He Meditated 30,000 Hours. The End of Suffering Isn't What You Were Promised | Delson Armstrong

For many people, suffering is a big word that describes something devastating. But from the Buddhist perspective, suffering is any clinging, any attachment, any subtle dissatisfaction we experience. So even deep practitioners likely feel some subtle discontent. Even if someone has the capacity, such as yourself, to access cessation, you can't stay in that state forever. We have to navigate worldly matters, which almost always brings some kind of dissatisfaction, even if it's subtle. Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, "Do you know what my secret is? I don't mind what happens." And I've sat with that line for a long time, and I can relate to it to some degree, like the fewer desires and attachments we have, the more free we are.

But at the same time, what parent could honestly say, "I don't mind if my child dies"? Right. So while teachings like that could sound very profound, sometimes I wonder, who can genuinely live like that? And even if we could, is that even desirable or psychologically healthy? And I can definitely say that meditation has helped me suffer less and has helped me create less suffering for others.

But I can't say it's ended my suffering. Some might say, well, you just haven't gone far enough on the path, and fair enough. But then there's someone like you. You've meditated over 30,000 hours. You've gone deep into multiple traditions, probably went far deeper than most people ever will. In one interview, and I think this was one of your conversations with Dohr, you mentioned still experiencing pain, grief and suffering like anyone else. You also talked about your attachments to your mom and your sister.

And to me, that sounds like being human. But yeah, I'd really love to hear your perspective on suffering and this whole idea of the end of suffering. Do you think that's truly possible, particularly for householders? And what might that look like? Yeah, that's a very good question. And there's a lot to unpack there, because the notion of suffering is kind of laid out in the Sutra model as being three kinds of categories, right?

One is the dukkha dukkha, which is the suffering of suffering. There is the viparinam dukkha, which is the suffering of change, and there's the sankhara dukkha, which is the suffering of an inherent, existential kind of suffering. And yeah, I tend to agree with the idea that suffering, as a translation, is a bit too dramatic. It's too, like, oh, that's heavy, you know, that's too heavy. But I like Lee Brazington's way of looking at it, which is, it's a bummer. Things can be a bummer. That kind of softens the blow. But the word dukkha really means that things are kind of out of balance. There's a certain level of imbalance in the way things are happening, because dukkha really is like that. I always give this analogy: when you're shopping in the grocery store and you take one of those carts, and there's always one wheel of the shopping cart that's just a little off, and you're trying to just push, and that's dukkha.

That's one part of life that is just a little off, and you can't escape that. Something or another is going to happen, right? But what we can help alleviate is our perception of what's happening. So we can learn to continue to transform our perceptions of whatever is arising. And I'm not talking about spiritual bypassing. I'm talking about a real look at: I'm suffering because I'm looking at it this way. Is there maybe a blind spot? Maybe it's my trauma? Maybe it's a trigger that's causing the suffering in this moment? Can I transcend that somehow without suppressing it? So human existence is suffering. I mean, it is going to be there whether you want it or not, and to be awakened is the realization that you've been suffering. Like some people in some circles of my friends from high school and elsewhere, where you can see that they're suffering, but they're blind to that suffering.

That's a certain level of ignorance. And they suppress that through abusing their body, abusing their mind with certain substances, or getting addicted to certain things, whether it's traveling all the time or buying the next best product, whatever it is, to deal with that suffering. And so the Buddha comes along and he says, first we have to understand that there is suffering and accept that there's suffering. That's the first noble truth. The second is there's a cause and condition for this suffering, which is namely craving. What is that craving? It's an obsessiveness of the mind, to either want something, to push away something, or to identify with something as me, mine or myself. That's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but basically what he's saying is there are certain causes and conditions.

But there's also a cessation of suffering, which is an experience of wisdom. It's that cloudless sky mind, as I call it, where the mind is free of any kind of obscurations, free of any kind of concepts or contrivances. And that space is a Nibbana mind, and that's accessible to each and every one of us. But does that mean it's going to stop us from suffering at all? I don't believe so. So the fourth noble truth is trying to perfect that path, the Eightfold Path, the cultivation of continually imbuing the mind, imbuing our life, with that non-contrived Nibbanic field, the Nibbana dhatu, the element of Nibbana, as it were. And I think so long as you have a body, so long as you have a mind, you're going to suffer.

You're going to suffer, but you will be able to recognize that suffering much faster, I believe. And you'll be able to understand: how do I let go of the suffering? How do I transform the suffering? Is there a lesson to be learned here? Is there a way in which I can transmute it somehow? Or can I just stay with it? That's another methodology, right? To acknowledge, stay with it, and see if anything comes from learning with it. And I'm not talking about Vipassana, like just watch the suffering, watch the pain and observe it. You can do that if you want, but it's a deeper level of recognition that there's suffering going on in this moment.

Where did the suffering come from? So that's yoniso manasikara in Pali, which is attention rooted in reality, as I translate it. The yoni means wound, the source. So what is the source of this particular suffering? experiencing. And that is the awakened path. That's the awakened mind. There are people who might not find that attractive, and that's fine. But I believe that an awakened mind will continue to suffer. And I agree with Jiddu Krishnamurti, by the way, where he says, the secret is I don't mind at all. But there are times when you will mind something.

And so how do you navigate that? That is really the tools you're given through this process of meditation, whether it's yoga, Buddhism, sankira, Vedanta or tantra. So it's fair to say that the teaching of the end of suffering is kind of like an ideal to aim for, and potentially in any given moment we might be meeting that ideal, and there might be moments when we're not. There might be moments of remembering, moments of forgetting, moments of expansion, moments of contraction. Absolutely, absolutely. And the one thing I would add is that if there's one thing we should let go of, it's idealizations. That's probably a big cause of a lot of suffering, because it creates these expectations in the mind: once I get there, once I reach that, everything will be perfect.

My mind will be purified, or I will attain to supreme emptiness, or whatever it is. Again, concepts of the mind, conceptual proliferation of the mind. And so, in my experience, I really see a mind without craving. That title of the book, A Mind Without Craving, just means a mind that is not reflective of any kind of need for things to be one way or the other.

And it's an evolutionary process. It's a process, which means it's not static. It's not fossilized, turned into a thing. It is a process that you continue to go through and continue to transform through. Yeah, no, I think that's a beautiful way to orient to these teachings. And it also feels like a relief, because I definitely have that tendency to idealize stuff like that. And actually, the other practitioner that I mentioned, who introduced me to the sutric versus tantric view, would say that, yeah, there is, you're going to suffer as long as you have a body. As long as you have a body, you're going to have some suffering. So yeah, it's just coming to terms with that. And it's like, how do we suffer better? How do we learn from our suffering? How do we reiterate on these cycles of contraction and expansion and just kind of ride those waves more skillfully, maybe? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It's like again that notion, or what do you do with the shopping cart?

You might find another shopping cart, but every single shopping cart might still have that third wheel or fourth wheel that is just, somehow, unstable. So what do you do with it? You learn how to navigate with it. You don't stop shopping. You actually continue with life and you continue doing what you need to do. You just find better ways.