Suffering, Impermanence, Egolessness
THE NINE YANAS of the Buddha’s way were developed to enable people—psychologically, personally, physically—to surrender themselves to the Buddha’s teaching. The nine yanas seem to be an absolute necessity. If we did not have the first yana, nothing could be achieved at all. We have to start with the first step, which is the shravakayana, in which everything is looked at in terms of a human situation, a physical situation. Here the Buddha is regarded as
son of man who still had a physical obligation to this earth. He was also wise. He saw everything in our life situation as consisting of pain. But at the same time the nature of pain is characterized by impermanence, and the experiencer of the pain is regarded as nonexistent. So there are these three points: The nature of life is pain; the nature of pain is impermanent; and the experiencer of pain is nonexistent.
You might ask, if the experiencer of pain is nonexistent, how come there are situations in which we feel that we do experience pain and pleasure, very solid situations? How do we know that this nonexistence is the case? If the Buddha said that being is nonexistent, how do we experience pain and how do we experience impermanence?
We simply say, “I don’t know about everything else, but I still feel pain. I do feel pain. I do feel frustrated. I do feel unhappy, I really do. I don’t know about the impermanence or nonexistence of my being, but I simply do experience pain, I sure do.” Well, in some sense, that’s great. At least you have found some relationship with the teaching. If you really do experience pain and suffering in its own way, that’s wonderful, fantastic.
Are you sure, though, that you are really experiencing pain, experiencing it in the fullest way? “Well, I’m not even certain of that, but I do feel some kind of discomfort. I do experience pain when I’m pushed into a corner, but during the rest of my life, I’m not so certain whether I actually experience pain or not. I do experience pain when somebody hits me, cheats me, or insults me. Then I do feel extreme pain, discomfort, anger, and so forth. But the
rest of the time I’m not so sure whether I feel pain as a continual thing happening to me. All the same, I feel that there’s something hanging out that’s bugging me; and I don’t feel absolutely free either. Particularly when I check up on what’s happening with me, I feel funny. I feel some sense of being trapped, but I don’t know what it’s all about. Maybe this is happening, but maybe also I’m just imagining it. I can’t say. Something is happening.
Sometimes I feel haunted, and sometimes I feel I’m just being silly—I should forget the whole thing. I should just go out and enjoy myself and do my own thing, whatever I want. But even if I try to do that, I can’t really do it, because I still stop and look back at myself and what I’m doing. And once I begin to check what I’m doing, I feel uncomfortable. Something is bugging me somewhere. Something is happening behind my back, as if I had a huge burden
that I’m carrying all the time. But I’m not sure if this is the thing that’s happening to me or I’m just imagining it. Maybe I should stop thinking altogether. But I already thought of that and tried it. The more I try to shake off the watcher, the more I feel I have to make sure that I have shaken him off. I couldn’t shake him off because I was being watched all the time by my shaking-off project that was happening to me.”
Maybe Buddha had similar experiences, even identical ones. There was a sense of ambition to become a spiritual or religious person. Buddha went so far as to leave home. He left his parents and his wife and infant child. He fled from his palace and plunged into the world of yogic teachers, Hindu masters. But still something didn’t work, because in some sense he was trying too hard, trying to become great, the greatest spiritual warrior of the century. He was trying to achieve something; he was concerned with achieving and with saving himself.
That seems to be the problem that we encounter all the time. We feel uncertain because, though we feel we know what direction we should go in, when we try to follow that direction, that itself seems to become a source of ignorance. The direction we were following seems to turn into clouds and clouds of darkness. Finally we begin to lose our sense of direction. But that seems to be the basic point: In relation to that, we discover pain, duhkha. That pain
is a self-existing thing that we cannot escape. Beyond the pain, we try to find the source of the pain, the origin of the pain, but we don’t find it. We find bewilderment and fogginess, uncertainty of all kinds. But that is the discovery of the origin of pain, which is a very important discovery indeed. Discovering the origin of pain does not necessarily mean that we should give up hope, or that we should give up fear, for that matter. Giving up means disregarding the whole thing rather than working with it.
