1. What is suffering?
The word ‘suffering’ seems to appear in every corner of Buddhism. And
generally, one would tend to associate suffering with pain, anxiety, agony, sadness,
dissatisfaction and all sorts of negativity in one’s lifetime. Unfortunately, this is
not the case in the eyes of the Buddha. In the Buddhist context, the dependent
nature is known as samsāra. Samsāra literally means ‘continuous flow’- referring
to a repeating cycle of birth, life, death and re-birth. When there is samsāra
arising, dukkha would arise concurrently. And the meaning of dukkha or suffering
would be to ‘bear with’ in the Buddhist context. Any circumstances that would
involve one to continue with; to persevere with; to soldier on with; to carry on with;
to undertake with; to go through with would mean suffering. Literally, it is not
correct for one to put much attention onto the conditions of pain, anxiety, agony,
dissatisfaction, joyfulness or happiness - for these conditions merely reflected as
the consequences of dukkha arising. To ‘bear with’ is to suffer and the antonym
of it is to ‘let go.’ So stop submitting oneself to the conditional circumstances
and one would be freed, be liberated and be neutralised! Let us cure the cause,
not the symptoms!
