Birth Is Suffering

When we meditate and examine the mind, we see that we want happiness. All of us born into the world, even common animals, want happiness. Why do we want happiness? What purpose does it serve? What can we do with it? This is something we should pick up to contemplate. The fact that everyone wants happiness, as soon as they’re born, the fact that we search for happiness, the fact that we desire to gain happiness, shows that everyone is born with pain and suffering. It’s the same as when we look for coolness because the weather is hot. All of us—people and animals—struggle to find happiness because we have pain and suffering.

If there weren’t suffering, we wouldn’t have to struggle to find anything. We could sit at our ease, lie down at our ease, and walk at our ease. But the fact is that we suffer as soon as we’re born. There’s nobody who survives birth and then lies there happy and peaceful as soon as they come out. They struggle. They cry. This is clear to see.

Part of the Dhamma that the Buddha awakened to is the truth that birth is suffering. In Pāli, it’s jātipi dukkhā. But we don’t see it clearly, which is why we don’t accept the truth. That’s because we lack concentration and discernment. We lack the kind of contemplation and examination that can solve this problem correctly.

Once pain and suffering arise, we try to solve the problem by gathering material things. We see that life depends on food, so we stock up on food. We stock up on all four of the basic requisites. We think that when we get enough clothing, we’ll be happy, that when we get enough food we’ll be happy, that when we get enough medicine we’ll be happy. But now we have food—and how much happiness have we gotten from food? Think about it. We have homes and shelters to lie down in, but how much happiness have we gotten from them? How long can you lie down? We have enough clothing to protect the body—or even more, to dress it up fancy. But how much happiness do these things really bring? How lasting is it? To what extent can we hold onto it? We have medicine everywhere, all over the nation, but to what extent can it really cure our diseases? How much has it cost us? Even though we have food to eat all the time, we’re still hungry all the time. There’s never enough. There’s no one who will be full until the day they die. No matter how many medicines we have, people still have aches, pains, and diseases—everywhere.

Contemplate this until it’s clear to you. When you listen to this, look inside your heart. Don’t simply hear the sound of my voice. When I speak about birth, each of us has already been born. We all eat. We’re all hungry. We all look for clothing. We all have homes and shelters. We all have doctors and medicine. We think that we have enough for our lives, enough to be happy, but even then there’s still pain and suffering, both in the body and in the mind. So far, I’ve been talking about the body and its food for you to contemplate.

Today, I’d like us all to meditate on the Buddha’s teaching that birth is suffering. We try to wipe out suffering, but how much have we been able to wipe it out? The world at large: How far has it been able to wipe it out? For a long time now, people have been searching, but what the Buddha said goes against the views of the world: Once there’s birth, the body has to age, just as we chant every day. There’s aging all the time, illness all the time. If there’s too much heat, it hurts. Too much cold, it hurts. Too much hunger, it hurts. There are dangers to life on all sides. If we sit too much, it hurts. If we lie down too much, it hurts. If we walk too much, it hurts. This is the truth. I’m not making this up.

If we want to know the truth, we have to uncover it. Don’t cover it up. Covering up the truth is one of the tricks of the defilements. They don’t want us to know. They want us to fall for the effluents in our hearts and minds that keep us from being intelligent, from seeing the truth. We try to find the way out but they cover it up.

It’s good that the Buddha first opened the door to the noble truths. He opened the door for us to look, to see. We’re really fortunate. There’s no one else who teaches like this, no institution that opens its doors to teach like this, no institution that tells us that birth is suffering. There’s only the Buddha. The Buddha revealed this truth, so we should try to prove whether it’s true, to test this principle of the truth, this principle of the Buddha’s teaching, to see clearly whether it’s true or not.

If we focus on this, if we meditate on this, we can see that “birth” refers to our body. The hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, and skin are all “birth.” When we focus on this, we’ll see in more detail that we’re born every day; we die every day. You’ll see this from the meditation. Birth doesn’t mean only coming out of the womb. These things are born every day. The things of the past, what we consumed in the past, can’t come back and help us now—not like the Dhamma. This is one point.

We should focus on this. The Buddha taught us to understand birth: jātipi dukkhā. Birth is suffering. When we know this, what purpose does it serve? It gets rid of ignorance, mental effluents (āsava), the causes of suffering. Where are the causes of suffering? Right where we don’t think, where we’re not yet intelligent, where we haven’t been properly trained. Kāmāsava, the effluent of sensuality: We don’t know the truth of sensuality. Bhavāsava, the effluent of becoming: We don’t know the truth of becoming. Avijjāsava, the effluent of ignorance: We don’t know the truth of our aggregates right here in the present. We’re deluded into nourishing other things; we try to wipe out suffering in other ways. The world has been trying to wipe out suffering for a long time now, but no one is full, no one has enough. I don’t see that anyone has been able to wipe out suffering anywhere at all.