Pain is constantly existing. Even if we find the origin of pain, it is a constant discovery, a very powerful one. Pain exists all the time whether we feel happy or sad. The happiness is superficial; pain is behind the happiness all the time. The pain goes on constantly; the self-existing pain, the pain of self-consciousness, the pain of ambition, and so on. All of those go on all the time regardless of the superficialities of what we feel. The facade is different, but behind it is the fundamental pain that is happening constantly.
The experience of pain thrives on its own fickleness. It is like a lamp burning or a candle flame. The flame has to breathe very fast to remain solid and still. It has to get fuel from the candle as it burns. It is continuously breathing, so the stillness of the flame is based on the continuity of discontinuity. Constant death and constant birth are taking place simultaneously. We cannot hang on to life as though it were something solidly continuous
like a pipe. If life wasn’t changing, if life was a solid thing happening solidly, then we couldn’t have pleasure and we couldn’t have pain. We would be frozen into jellyfish or robots, reduced into rocks. Because we are able to experience our pain and pleasure, our highs and our lows, depressions and excitements, all kinds of things can develop in our life situations. That means that there is automatically some sense of change or shifting happening all the time.
A bridge wouldn’t be built if a river was still. Because a river is dangerous and turbulent and passing all the time, because the current is happening constantly, therefore we build a bridge. Otherwise we could just put a huge boat there and walk across that. The sense of discontinuity is important. Impermanence is important.
But before getting into impermanence further, we should mention that there are different types of pain. There are three types of pain. The first is pain as a natural condition. This is the pain that is always there. Even when we are indulging in the pleasure, extraordinary sybaritic pleasure—delightful, beautiful, fantastic, deep, profound pleasure, pleasure that is physical, psychological, reassuring, solid, textural—even that contains a tone of suspicion
constantly. Even if we have millions of guards to protect our pleasure domain, still there is a tone of pain happening. However extraordinarily happy we may be, there is still a tone that suggests that the whole pleasurable situation might possibly be extraordinarily painful. There is a sense that we are dwelling on, digging, the pleasure for the sake of the pain or digging the pain purely for the sake of the pleasure. It feels questionable—our mind is completely intoxicated, so we are uncertain whether we are digging the pleasure to defend against the pain or digging the pain to defend against the pleasure. That is the quality of self-existing pain. Pain is definitely not fun, not particularly pleasurable.
The second kind of pain is the pain of change. You think you have pleasure happening in your existence. You feel you are involved in a real, good, solid, organic situation of pleasure. The pleasure feels extremely definite, even to the point where you no longer feel you have to defend your pleasure or compare it with pain at all. You are out on a sailboat, enjoying yourself, sunning yourself on the deck. The water is beautiful. The sea is smooth. The wind direction is good. You had some nice food before you went out, and you have a nice companion who sparks your wit and takes care of you. It is an
absolutely ideal situation. Suddenly a storm comes, a hailstorm. You don’t have a chance to get yourself together, to protect yourself. Your boat is tipped over. Your wittiness is unable to continue. Instead of wit, aggression now becomes a problem. You blame your companion. You feel it is his fault, because he didn’t take precautions against such a thing. You regret that you didn’t have a life jacket on board. You are just about to die. You’ve sailed too far out into the ocean, because you wanted to be alone and enjoy your friend’s companionship. You have sailed out too far for anyone to rescue you. You regret that. You have killed yourself.
That is pleasure changing to pain. By the way, the traditional analogy for that is being at your wedding party and suddenly having the house collapse due to earthquake, or whatever. That is the second type of pain. The first type was self-existing pain, within pleasure.
The third one is the pain of pain. In this case, you are already caught up in pain, extreme pain. Real, juicy, good pain. For example, you are experiencing the acute pain of just having been in an automobile accident. Your ribs have been fractured, and you can hardly breathe, let alone talk. Even if somebody
makes a joke, it is painful to laugh. You are in extreme pain. Then you catch pleurisy or pneumonia. You can’t talk because of your rib fracture, and now you catch pleurisy or pneumonia, and you can’t even breathe without extreme pain. Or it is like having leprosy, being ridden with leprosy, and then having a car accident on top of that. Or you are already bankrupt, and then on top of that you are kidnapped, and the kidnappers demand more money.
