Pali – dukkha. Sanskrit – duḥkha. ‘Du’ – bad, or difficult; ‘kha’ – axle hole at the centre of a wheel... Therefore: the ‘bumpy ride’ you get with such an ill-fitting axle. We might call ‘dukkha’ the ‘bumpy ride-ness’ of life.

Life hurts. Every sentient being feels pain. This is just part of nature; an inevitable part of existence. Just like light and dark; up and down; cold and hot... There is pain – dukkha; and there is ease – sukha.

What we call dukkha exists along a very broad spectrum – from almost indiscernible or very faint unsettledness, through to deep anguish or agony, torment. Most often, we see it translated as ‘suffering’, but also unsatisfactoriness, sometimes stress, distress, anguish. I prefer to use the Pali original, because all translations to me miss something of the nuance of the original.

And this is the Buddha’s main project: to become intimate with – to deeply understand – dukkha. And to transform our relationship with it, so that we don’t suffer.

So – if pain is a part of nature, it’s an inevitable part of life, what are we transforming?

The key is in our relationship with pain. Life hurts – but what we habitually do is rail against that! We want life to ‘be like this’ and ‘not like that’ – essentially, we “argue with the inarguables”, as the Insight teacher Christina Feldman puts it. Our preferences FOR THIS and AGAINST THAT is what creates dukkha. And this of course points to the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths: That there is dukkha (i.e. we DO suffer). There is a cause (i.e. we suffer BECAUSE we want life to be other than it is). There is freedom from that cause (i.e. when we let go of the wanting). And there is a way to live that establishes us more and more in that freedom (i.e. the eightfold path).

The Buddha taught there are three kinds of dukkha. And in all three cases, remember that it’s about our response to what arises – it’s the movement of the heart in response to experience...

1. Dukkha dukkha – is the dukkha associated with physical and mental pain. For example, stubbing a toe, or a headache: our response is: ‘it hurts’. Another example is hunger: it’s uncomfortable physically and unpleasant mentally – we want to eat in order to alleviate the discomfort. Or the dukkha of letting someone down – it hurts mentally and emotionally; or seeing an injustice done to a person or group of people – it stings, sometimes really intensely!

Because we are born into a physical body, and have heart-minds (i.e. we’re part of nature), we are subject to illness, injury, old age, loss.... But it’s our aversion to this that creates dukkha!

2. Viparinama dukkha – is the dukkha associated with change. All things in the known universe, in our experienced world, change – everything is impermanent. But we want pleasant experiences or things to last, we grasp after pleasant experiences or things we don’t yet have, and we want what isn’t pleasant to disappear, to be rid of them...

I want the holiday that I’m on to last longer..... I don’t want the migraine that arrives with intensity – I want it to be gone..... I see my body aging and think ‘surely this isn’t really happening to ME!’..... Even on that holiday, as I find myself feeling very happy experiencing a great meal, or watching a sunset, or sitting on a beautiful wild beach, there’s something underlying that happiness that knows ‘I can’t hold on to this...’ ‘It’s not mine’... ‘It’s already disappearing’...

But impermanence isn’t the cause of dukkha. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.” Again, it’s our relationship with – how we relate TO – the impermanence of all experience, that means we will suffer, or not.

3. Sankhāra dukkha – is dukkha associated with the built-in unsatisfactoriness of existence brought about by our mistaken perceptions of ourselves and the world. Sankhāra means formation, concoction, or fabrication, in particular the way we form concepts and perceptions about existence; in other words, my stories about me, myself and my world (I, me and mine). And this is the most subtle (and therefore most difficult) dukkha to explore and understand, because these stories about myself and my / the world are so ingrained – it is the sea we swim in. It is also incredibly liberating when we understand this form of dukkha, because this is where all our neuroses, intellectual obsessions and mental ‘knots’ are held. So it takes time, honesty, meditative stillness and enquiry to shine a light on these aspects of mind.

This is the ‘insight’ work of vipāssana (clear seeing) – understanding how we keep fabricating a sense of a self we think is in control, in the face of continual change. And this is a process: sometimes we call it ‘self-ing’. And because we crave and cling on tightly to identifying with that fixed sense of ‘I’ and ‘me’ (and by extension, we crave and cling on tightly to all our concepts of ‘mine’ and ‘my world’ – how the world is, and isn’t – in relation to ‘me’!), we suffer. We’re someONE invested in someTHING being a certain way, moment-to-moment... So then, we might say, self-fabrication = craving and clinging = dukkha. As Ajahn Chah says: “No self; no problem!” Or we might say, no clinging, no problem. No clinging, no dukkha.

It’s tempting to think then, that overcoming dukkha – i.e. suffering, unsatisfactoriness – means not experiencing discomfort or pain. That if I do this practice, follow the Buddha’s teachings, I won’t feel pain, I will only ever feel joy and happiness. But life isn’t like this.

