UnMind 11. Third Noble Truth — Atlanta Soto Zen Center

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Cessation, we hope,
will happen in this lifetime.
Wish you well with that!

This seems to contradict the line in the Heart Sutra that continues the long list of negative attributes that magically disappear in emptiness. Given emptiness, no suffering and no end of suffering, which seems internally contradictory. But the kind of suffering that can come to an end through acceding to this kind of wisdom is that of the self-inflicted and mutually-inflicted kind. In other words, unnecessary suffering. The kind that does not, indeed cannot, come to an end is that of the natural variety — aging, sickness and death.

Whereas Buddhism’s teachings are not pessimistic, neither are they overly optimistic — they do not lead us down the primrose path wearing rose-colored glasses, to mix metaphors. We recognize that most of our suffering is not only the result of our inchoate craving, but also of our resistance to suffering itself. Not that we should all become martyrs to some cause, but that even the pain we feel in meditation is mostly the predictable outcome of our resistance to the sitting, on mental and emotional levels as well as physical. The latter will adapt with time, as the body stretches to accommodate the posture. The former will be of longer duration, and more likely to return again and again. The body is relatively flexible compared to the monkey mind.

Dukkha guarantees that suffering will come to cessation, owing to the very change that is intrinsic to its definition. If you are dissatisfied with this present moment, not to worry, it will pass in a moment. Everything is changing moment-to-moment, if in a multifold of polyrhythms. Knowing this is not tantamount to experiencing it, however. This level of dynamic change can only be entered into by sitting as still as possible as long as possible.

It will not do to imagine what this must be like, entering into the frontier of so-called nirvana. As one of my teachers reminds us, when you go to nirvana, there is nobody there. Only bodhisattvas can go there, and they choose to stay here, in samsara, in order to help all others to the other shore. So nirvana is empty, no immigration problem there.

Our charge then becomes to transform this so-called samsara into nirvana. As Master Dogen is said to have asserted, actually we do not go to the other shore of nirvana. The other shore comes to us. We step onto the raft each time we sit on the cushion. Watch out for the waves.