to be careful, to abandon even the slightest negativities and accomplish all virtuous deeds. Seeking samsaric pleasures as the door to all suffering, they are uncertain and cannot be relied upon. Recognising these shortcomings, please bless me to generate the strong wish for the bliss of liberation.
Led by this pure thought, mindfulness, alertness and great caution arise. The root of the teachings is keeping the Prātimokṣa vows. Please bless me to accomplish this essential practice. Just as I have fallen into the sea of Samsāra, so have all mother migratory beings. Please bless me to see this, train in supreme bodhicitta and bear the responsibility of freeing migratory beings.
Even if I develop only bodhicitta but I don’t practice the three types of morality, I will not achieve enlightenment. With my clear recognition of this, please bless me to practice the bodhisattva vows with great energy. Once I pacify distractions to wrong objects and correctly analyse the meaning of reality, please bless me to generate quickly within my mind stream the unified path of calm abiding and special insight. Having become a pure vessel by training in the general path, please bless me to enter the holy gateway of the fortunate ones, the supreme vajra vehicle. At that time, the basis of accomplishing the two attainments is keeping pure vows and samaya.
As I have become firmly convinced of this, please bless me to protect these vows and pleasures like my life. Then, having realised the importance of the two stages, the essence of the vajrayana, by practising with great energy, never giving up the four sessions, please bless me to realise the teachings of the Holy Guru. Like that, may the Gurus who show the noble path and the spiritual friends who practice it have long lives. Please bless me to pacify completely all outer and inner hindrances. In all my lives, never separated from perfect Gurus, may I enjoy the magnificent Dharma by completing the qualities of the stages and paths may I quickly attain the state of vajradhara.
So then think that Śākyamūni Buddha is very pleased, the whole field of refuge, is very pleased with us, with our motivation. Because of that, the lion throne on which the guru is seated dissolves into light, absorbing up into the lotus sun and moon. And then the Guru Buddha seated on these now comes to the crown of our head, turning around, facing the same direction as ourself. Then make a strong heartfelt request to the guru buddha for one’s mind to become completely free of all hindrances, obstacles that prevent one meditating correctly and realising the suffering nature of cyclic existence. cyclic existence being our own mind controlled by delusion and karma.
Think the Buddha happily responds, sending this continuous stream of blissful white light and nectar from his heart into us through the crown of our head. It fills our whole being and washes out all those obstacles which take the form of very thick, black liquid that leaves from the lower part of our body, completely dissipates, becomes nonexistent. And then a continuous stream of golden light and nectar comes from the Buddha’s heart into us, blessing our mind, energising our mind, inspiring us, clearing our mind so that we can meditate correctly and gain a valid, stable realization of the suffering nature of cyclic existence. So having prepared our mind in this way, we direct our attention to contemplating the different kinds of sufferings and throughout the session always being mindful to check if, obstacles are arising, such as the mind becoming very dull, sleepy and so on, bored, depressed or something, or on the other hand becoming agitated in some way, wandering to some other object. As soon as we notice those things with mindfulness, we should try to let go of them, apply the antidote.
One simple method we can use is recalling the Buddha on the crown of our head and immediately feeling this blissful, very powerful white light in nature coming into us that completely wakes us up, completely dispels any wandering mind. And then we bring our mind back to the topic. So we can reflect that while our mind is controlled by delusion and karma, while there is the fundamental root delusion, the root affliction of ignorance, that the mental factor that gives continuous rise to a false appearance of ourself and others, while that exists in the mind, while that obscures the mind, then there will always be the different afflictive emotions and the creation of negative karma. And through that so the delusions themselves, when they arise in the mind, are suffering, and they create the cause of suffering. So while the mind is obscured in this way, we will continuously experience the three kinds of suffering.
So the first kind of suffering that we will experience, which is inescapable, is what we understand as suffering, the suffering of pain, or what we can call the suffering of suffering. So this can be either physical suffering that arises in a human body, an animal body, a hungry ghost body, a body of when we’re trapped in the hell realms. It can range from just a simple headache or an itch in the body to horrific physical pain. So this suffering of suffering is experienced only in the desire realm. It doesn’t exist in the form or formless realms.