Nothing is only ever just one thing. Life can only exist in its entirety. This is just the way life is, the way nature is. Joy and happiness can only exist BECAUSE of unease and pain, because life is also difficult. Otherwise, how would we know joy and happiness? Everything is relational!

The beauty and poetic nature of the Buddha’s Middle Way teaching is that it is not about moderation – finding a mid-way point between joy and pain, and planting ourselves there: a bit of this, and a bit of that. It’s far more radical than that. It’s about jumping off the duality pendulum (between hedonism and nihilism) completely, and opening to a totally different relationship with life. It’s a recognition of the inherent instability of all things, that we can’t hold on to any of it – and then, opening to life just as it is. Can we meet wholeheartedly what is already arising, painful or pleasant, recognising it will cease, like all things? Without grasping on? Without pushing away? No preferences.

And this doesn’t mean we simply accept whatever happens – we still have agency to act to protect life, for example, or stand up for truth, or peace etc. It’s just that we’re clear about what is happening, we are aware of our heart’s response, and we act from this awareness, wisdom and compassion, not from unawareness and kneejerk reactivity. An open embrace is the expression of an open heart, and a steady mind – in Buddhism we call it equanimity, upekkha. And it arises naturally when clinging to life being a certain way – i.e. dukkha – loosens its grip, and we meet the flow of life more freely. Then, we can simply respond with ‘ouch’ when we stub our toe; feel the sensations of hunger when we realise we’ve missed a meal; feel the intense grief of losing a dear friend. And act wisely. Without adding anything further in terms of self-agenda.

So, in our dharma practice, we work with dukkha by exploring how we’re relating to experience, moment-to-moment. Am I holding on in some way right now? Is there clinging here right now? And – if there is – where am I holding on? Where am I clinging? Am I clinging to the body being a certain way? To a feeling? To the fact of change? Or to a belief, view, a particular take I have on life being ‘like this’? As Pema Chodron says: “Openness actually starts to emerge when you see how you close down.” In that willingness to be honest with ourselves, we’re already creating a smoother axle hole for the free flow of the wheel of life, for less of a bumpy ride.

Last time, we looked at ‘dukkha’ – the sense of suffering, unsatisfactoriness or unease that underlies human experience. And tonight, I’d like to explore the word ‘nibbāna’ – freedom or release from suffering, unsatisfactoriness, unease. In other words, complete peace.

The Buddha spent his teaching life focused on these two things – dukkha, and its ending. Nibbāna is the release from, the letting go of all wanting, aversion and delusion, the three fires that keep us entangled in dukkha. So we might see the path as one of letting go, continually, as we come to see more clearly, to understand, the particular entanglements of our human condition. In that seeing, we essentially change our relationship with our experience – we let go of that which entangles us. We might say then that letting go is the essential movement of the heart, that underlies our freedom.

But letting go isn’t a ‘thing’, because it’s just the presence of an absence, a profound cooling of agitation. A clearing in our lives. An open space that wasn’t there before. Letting go is peace, is deep relaxation.

One of the most expressive metaphors for nibbāna in the teachings centres on letting go: nibbāna (in Pali; nirvana in Sanskrit) literally means ‘going out’, ‘ceasing to burn’, ‘coming to an end’, or ‘unbinding’. This image arose from an understanding of fire in ancient India, where fire burns, is agitated, trapped and full of heat, because the fire element relies on its fuel, it clings to its fuel.

As the metaphor explains, just like a woodfire clings to the logs of wood it relies on in order to keep burning, so we cling to the sense of ourselves by continually imposing ‘I, me and mine’ onto the body, and onto aspects of the heart-mind (the feelings, perceptions, thoughts, views, even awareness). For example, we believe “this body is ‘me’”, “this view is ‘mine’”, “I am anxious, I am kind” etc.

When fire lets go of its fuel – eg. when we stop adding logs to a woodfire – it burns down, goes out – it cools – and in the ancient Indian understanding, becomes free, unbound. In other words, it’s no longer trapped. This nibbāna – ‘cooling’ or ‘going out’ – would be understood in ancient India in everyday language, such as ‘making the fire nibbāna’ (putting out the fire). Or a goldsmith might refer to gold that was dowsed after heated as ‘nibbāna-ed’. Or waiting for food to cool enough to eat would be referred to as ‘nibbāna-ing the food’.

Today, in our cultural context however, when we say nibbāna, or enlightenment, or awakening, we usually take it to mean something rarefied and very far off, an exotic, mystical or unreachable state. And yet, we all know a heart-mind that feels ‘cool’ or ‘cooler’. So, in actuality, the potentiality of nibbāna is always right here, available, very close. Training in cultivating these moments of coolness we experience – when life feels in accord with nature, with the natural flow of things – lead naturally to greater coolness, until, if we continue to take the Dhamma to heart, the “coolest of the cool” as the great Thai Forest teacher Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu called nibbana, reveals itself, the ending, going out of all wanting, aversion and delusion, the ultimate letting go.

