Seeing Everything as Suffering

Seeing Everything as Suffering

Date Posted:
October 2005

Rinpoche gave the following advice to a student who had trouble seeing everything as suffering.

To see things as suffering is a realization. It shows you have renunciation from past lives. Seeing sense pleasures as suffering is a realization. For example, we can see that dependence on drugs causes a lifestyle full of negative karma: killing, stealing, and so much negative karma, basically coming from desire. We are controlled by desire, and then engage in hundreds of different problems and never get satisfaction. This is not like Dharma practice, where happiness increases.

Samsaric suffering has still not ended. Why? Because our mind labels that suffering as pleasure and believes that. And then, again, we are born in samsara. As long as we cling to that, then there is an obstacle to our ultimate happiness. We never achieve freedom from samsaric suffering because of that clinging.

If you just rest, play, and don’t bear hardships, then you don’t prepare yourself for the next day, week, month, or years, without mentioning liberation and enlightenment. Even in life, you must work in order to retire. So, too, in the Dharma path. The best is to be able to liberate others. How can you do this? You must complete the path. So, you should read and research the Dharma. Even if you don’t understand much at the beginning, it is extremely worthwhile to research the Dharma. To understand Dharma needs a lot of merit, that is why Buddhists are so few in number. But it is incredibly beneficial to do this. Infinite qualities come from the omniscient mind. So, you must study and research the Dharma.