But when we take rebirth in any of the six realms of the desire realm, we will always experience some form of the suffering of suffering, either the physical suffering or mental suffering. So we can reflect that there are many kinds of mental suffering. Suffering fear, worry, the suffering of anger, the suffering of attachment. Suffering of depression, anxiety. If we think about it, one can check up.
Actually, the mental suffering is perhaps far worse ultimately than any physical suffering. For example, it is said that in the god realms, where one is born to experience incredible pleasure for millions of years, at the very end of that rebirth, one becomes aware that one is going to die and fall into the lower realms. In the teachings, it says that mental suffering of knowing that this incredible pleasure is going to stop and be replaced by this horrific suffering, physical suffering in the lower realms, that mental suffering of the gods in the last period of their life is the worst suffering in cyclic existence. And this we have to experience again and again while we have ignorance, delusion, and karma, karmic imprints. For us in the human realm, probably the most the worst suffering of suffering is the most subtle one, which is the sense of one’s existence, life in general, being meaningless.
That hollow feeling in the heart that nothing is satisfying, that nothing has any lasting meaning. Is that very subtle, hollow, empty feeling we have that leads us in our confusion to create so much negative karma, trying to make ourselves happy, distracted, to avoid experiencing that painful feeling. We follow how desperately our self-cherishing thought in order to hide from that empty feeling that always threatens to rise to the surface of our awareness. What we need to reflect and understand is that the more we actually follow the self-cherishing thought, chasing after the meaningless things of life, the more we actually reinforce that empty feeling inside us. So the suffering of suffering is said to be easy to recognise, that even animals, of course, understand, recognise the suffering of suffering and try to avoid it.
But the suffering of change is far more difficult to recognise. Because the suffering of change is referring to what we, as human beings, identify as happiness. Since we’ve never experienced even the bliss that comes from developing single pointed concentration, let alone the bliss of nirvana, the bliss of enlightenment, how our confused mind labels what is actually in the nature of suffering incomplete, unfulfilling, unsatisfying, we label some of these experiences as actual happiness, believe it’s happiness, grasp it, desire it, get attached to it. So we need to reflect that everything that we have ever experienced, that we think of as happiness, that we’re attached to, that we desire and chase after can be understood to be not real happiness simply because it doesn’t last. Everything that gives rise to our happiness, if we check the object of our desire, our attachment, is something produced by causes and conditions, which means it’s impermanent, which means it cannot last, and therefore, the apparent happiness that rises from it obviously cannot last.
So when that happiness stops, the only obvious experience that arises in the next moment is suffering, disappointment, shock, surprise, depression, disappointment. Another way we can begin to understand that what we have always believed to be happiness is actually an example of the suffering of change, is that what we label happiness is only happiness relative to some worse experience. Relative to feeling hungry, eating food is pleasurable, is happiness to our mind. When we’re bored and something comes along to distract us from our boredom, we label whatever it is as some kind of happiness. And another way to understand it is also in relation to being something relative is that we have never experienced anything with a mind free of attachment, ignorance and anger.
So we have no example of an experience in in our lifetime of what the mind can experience when it’s free, of completely free of delusion. So because of that, things that are actually in the nature of being incomplete, unsatisfying, not completely fulfilling, for our confused mind can appear to be real pleasure, real happiness, because we have nothing really to judge by, to compare with. And then we can reflect, meditate, try to see how what we label as happiness is in fact in the nature of suffering, unsatisfying, not only because it’s impermanent, it doesn’t last, not only because it’s something relative, But because these pleasurable, happy experiences, they don’t only change into suffering. They actually, in their very nature, are unpleasant, unsatisfying from the very moment they arise. They never are happiness.
If these experiences were real happiness, they would remain as happiness. But we can reflect on a common example that is given in the teachings. That, for example, if we stand for a long period of time, the body becomes uncomfortable, tired, and we’re experiencing suffering of suffering. And we recognise it as such. So then we sit down in a comfortable chair and relax.