The Buddha-to-be discovered this ultimate letting go after many years of striving to find coolness through engaging in harsh ascetic practices, believing that punishing and denying the body would bring freedom to the mind. It was some time before he realised there was no coolness there – he was still creating more heat and agitation. He realised that to awaken, ease is needed in body and mind: establishing a foundation of serenity allows for clear seeing, which allows the fires that entangle us to go out naturally, of their own accord. This discovery he called the Middle Way – not forcing anything, not grasping at happiness or suffering: simply letting body be body, mind be mind, then the grip of clinging naturally loosens, and the fire in the heart cools...

So, nibbāna naturally arises as the conditions for clinging stop coming together – it’s a natural outcome of non-clinging. But clinging doesn’t go anywhere, just as fire doesn’t go anywhere when it goes out. The question ‘where did the fire go?’ simply doesn’t apply – we wouldn’t think to ask that. Like this, nibbāna is synonymous with non-clinging. When we stop clinging, the question where did the clinging go?’ doesn’t apply. We know intuitively that we just stopped holding on. In this sense, nibbāna doesn’t have any particular form, texture, colour, taste, or feel... Because it’s not a thing, it’s not a state, it can’t be found, or nailed down. Which is why nibbāna is often described in negative terms, such as the unconditioned, unformed, unmade, unborn, deathless, un-ageing, unmanifest etc. It’s simply the presence of an absence.

But this freedom is expressed in the wise and compassionate action, thought and speech springing from a free heart – a cool, non-agitated heart. A heart in which the fires of wanting, aversion and delusion, the fires of self-fabrication, have either completely burned out (for one completely awakened), or temporarily burned out (for one well along the path). So we recognise it’s manifestation. Just as we recognise a fire that is gone out, cooled, still, at peace.

So, while there is a goal that we aim for in practice – the completely cooled heart-mind – the path that we walk reveals glimpses of letting go all the time. Each time we sit down on the cushion for example, we allow letting go to happen with each and every out-breath; we’re encouraged to let go of each thought that arises, each unpleasant sensation, each pleasant sensation... Give it back to nature. Let it all be. When we open and meet life without agenda, there’s actually no-ONE here DOING anything at all – rather, it’s just presence being fully receptive to life, which is always fresh, unrehearsed, it’s never been ‘just like this’ before! We might say, we’re nibbana-ing!

And often letting go doesn’t feel that dramatic – we might only recognise the cooling has occurred some time later, in the way we respond to certain situations, or relationships: we recognise a relaxation, a non-reactivity to something that would have once created great tension in our body and heart-mind.

And what of this idea that nibbāna is unreachable for us modern lay practitioners? That it’s only possible to reach such lofty states of being in a monastery or cave? The revered Thai Forest master, Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, says: “When we recognise that there are many levels of nibbāna, which are available according to our circumstances, we discover the sort of nibbāna we need... which is the accessible level of nibbāna that we can have all the time. Get to know this form of nibbāna, bring it into life. Even though it’s not the highest form – not yet the coolness arising from the complete ending of the kilesas [fires of the mind] and underlying tendencies – we all can have a contented, “cooled” life here and now... Just live your life... and dwell with a contented mind.”

And this goes to the heart of this path that we walk towards freedom – it’s a practical endeavour, not intellectual or transcendental. Awakening occurs in the heart, not the thinking mind, or somewhere else. Through the practice of ethics, serenity and insight, we gradually – naturally – open ourselves to inclining towards nibbāna, perhaps the wisest and most compassionate way of being in this human life.

‘Sīla’ means ethics or moral conduct. On the dharma path, it’s one of three fields of training in Buddhism. Sīla is foundational – it’s all about abandoning what’s unwholesome. This supports the other two trainings, samadhi (collectedness) which is about cultivating what’s wholesome (peace and calm in the body, heart and mind) and pañña (wisdom), which is about waking up, liberation. Each of these is needed to support and cultivate the other two. Together, all three move us towards waking up, towards a free heart-mind.

 Sīla is relational – it’s about developing ethical sensitivity in order for personal and social harmony to exist. When we live in harmony with nature, with the way things are naturally, we live virtuously, ethically, within ourselves, and with other beings. If we don’t live in harmony ethically, it’s not possible to find peace, calm, or clarity in the heart-mind. And without peace, calm, clarity, there’s no waking up, there’s no liberation.

