Contemplative Practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) on Suffering

Ru Chun: Sat in meditation at 4:55 in the morning: deep breathing. I had intended to recollect the Buddha as usual, but today my mind automatically began reciting the Heart Sutra. For an hour and a half there were basically no wandering thoughts; the Heart Sutra repeated itself over and over as if playing automatically. Is this Guanyin Bodhisattva blessing me?

In the evening while meditating, a mosquito disturbed me and I gave rise to a mind of affliction and the feeling of suffering. I asked myself: why did a mind of affliction and the feeling of suffering arise? My mind analyzed: the mosquito would bite my flesh and suck my blood, causing itching and pain—such sensations are very uncomfortable and painful. When it bit me, I very much wanted to slap it dead; if I had slapped it, I would have created evil karma and planted the cause of suffering; if I failed to slap it, I feared being bitten, which again would be suffering. One tiny mosquito brought so much affliction and distress. In ordinary life there is far more suffering—in clothing, food, lodging, and travel, everything is suffering. Take eating, for example: first, cooking the meal is itself laborious—in winter the water is icy, in summer the stove is hot, all kinds of feelings of suffering; washing, cutting, stir-frying, all sorts of trouble. Then, to chew and digest the food, all kinds of "switches" must be switched on, working away for a long time and consuming a good deal of energy. When you encounter delicious food, you eat and still want to eat more, until you are stuffed to the point of suffering; when the food tastes bad, you suffer; when you go hungry, you suffer. In short, suffering is everywhere.

Then where does suffering come from and where does it go? Suffering is a feeling, arising from the five-aggregate body. The five-aggregate body can feel suffering and can also collect suffering, and we take the five-aggregate body to be the self. Putting it all together: suffering = feeling = the five-aggregate body = the self. Conversely, without a self there is no feeling, no five-aggregate body, and no suffering. Suffering comes from the self and goes to the selfless.

Assessment: Only by knowing suffering can one cut off its accumulation, aspire to its cessation, and cultivate the path. Without knowing suffering, one does not want to cultivate the path, and the resolve for the path is not strong either. Once the mind of compassion strengthens, one first thinks of the suffering of sentient beings, and only afterward of one's own suffering. When the mind's capacity was small, one only felt that killing the mosquito would mean creating evil karma and undergoing suffering oneself, without considering that the mosquito's death would also involve feelings of suffering. In cultivating the bodhisattva path, one should think of sentient beings first and oneself afterward, and not always revolve one's thoughts around oneself. Why is it that most people, when encountering a situation, first think of their own interests—or can only think of their own gains and losses, without the slightest consideration for the other party? Because most people are people of small mind-capacity and low energy, of meager merit (alpa-puṇya), lacking the spare mental bandwidth and ability to attend to others, so that their hearts and minds, eyes and brains are filled entirely with themselves. Such people, because of their meager merit, can hardly see the path in the Great Vehicle and lack the qualifications of a bodhisattva—how could they become true bodhisattvas?