And we label that experience as some kind of happiness, pleasure. But as we continue to sit for some time, the pleasure that we first experienced gets mixed with some discomfort and we have to move, adjust ourselves. And eventually, we have to stand up because the apparent pleasure of sitting is no longer existing. It seems to have stopped. But the reality is that there was never any pleasure in sitting from the very beginning.
From the very beginning, from the moment we sat down, there was actually the suffering of sitting. But we didn’t notice it. Our mind was too obscured to notice it because what we paid attention to when we sat down was that the obvious suffering of standing stopped. That’s what we noticed. And compared to sitting down, compared to standing up, sitting down seemed to be to our confused mind.
It seemed to be pleasure. We didn’t notice the subtle suffering of sitting down. But as time goes by and we forget the suffering of standing, we become aware of the suffering of sitting. It was there from the very beginning. We didn’t notice it.
If sitting down was actually real pleasure, genuine happiness, the longer we sat In other words, if sitting is the cause, sitting down is the cause of happiness. The longer we prolong the cause, the longer we continue to sit, then we should continue to experience happiness. It shouldn’t decline. In fact, it should even possibly increase. But it doesn’t.
The apparent pleasure gets less and less. This is because it was never there in the first place. So this simple example applies to every experience we have. Every pleasure, happiness we’ve had has never been real happiness. It just looks like that to a confused mind.
To help get a clearer sense of that, we can reflect that if we think of any example of some cause of suffering. For example, if we stick a needle, a pin, into our skin, it hurts. And if we stick it in again, it hurts. And if we stick it in again, it hurts. Every time we stick it in our skin, in our body, in our flesh, it hurts.
No matter how many times we create the cause of sticking the pin in the skin, we always get the same result of pain, obvious suffering. This is because the suffering we experience is suffering. But if we can prolong, continue the causes of the things that we label happiness, If we continue to eat, drink, sleep, do anything that we call happiness, the happiness doesn’t stay the same. It doesn’t increase. It actually gets less, even if one keeps the cause going.
And this is showing that it’s because that happiness never was happiness. It was never there in the first moment. And then we can reflect on the most subtle kind of suffering that exists, which exists throughout all the realms of cyclic existence. Every being in the desire realm, in the form realm, in the formless realm is continuously experiencing this very subtle, compounded, pervasive suffering. Suffering in the sense of not obvious pain but that which is incomplete, unsatisfying, unfulfilling.
That compounded pervasive suffering is referring to the mere fact that as a sentient being, we have a body and mind that is produced life after life by delusion and karma and is controlled by delusion and karma. Just because this human body can give rise to pleasure but which in fact is actually only the suffering of change, remember? But also this body, just the mere fact that we have this body of flesh and blood, we can experience incredible suffering. When the body is healthy, there’s some kind of contentment. But when the body goes wrong, falls apart, it can give rise to horrendous suffering.
Same with the mind. And it’s called compounded because these things compound each other. The suffering of our body is a condition for our mind to suffer. Our mind finds the suffering of our body unbearable. And the suffering of our mind can cause our body to become sick, unhealthy, and experience all sorts of disease and pain.
The two things compound each other. This is the very nature of our existence when we have delusion and karma. While we have saṃsāra, we never go beyond suffering, even for a moment. We can complete this meditation by making a very strong determination to use this precious human rebirth, which gives us the optimum chance to recognize our suffering, and rather than perpetuate it, to direct the mind towards achieving true happiness, pure, lasting happiness, the everlasting happiness of liberation, the peerless happiness of enlightenment. And to direct our mind in this way, not only for our own sake, but so we can help all the kind suffering Mother sentient beings who are trapped in only experiencing again and again these three kinds of suffering.
And as they experience them, creating the cause for them to happen again and again. Then recall the Buddha on the crown of your head, seeing the Buddha as very happy with what we’ve been meditating on and our decision. And then visualise the Buddha as happily dissolving into light, that blissful golden light coming down into us through the crown of our head, pervading our whole being, blessing our mind to gain a complete, valid, stable realisation of the suffering nature of its cyclic existence, the realization that gives us this energy, this pure wisdom energy, to renounce suffering. Dedicate the merit. This is on page twenty six of the first section, the morning prayer section.