 So, given that we can’t live in this world alone, how do we live in a way that allows us to live comfortably together? How do we live on this Earth at this time, as human beings? How do we cultivate ethical sensitivity? As with everything on the dharma path, it’s about practice. Practising sīla is essentially based on non-harming – ahimsa. It’s a practice of protecting and caring for life. Safeguarding coherence.

 Some of you will be familiar with the five primary precepts or ethical trainings that are based on non-harming: training in not taking life, not taking what is not given, not using sensual energy irresponsibly, not using speech irresponsibly, and not consuming what leads to careless behaviour. This training requires contemplation/reflection, and continual enquiry – there’s no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to deciding what’s right or appropriate in any particular situation or moment. And remember here that the Buddha’s teaching is always based on our direct experience, experiential learning and wisdom. So, just as with other aspects of practice, we have to find our own way through with sīla, to know for ourselves what brings greater peace and harmony, and what doesn’t.

 The precepts aren’t rules or commandments – rather, they’re ways of learning to live. Learning to live in harmony and with serenity. They keep opening up as we practice them. While we might say it’s right to speak truthfully and wrong to lie eg., the way we actually practise this is very nuanced and not always black and white.

 In his book, For a Future To Be Possible, Thich Nhat Hanh renders the five ‘precepts’ as the ‘Five Mindfulness Trainings’. He says: “What is the best way to practice the mindfulness trainings? I do not know. I am still learning, along with you.” This humility and openness is what we need to practice sīla, offering a continual willingness to learn, to know that we don’t know everything, to recognise that delusion is still present here in this heart-mind and will still trip us up, and an acknowledgment that we’ll make mistakes along the way. After all, this training aspect of the path is often difficult – I’d say probably the most difficult: when it comes to relationship with other beings (and other humans especially), what we still need to transform in our hearts and minds in terms of relationship with others is most keenly brought to the fore!!

 Two qualities are really helpful when it comes to practising sīla: honesty/truthfulness, and mindfulness. Honesty is the willingness to recognise, clear-eyed, the effects our thoughts, speech and actions have – are they bringing harmony and comfort to our own heart, and to those beings around me? Are they bringing harmony to where I live, to the Earth etc.? Is non-harming predominant? Or not?

 Along with honesty, this contemplation requires mindfulness – the ability to maintain a felt sense of awareness of our actions over time. In other words, to be paying attention! To slow down, rest back into the wider field of things, to pay close attention to what’s going on, and importantly, to pay close attention to my response or reaction to what’s going on. And, in my experience, the body will always give me clues about whether I’m acting with ethical sensitivity, with sīla, or not: I know well the heaviness and mild agitation in the heart that occurs when I know I could have acted with greater wisdom or compassion... It’s like the heart knows (usually) what to do to maintain harmony and care – if we’re listening closely enough! What a gift.

 When we keep practising like this, we see which of our desires, when acted on, are helpful on the path, and which get in the way of our freedom. And this is really important, because everything rests on our desires and intentions, and seeing their fruits. If we pay wise attention – i.e. if we know which questions to ask in order to cultivate wholesome desires, and overcome unwholesome ones – we get to know how kamma works (kamma being the law of cause and effect): that it all begins with wanting, the root of our intentions.

 Sometimes our intentions are good, but the actions that result from them aren’t that skilful (hence the saying: ‘the path to hell is paved with good intentions’!). Hidden somewhere in the intention is delusion, which then tarnishes the action in some way. You see how nuanced and subtle this work is? It takes razor-sharp mindfulness to clock the differences sometimes!

 Essentially the aim of all this is harmony, personally and socially (and of course, the two are not separable). When I can relax with you, because I know you’re looking out for my wellbeing, my possessions, my boundaries, my progress on the path etc.; and when you know you can relax with me for the same reasons, then when we sit down to meditate together, inner calm and contentment can arise naturally and easily from that place of harmony and relaxation. Sīla is the foundational condition necessary for serenity and wisdom to arise.

 Given all this, can you see how it’s not possible to force ourselves to be calm? Rather, calm naturally arrives as the result of developing a heart-mind that’s settled and non-agitated, because our actions are based on forming wholesome relationship with the world around us.

 So, why wouldn’t we want to live like this? This path of practice makes sense from a conventional view of the world, given that it promotes peace and harmony in society when we look after ourselves and each other. But it also makes sense through a bigger picture lens, from an ultimate view of reality: we look after ourselves and each other because we understand there’s no discernible separation between ‘me’ and ‘you’ – we’re all companions in this life, deeply interdependent and interconnected. And the truth of this empty nature of things means that my peace and liberation is none other than your peace and liberation: one can’t exist without the other. As the poem by the late Zen meditation master, Thich Nhat Hanh, beautifully expresses:

You are me and I am you.
It is obvious that we inter-are.
You cultivate the flower in
yourself so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself so
that you do not have to suffer.
I support you, you support me.
I am here to bring you peace
you are here to bring me joy.