What is it to have a human body? A conscious human body with sense organs is continuously being impinged on in some way. What does that look like? It affects us, doesn't it? If we see something that is beautiful or hideous, we feel it. In sound, it can be melodic or pleasant, cacophonous, loud or soft; odors can be fragrant or stinking; food can be delicious or horrible; the body is a totally sensitive thing, isn't it? It gets hot and cold. It gets hungry and thirsty and feels pleasure and pain through the physical body. Let's look at the mind: what are our mental attachments? We attach to negative thoughts. If we attach to anger, resentment, jealousy, fear, things that obsess our minds, despair and worry and anxiety, then we suffer over time. This means that we're suffering all the time. These attachments and obsessions are in the hell realm, which we actually create in our minds. If we attach to goodness, beauty, truth, the ideals, then these tend to give us some happiness. If we attach to the good, then we tend to be a lot happier, positive and optimistic about life.  

The Buddha, however, went even beyond attachment to happiness, pointing to the very act of attachment as the problem, this very act of attachment. This is the most significant of the Buddha's teaching, for me anyway, and most accurate is his emphasis on the cause of suffering: the attachment to desires. Not even desire, desire's not the cause; it's the attachment to desire. I notice in so many teachings and so many other religions, people talk about suffering and are usually blaming something. They say, that person is the cause of my suffering. The termites or mosquitoes make me suffer. I suffer because of the bad food, because of a chronic pain, or because of the loss of a loved one. I think the Buddha was pointing to the attachment to these perceptions as the cause of suffering, and that's very significant. Being a monk, for example, I used to wonder why I still suffered when I was being a good monk. "I'm a good monk, keep the rules, practice hard, do all the right things, yet I still suffer." I thought when I became a monk, I'd stop suffering if I did all the right things. This is an attachment, an attachment to somebody doing all the right things. This became apparent to me during the year that marked my sixth as a monk. I was proud of being such a good monk. I left Ajahn Chah that year and went off to this island in the gulf of Thailand. There was a monk there, a Tudong monk, whom I was recommended to see. He was supposed to show me a good place to go and practice, so I stayed with this monk for a while. Then I had to leave. I heard later that he told other monks that I wasn't a very good monk. I felt outraged. I wanted to go back and punch him in the nose. What was the cause? Attachment, wasn't it? It's an attachment, even to goodness. Attachment to ignorance, to even tradition, Theravada, Mahayana, or Thai forest tradition, or teachers, all these things can be attachments; dukkha results from attachments.  

The teaching of the Lord Buddha, the Four Noble Truths, and dependent origination are for you to contemplate, not for you to believe. I've been contemplating these over the years. I began to see for myself how much suffering I created for myself through attachment to ideals. Being an abbot of the monastery, for example, I took on responsibilities. I was attached to this idea of being responsible. Then I began to feel weighed down by this responsibility. At first it felt quite nice that I was now responsible for this monastery. After a while, when things weren't going all that well, there were problems and difficulties. Then you thought, "I've had enough, I want to leave. I've had enough responsibilities. I began to realize the suffering that was caused by attachment, even to something that's very good, that's right and responsible. I want to point out, though, that responsibility's not the problem, but attachment is; attachment is the cause of suffering. Once we really see and realize that for ourselves, then the insight helps us to let go. Letting go doesn't mean that I become irresponsible. It means that I don't suffer; I don't create suffering around responsibilities, and that's liberty of the mind. The mind's liberated, isn't it? From even the kind of tyranny of ideas that can easily turn one into a cynic.  

Dukkha is translated as suffering, but the more literal translation means "hard to bear." "Du" always implies some kind of negative thing, like suffering or difficulty, something not so good. I began to notice in my life that as a monk in Thailand, for example, life wasn't so hectic.  