Those three types of suffering are part of the display of impermanence. Suffering happens because impermanent situations exist. Suffering cannot exist on solid ground. Suffering has to dwell or develop in a situation, and situations can develop because situations are constantly changing. We die so that we can be reborn. We are born so that we can die. Blossoms bloom in the spring so that there will be seeds in the autumn. Then the winter gives the seeds time
to adapt to the soil. Then spring comes again. The seeds are awakened after their hibernation. Having settled down to the ground, the seeds are reawakened. Then the plants grow, and there are more seeds. Then another spring comes, another summer comes, another autumn comes, and so forth. Things change constantly, always.
We think we can keep a record of things if we write them down in our notebooks. “On this particular day, such-and-such a thing happened. I heard a word of wisdom on this particular day. I’ll write that down.” You write that down today for the sake of what you experience now. But then you walk out of this situation and you relate with yourself tonight, tomorrow, the next day, the next week. When you read your note again after that, it is not going to speak
to you as you thought it would when you wrote it down tonight, right now. The inspiration and the impact are going to change, change constantly. Let’s see what happens if you write something down: that the pain of pain is acute and powerful. Then you’ll walk out of this hall and spend your time: tonight, tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next day, and so on. You will begin to develop self-consciousness concerning the fact that you wrote this thing down rather than relating to the idea or the philosophical implications that inspired you.
Things are like that constantly. Statements that we hear and things that we experience are not as solid as we would like. For that matter, even the experience of enlightened mind flashing is not all that permanent. It is a temporary situation. Fundamentally, we are distrustful people, all of us. We can’t trust ourselves at all. We get one impression one moment and another impression the next, and so forth. We cannot repeat what we experienced the previous hour, thirty minutes ago—at all. We are untrustworthy persons because we are subject to impermanence.
Moreover, if we keep changing to the next subject, it’s because we have no substance to hang on to. This is what we call egolessness, if I may introduce that subject as well. The notion of egolessness refers to the fact that we don’t have any central headquarters. We do not have a definite thing, definite ground, to maintain—me, mine, my existence as such. We have been fooled by the play back and forth [into thinking that there is such a thing]. It’s purely
that we have been fooled by the back-and-forth, by impermanence, thrown back and forth between this and that, that and this, past and future, future and past. People are thrown back and forth constantly like a Ping-Pong ball. So in conclusion I would like to point out that we do not have a heavy basic solid soul or ego as we would like to have. We do not have that at all. Because of that, we are so frivolous that we are unable to grasp any teachings, any solid situation of basic sanity at all.
If we had some basic ego, a solid thing with aggression and passion happening to it, then we might be able to grasp onto that as a monumental expression of some kind. We could say: “Once I killed myself. I would like to make that into a monument, a reference point for praise. I would like to show that to other people: ‘This is my monument—my having killed myself.’ ” But that won’t work. You are not around anymore if you have killed yourself. Yet it seems that
that is what we are asking for: “I have become an extraordinary person because I have given up what I was and have become what I would be, and this is my image for the future, which is independent of the present.” That [making a monument out of hanging on to your projection of yourself] seems to be one of the biggest problems that has happened. So egolessness at this point means that you cannot hang on to anything; you cannot hang on to any experience. Student: Is the trouble and pain of samsara potentially the same for everybody?
Trungpa Rinpoche: I think it’s the same for everybody, yes. If somebody values pleasure, then pain automatically comes along with it as its shadow. If somebody asks for light, a shadow will be there along with that.
Student: I thought you said that pain was there regardless of the pleasure, that it was not just a complement to the pleasure but was continuous in the background in any case.
Trungpa Rinpoche: Yes, the background is also pain, painful. It is not a matter of choice; it is a constantly painful situation. But the background is also asking for an ideally pleasurable background, asking for the whole thing to be smooth. This asking for smoothness is trying to defend against roughness, which automatically invites pain.
Student: We seem to be using pain for a lot of different things. I understood that the background pain is not the same as the other pain that we invite when we try to insist on pleasure.
