Question: If suffering is a constant part of life, why does alcohol seem to make suffering disappear for someone with PTSD, and what is really happening beneath that relief?
By Ven. Tenzin Tsepal | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
The Buddha spoke about duhkha. When this word is translated as suffering, we can easily assume it only refers to the “ouch” kind of physical or mental pain. But duhkha refers to any kind of unsatisfactory experience — physical or mental.
In the Dukkhata Sutta, the Buddha spoke of three kinds of duhkha. Let me summarize them as they are taught in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition:
Duhkha of pain
The duhkha of pain is the obvious physical and mental pain that we and all living beings recognize as suffering and try to avoid. This includes pain we experience from heat, cold, hunger, thirst, stress, anxiety, PTSD, depression, loneliness and so forth.
Duhka of change
The duhkha of change is more subtle and more difficult to identify. It includes what we usually call happiness. We may wonder why the happiness we experience from eating good food, hearing nice music we like or experiencing other types of pleasure is unsatisfactory.
One reason is that these things are temporary and don’t last. They are fleeting and leave us wanting more. Another reason is that if they were truly pleasurable, the more we had of them, the happier we would be.
However, is that your experience? We may like eating pizza, but if we keep eating more pizza once we’re full, we will eventually get a stomachache or feel sick, right? When we first drink alcohol, we enjoy the relaxing buzz, but if we drink more and more, we will pass out and feel hungover the next day.
When we feel lonely, seeing a friend initially alleviates the feeling of isolation and makes us happy. But if we stay with that person hour after hour, we get tired, bored and want to be alone. Test this out with anything you think makes you happy. I think you’ll find that what we call happiness is not “true happiness.”
These external conditions for happiness feel good for a short while, but then turn into dissatisfaction, discomfort or even pain. For this reason, such experiences are not satisfactory. Due to his compassion for all beings, the Buddha directs us toward a more satisfying kind of joy and wellbeing — the lasting peace of liberation and full awakening.
Duhka of conditioning
The pervasive duhkha of conditioning is even more subtle and difficult to identify. It refers to our very body and mind that are produced by our own karma and mental afflictions.
Our body and mind are the result of our previous samsaric rebirth and are the basis for our present duhkha when our destructive karmic seeds ripen as the physical and mental duhkha we experience in this life.
Although our body and mind may not experience overt pain at this moment, with the slightest change in our circumstances — a stomachache, eating too much, etc. — we could easily experience the previous two kinds of duhkha.
The Buddha taught how we can eventually be totally free of all suffering and dissatisfaction by learning about the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. His teachings are not difficult to learn but take time and practice to implement. And all of it starts with, as you said, being more self-aware.
The human mind is our most wonderful asset. Our mind can perceive directly, it can think conceptually, it can remember the past and plan for the future; our mind observes our world, investigates, problem-solves and communicates; and our minds can quickly process complicated information.
Thinking is very useful. But an untrained mind tends to repeat distressing mental patterns — like worry, ruminating, chronically comparing, criticizing, obsessively planning and so forth. Such forms of thinking impact our physical and mental wellbeing.
We spend an enormous portion of our lives dwelling in stories we fabricate, which disconnects us from what is actually happening in the present moment. The good news is that we can intentionally train our minds to let go of unskillful mental habits and develop beneficial ways of thinking.
And that begins by recognizing a thought as just that — a thought, a creation of our mind. We learn to distinguish between beneficial and unbeneficial thoughts. We learn to catch and replace unskillful thoughts with more accurate and beneficial ways of thinking.
As we strengthen realistic ways of thinking more and more:
- Our mind becomes more stable — less up and down.
- This naturally lightens our psychological load.
- And enhances our sense of ease, well-being and joy.
- This often leads to life-changing insights.
Understanding how the mind works, we can choose to:
- Identify the values we want to live by and cultivate positive intentions each day.
- We can train in mindfulness and cultivate greater love and compassion.
- And lessen destructive emotions like anger, craving, confusion and doubt.
Visit our teaching website www.thubtenchodron.org for more information about Tibetan Buddhism.
Wishing you and all beings much happiness.
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