Sometimes I thought I couldn't bear it anymore, but I was bearing it. You can't trust that voice that screams away. I realized at that moment, that's dukkha. I was creating dukkha. There was still the heat that was bearable if I could bear it. The suffering was, "I can't bear this." This comes through contemplation. This comes through listening to your inner voices that go on within yourself that say, "I don't like this person, I don't want that. It should be like this. That person should be like that. I'm fed up with this. I can't take anymore of that. I don't believe in it anymore." It's totally untrustworthy, and so recognizing that, realizing that for myself I could really see the difference between the way things are, which can be difficult, painful, unpleasant, unfair, unjust, atrocious even; all these are possible. We're all subject to being persecuted, abused, and treated badly, disrespected, humiliated; these are still possibilities that we will experience in our lifetimes. Is this the suffering that the Buddha was pointing to, or the suffering we create around this experience? This is the awakened mind, isn't it? To wake up to this is for you to suddenly realize for yourself: you don't have to suffer if you don't want to. It doesn't matter what's happening to you because often times you can't help that. You do have a choice in how you respond to it. This is liberty. Also, it is a kind of happiness to know that you're not just a helpless victim, you're not just caught in a trap, with no wisdom, no light at the end of the tunnel, just a black hole of despair. We have this potential for awakening, and that's always with us, in the present moment. So the more you contemplate this and appreciate this, you begin to really trust this.

There's nothing else to trust in this conditioned realm, it's going to change. The last that's going to change is the thing you wanted to change. We've got the end of the century, the millennium, the Y2K bug; we've got all kinds of things that are menacing and threatening to the future. We also have a huge population and very little wisdom, it seems. So it could be seen as what's wrong with the world? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with everything? To dwell, to attach to all those negative perceptions is the way to depression and despair. Then we can say, we won't, we'll just be positive, "It's all going to get better. The Golden Age, end of the century, end of the millennium, the Y2K will end up being a blessing and we'll have social harmony, political and economic harmony in the next millennium." It would certainly seem that it'd be wiser to attach to those things than negative ones; but in terms of wisdom, the reflective mind reflects both. The intuitive awareness of the human mind recognizes all conditions are impermanent, so you're actually tuning in, or awakening to reality through this practice of mindfulness, through this awareness, this awakening. This is the very essence of the Buddhadharma. It's very significant that the Buddha places sati, or mindfulness, as a focus, this awakened state of mind.

The word "Buddha" itself means the awakened one. It doesn't mean someone that just has their eyes open, because you can be caught in the whole deluded scenario of your own thoughts, with your eyes open, believing and committing actions on those beliefs. When you are really awake in the mind, you have the simple ability to pay attention to the present, to listen, to observe, to investigate, to contemplate, and to recognize through the guidance of the Lord Buddha's teachings. Buddhist teachings are very brilliant in that they point to the problems that we have, which are ignorance, desire and attachment. Once we awaken to the causes of suffering, we can be liberated; we can find our liberation from the bondage of attachment to the conditioned habits that we have, to our own thoughts, to our own social and cultural conditioning, to our own biases, views, prejudices, and to recognize the basic purity and oneness that we all share. Even within the limitations of our human state, no matter what state you're in right now, such as disability or lack of education, it's no obstruction in the conditioned realm unless you're determined to grasp it. So the obstructions are created through our own determined grasping, through not understanding.

The Buddha's teaching is most appropriate for this time, or any time really. However, particularly at this time when humanity does seem so lost, seem so caught in its own passion and obsessions, and so willing to destroy and exploit each other.

The world population is so enormous now; it'll probably double in the next fifty years. How are we going to live with each other? How are we going to share this planet with each other? If it's just based on ideas, or on domination of the strong over the weak, then that will just create endless suffering in the world. There is also this light at the end of the tunnel, which for me, is the Buddha's teaching. I chose this hope and direction in particular because the Buddhadharma was the only thing left. When I became a monk I found that the only thing I could be positive about was the Buddhadharma. Following that insight, it's been well worth it. It's been a great privilege, actually, to develop in this way. So I wanted to share this with you and to encourage all of you to recognize that this is something that we can all do. I'm not some kind of a special human being from Mars or Jupiter. I'm from Seattle, Washington; I'm a Seattlelite. So I offer this as a reflection for this afternoon.