Trungpa Rinpoche: Yes, you are right. There are several types of pain. The background pain is very low key, backgroundish. It has a basically paranoid quality, a quality of being haunted. Then there’s the actual pain that challenges your pleasure. Then there’s more actual pain [the third type], which invites chaos. It is a suicidal thing. You have one pain and you invite another pain on top of that.
Student: Is understanding the pain that you call the background pain the Buddha’s teaching?
Trungpa Rinpoche: All the pains are teachings. That alone is nothing particularly extraordinary. But you should also realize that you were born out of pain and dwell in pain as far as the way of samsara is concerned. So any element that is related with the pain is the truth of duhkha, suffering, the first noble truth. Just experiencing the pain is not quite the point; the point is acknowledging that such pain does exist in your being. Acknowledging the pain is the teaching.
Student: It’s easy to acknowledge the pain. I just say, “Well, the root of everything is suffering.” But it’s another thing for me to be aware of the experience.
Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t particularly have to stop in order to experience it. You have the experience first. That seems to be why you are here attending this seminar, which is in itself a very positive action. You have decided to come here and discuss the whole thing, which is a very inviting situation, a hopeful situation, a pleasurable one, we might even say. Your being here means that you have decided to work on your pain. That’s great, wonderful. But that doesn’t mean that we here are going to undermine your pain. We are going to accentuate the meaning of your pain. The teaching does not provide a possible hope, the possibility of a pleasurable situation. The teaching provides intelligence to relate with the pain.
Student: Does the background pain lack coherence in the way you were talking about with the candle flame? Does the background pain exist as a kind of moment-to-moment thing, rather than—?
Trungpa Rinpoche: It’s always there, always there. The front part of the pain is depression, excitement, and so forth [it is more fickle]. But the background pain goes on all the time, simply because you have experience of some kind. Experience is pain. Your human functioning—any kind of intelligence that goes on in your mind—is pain, because you feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. Even if you have a tremendous insight to the effect that you are going to conquer the world, make yourself a million dollars, still there is something not quite fitting. There is some kind of hole somewhere that is not quite comfortable. That is the original pain. There is a very mystical experience of pain, something not quite comfortable.
Student: Why do we decide to continue to exist? Some people say that the ego is body-consciousness, so it seems that the body could decide to keep on living even when the ego has decided not to live anymore. But if you really decided you didn’t want to be on this planet, couldn’t you just leave it when your body was sleeping?
Trungpa Rinpoche: You can’t.
S: Why not?
TR: You can’t, because you begin to notice yourself. No other logic is necessary. Because you notice yourself, you let the rest of it come along as well. Anyhow, committing suicide does not solve the whole problem. You killed yourself. There is someone watching you being killed. S: The ego isn’t body-consciousness, then?
TR: The ego is self-consciousness. And self-consciousness is automatically the relative reference point for other at the same time. In that sense, you cannot destroy the law of relativity. So you have to live.
That is precisely the idea of enlightenment: transcending the barrier between this and that [[[self]] and other]. But enlightenment does not mean suicide, killing this or that. That doesn’t work. Purely removing the barrier between this and that is the only solution. Student: Is pain a kind of energy?
Trungpa Rinpoche: Yes, pain is energy.
TR: If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be here. Buddhism wouldn’t be here on this continent if there wasn’t enough pain. Your pain has brought fantastic energy. That’s why I’m here. That’s why Buddhism, buddhadharma, is here. That’s why tantra is here. Without pain there is no energy. That pain is an indication that you are serious, that you want to relate with your situation in the space of truth, if I may say so.
Student: Rinpoche, it seems that pain brings on a certain inspiration. For example, when things get very painful, there’s a shift from the background to the foreground. This means that you can be aware of the pain, and somehow that begins to change the energy. But then inspiration goes. It leaves once the pain goes back to the background. It goes back and forth again. How do you sustain the inspiration?
Trungpa Rinpoche: Inspiration shouldn’t be regarded as a cure or as medicine. Inspiration shouldn’t be regarded as an enlightened state. The inspiration is to bring out more shit and piss and being willing to face that. If you are into that, then no doubt you will get more pain, more frustration, more inspiration, more wisdom, more insight, and more enlightenment in your life. That’s up to you.