We have educational institutions all over the world for wiping out suffering, but they’ve actually increased suffering. The more they try to wipe out suffering, the more pollution there is in the world, creating even more dangers to the lives of human beings. The earth is poisonous. The water is poisonous. The air is poisonous. Is this the progress of the world? Looking for danger and poison like this? With all the new diseases that are menacing to life: Is this the discernment of the world as it progresses?

Let’s look instead at the discernment of the Buddha’s awakening, what he announced to the world: Birth is suffering. The Buddha was able to gain release from suffering because he first knew suffering. If he hadn’t known the truth, he wouldn’t have been able to gain release. How could he have gained release? So he first started with a principle that happens to everyone: Once you’re born, you have to age. This happens to everyone. When you age, there’s pain and illness. When there’s pain and illness, there’s death.

The Buddha then investigated what it is that takes birth, ages, gets ill, and dies. He found that the body is composed of four properties: earth, water, fire, and wind. The earth becomes things like hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin, and muscles. As for the water property, there’s bile, phlegm, pus, mucus, urine, saliva. These are examples of the water property in the body. The wind property includes the in-and-out breath. The fire property is what gives the warmth inside and out that enables us to survive. If there were no warmth, we couldn’t survive at all. If there were no wind property or water property, we couldn’t survive at all.

This is why we have to keep drinking water all the time. And why we need food from the earth property—such as vegetables—to nourish the properties of the body. What elements are there in the earth property? Iron, copper: Whatever they’re like outside, that’s how they are in the body. The Buddha discovered these things more than 2,000 years ago. But in discovering them, he did it for the sake of gaining release from suffering. He didn’t try to construct things the way the world does. The world already has aging, but it goes searching for things that age—which is the same thing as searching for suffering.

What is it that ages? What is it that deteriorates? Life: Life is always deteriorating. The body: The body is always deteriorating. If we get a house, the house deteriorates. If we get a car, the car deteriorates. If we get clothing, the clothing deteriorates. If we marry and get a husband or a wife, we’re getting things that age, that grow ill. Is there anyone who doesn’t age and grow ill? And once we get these things, we have to be separated from them: more suffering.

So the Buddha was able to contemplate in this way. What is it about aging things that ages? He contemplated hair of the head: “Is the hair me? So why do I have to age like hair? The skin deteriorates until it dies. But why do I have to die?” These things are elements, properties. And when you take them apart, you see that they’re anattā: not-self. Scientists have investigated these things, starting with large chunks—earth or rock—and as they divide them into smaller and smaller bits, they get down to atoms. When they get more refined than that, it’s just energy. There’s no life there. It’s not self. That’s anattā.

The Buddha found that there’s no mind in there, no soul. It’s empty. And he taught this a long time ago. It’s not that we’re just teaching it now. He taught this more than 2,000 years ago. He had no instruments to know these things, aside from the instruments of virtue, concentration, and discernment—in other words, the noble eightfold path. This is the path to wipe out suffering. If you want to search, search for this path. If you want to develop something, develop this path. This is the path leading to what doesn’t age, doesn’t grow ill, doesn’t die. You can depend on it, always hold it in mind. It’s never worn away.

So we should all take this to contemplate. Contemplate jātipi dukkhā, birth is suffering. Try to contemplate this in all your activities if you hate suffering, if you don’t want to suffer. It’s like hating a wound, or like a doctor who doesn’t want there to be a wound: He has to take care of it, he has to wash it all the time. If he does, it’ll heal. And it’s the same with us. If we don’t like suffering, we shouldn’t run away from it, in the same way that if we don’t like a wound, we have to focus attention on it.

The Buddha gained release from suffering in the same way a doctor approaches a disease. When the doctor examines a patient, he doesn’t examine the parts that are beautiful and strong. He doesn’t examine those parts. He examines wherever the disease is, in the parts that are dirty or wherever the symptoms appear so that he can cure them, and the body will be strong and healthy. It’s the same with us. Whatever it is that makes the mind suffer, that’s where we look. Wherever we find it, we wash away the causes until the mind reaches its primal, elemental nature, its true nature, a nature that’s pure.

When we reach that element, there are no cemeteries, no hospitals, no stomachs or intestines for consuming things, stocking up on things, for encouraging greed. There’s no anger, no delusion. What would there be to be angry about? What would there be to get greedy for? Everything has been taken apart, and each part is independent, in and of itself. They don’t get involved with one another. The properties are simply properties. Earth is just earth, that’s all. Water is just water, fire is just fire, wind is just wind, that’s all. These things don’t get involved with one another. They’re simply conditions, that’s all. The mind is just a knowing property, just as earth is the earth property, not involved with anyone; just as water is the water property, not involved at all.

But at the moment, the mind suffers. The reason it keeps struggling is because it’s not yet intelligent. It grabs hold of this and that, and finds that it’s grabbing hold of things that are inconstant, so it raises a big fuss. It grabs hold of things that hit back, and it suffers. It grabs onto sunlight and complains that sunlight is hot. It grabs onto the body, but the body is inconstant, so it complains that the body is inconstant and hungry—but we never get disenchanted. This is what it means not to be intelligent.

