Dukkha People come from all different walks of life. There are the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the fortunate and the unlucky in life. We all share something in common though. That common thing is that we all experience suffering no matter who we are. Suffering can come in varying degrees, from the intense feelings of physical pain, to a vague sense of unsatisfactoriness in life, that there is something "missing" that we can't quite put our finger on. Unfortunately many on these forums are subject to very intense mental suffering caused by OCD.

In Pali, the language used to preserve the teachings of the Buddha, the multivalent word Dukkha is used to cover the whole spectrum of suffering. Dukkha can mean suffering, stress, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness or depression. The word "suffering" seems to be the most appropriate for when I am experiencing an OCD spike. The study of suffering and its causes is the raison d’être of Buddhism. Because of this, Buddhism is sometimes unfairly labelled as being pessimistic. This is unfair because it is also about seeking ways to come out of suffering as well. I think it could be better described as realism instead of pessimism.

What Buddhism does do by making dukkha the centrepiece of analysis is that it encourages us to develop a new relationship to our suffering by adopting a mature attitude towards it. Suffering is a fact of life and it afflicts everybody and so we are not alone even though it feels like that sometimes. Now OCD is the cause of much dukkha for us, but we must be careful not to blame it for everything bad that happens in our lives. To do so would be an unskillful waste of our precious energy.

The Buddha called us to take full responsibility for our lives and our fortunes. I know that sometimes this feels impossible because it seems that the whole universe is conspiring to make our lives a living hell. However, it is still better for us to try to raise our head above the water and attempt to swim upstream. We are always subject to the law of cause and effect. If we try to act skillfully at all times, even when the going is tough, it will bring immeasurable benefits to us in the future.

Often it is all too easy to blame our suffering on the conditions which we find ourselves in or the events that have happened to us in the past. Without diminishing the significance of these things, we must also come to realise that as long as we defer responsibility for our thoughts to these conditions or events, we will never be truly free to live. The message of the Buddha is that we are not owned by our conditioning and past experiences, but we can choose to rise above them. This will undoubtedly take energy, effort and a lot of courage. Those who can do this, are said to lead noble lives.

The word "noble" is used a lot in Buddhism. This deserves some discussion. Back in the time of the Buddha, India had a caste system as it still does today. People were born into the caste heirarchy and were looked on and treated according to their caste. The Brahmans were of the highest or "noble" caste and were given the greatest respect by the lower castes. The Buddha saw the moral inequality of the caste system and thus created an Order in which people were all equal no matter how high or low was their birth. The Buddha said that our "nobility" depended not on our birth or our family or friends, but on the way we choose to conduct ourselves in the face of happiness and adversity.

So let us stand up and bravely acknowledge our suffering and our OCD. To acknowledge is not the same thing as resigning ourselves to the situation. To overcome an obstacle, we cannot deny its existence but we must accept its true stature. Then we can climb over it. When we take full responsibility for our lives like this, it paradoxically feels like a load has been taken off our backs. In spite of our OCD, we can become free to live our lives to our maximum potential. So we come to the first of the Four Noble Truths:

"There is suffering"
The Noble Truth of Dukkha (Unskillful Effect)


We can instantly see that the man in the picture is suffering. We do not need to read a biography of this man or even speak to him to understand the pain that he must be going through. This suffering is what we have in common with everybody on this planet, even our enemies. When we see that everybody is trying to seek happiness and to avoid this thing called suffering, we want to help them to the best of our ability. This aspiration is the seed of nobility within us which we are encouraged to nurture to its full fruition. Then we will be able to truly realise the full meaning of the noble truth of suffering.  ¶ 4:18 PM