Subject #6: On suffering

Suffering is something we're all familiar with. In fact, it's so common to us that people have just accepted it as part of their life instead of trying to understand the roots of suffering. There are two main things which cause suffering: desire and fear. Anytime when you feel, for example, sad or depressed or miserable or angry or jealous or proud it's linked either to desire of something or fear of something. Quiet observation would reveal the root but people tend to look for external scapegoats and blame them for their suffering - that of course changes nothing and suffering continues.

Buddha put it this way in his four noble truths:

There is suffering.
There is the origin of suffering.
There is the cessation of suffering.
There is the path to the cessation of suffering.

Sounds simple? First part is obvious to everyone. Second part requires that one stops looking for reasons outside onself and instead starts seeing what happens inside. That takes lots of humility because we must accept that we are responsible for the suffering, it's created by our mind and not by others. Third and fourth part may seem to require faith but the question is just if mind can be free from desires and fears or not. In my humble opinion, it can be. It just requires total awareness and that will be my next subject tomorrow.

People always look for practical advices. Therefore question "how?" is very common in spirituality. How does one liberate oneself from suffering? What must one do? There are tons of answers to those questions by different people or by different books (ten commandments in bible & eight-fold path in buddhism) . Advices can be practices, methods, meditations, moral codes, ceremonies, rituals and so on. There is no perfect answer which you can hear from others but there is perfect answer which you can find yourself.