If you really want to contemplate down to the true elemental nature of things in a subtle way, you have to develop the path that the Buddha himself practiced. There’s only one path: the ekāyana-magga, the path for the purification of beings. If you want it to be complete, you have to see that it’s composed of eight factors. It’s like taking many good medicines and mixing them together to cure a disease that requires all of the ingredients, because each plays its role in curing the disease and wiping it totally out. In the same way, each factor in the noble eightfold path plays its role in curing the mind, controlling the mind so that it can become pure. There’s nothing lacking in the path, nothing in excess. It can wipe out all sufferings, stains, and defilements.

To practice the noble eightfold path, don’t go looking in the books. The eight factors boil down to three: virtue, concentration, and discernment. Now, virtue, concentration, and discernment aren’t letters of the alphabet. They’re not spoken words. Virtue is an affair of the body. It looks after the body: right action. It looks after speech: right speech. It has you earn your livelihood rightly: right livelihood. This is the path, the practice. Whatever you do in your life, keep in mind what’s right. Whatever you’re about to say, first stop and keep in mind what’s right. Examine your words to make sure that they’re in line with the path. Don’t let them wander off the path. Whatever you consume, consume within the limits of what’s right. Don’t go outside those limits.

It’s like being a patient: If the patient trusts the doctor and practices in line with what the doctor says, the disease is sure to go away. But if you disobey the doctor, you can guarantee that the disease won’t go away. You won’t get to the end of the path.

These are the parts of the path concerning body and speech.

As for the heart: right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right view, and right resolve. These are the factors that train the heart.

It’s for this reason that virtue, concentration, and discernment can purify the body, so that no damage comes from our actions. They purify our speech, and purify our livelihood, our means of survival. They keep our body and speech under control so that they’re pure. This is what’s meant by virtue.

As for the mind, whatever you think about, you have to think in ways that are right, in line with right resolve. Resolve to find the way to escape suffering, resolve to gain right view, resolve to practice renunciation to get out of suffering—nekkhama-vitakko; to have no ill will—abyāpajjhā hontu; and to cause no harm—avihiṁsā-kammanto. These are the principles of right resolve. We resolve to escape from birth, aging, illness, and death. We don’t get carried away with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. When we meditate, we contemplate to see that these are the things that take birth, age, grow ill, and die. When we can see their drawbacks, the mind can grow still. We can develop the mind because it’s still. We gain a new kind of happiness, a happiness that doesn’t have to depend on sensuality. Ultimately, we gain a happiness that’s totally enough, that doesn’t need to involve birth, aging, illness or death. We gain a deathless happiness (amata-sukha) based on our practice of concentration.

When we practice virtue, we gain a type of peace free from animosity or danger—because we don’t create them. We look after our speech to make it right speech, and there’s no animosity or danger. We gain peace from our speech. We practice right effort and right livelihood and train the mind to gain mental peace and mental happiness.

When these factors gain strength, and we’ve developed our discernment, we’ll see the four noble truths. We’ll feel a sense of disenchantment for things that age, grow ill, and die. We see their drawbacks. But because we see the happiness that comes from a quiet mind, we can also let go and discard these things. I’ve never seen any noble one who’s gone back to start a household ever again, or who’s looked for satisfaction in the body ever again. The Buddha, even though he had great wealth and could have ruled over a kingdom, was able to let it all go, without any doubts. None of his disciples, even though they had been millionaires, ever returned to get involved with their wealth. They did nothing but let it go, let their aggregates disband, while they totally unbound.

That’s because the happiness that comes from peace is free from animosity, free from danger, free from birth, aging, illness, and death. It’s freed from all the confusion and quarrels in the work of the world. How much happiness is there in that kind of work? Contemplate your body: How far can you depend on it? Your mind, if it’s not trained: How far can you depend on it? But if you do train it to find true peace, that’s when you can depend on it. Attāhi attano nātho: That’s what you can depend on when you depend on yourself.

When the mind has been well trained, it becomes Dhamma: supaṭipanno, one who has practiced well; ujupaṭipanno, one who has practiced straightforwardly; ñāyapaṭipanno, one who has practiced rightly; sāmīcipaṭipanno, one who has practiced appropriately for gaining release from suffering. The mind becomes Dhamma; the Dhamma becomes the mind. There’s no being there, no person at all. The Buddha, Dhamma, and Saṅgha become one and the same element, the same mind: a single element, with no second. There’s nothing to strike against anything, because it’s all one and the same. There’s nothing to strike it—as when you try to clap with one hand, there’s no sound. When everything is let go, there’s just one.

This is why there’s only one unbinding. There’s no second. If there were a second, there would be problems. So we should let go of everything so there’s no second. Let there be just one.

Now that you’ve heard this, remember it well.