Lesson video

Hello and welcome back, my name is Ms. Pauvaday and today we will be look at Buddhism again we are going to be specifically looking at concept of Dukkah today, we kind of looked at the briefly in previous lessons you may remember from the three marks of existence specifically or even in the Skandhas but today we are going to kind of hone in a bit more and kind of really start to unpack what we mean by suffering because its quite a vital teaching of Buddhism you know to really understand what's going on we need to look at the concept of Dukkah and we need to start looking at how the Buddhist start to unpack that idea okay, so lets get ready Okay so lets get ready for today's lessons make sure you're nice and ready make sure you have a pen some paper make sure you have a nice clear mind ready to kind of to tackle some of the interesting things we are looking at today try and go somewhere nice and quiet away from any distractions so turn off the TV, any music, move away from any annoying brothers and sisters that you have who are making lots of noise somewhere nice and quiet so that you can focus And its important that I tell you today that we are going to be looking at some things of death and pain its very important that we look at these particularly in Buddhism and I'm sure you have come across these things in you ari philosophy lesson so far, its kind of the area we tend to talk about these issues just be aware, if you want to go through these lessons with a parent or guardian, that's totally okay maybe afterwards if you want to go through the lesson by yourself maybe afterwards perhaps have a chat with the people around you or people in your life just to kind of get their view if anything you found upsetting today just go and have a chat with them its good to talk anyway and yes, go ahead and pause now make sure you get everything you need and I will see you in one moment right, hopefully you got everything you need and we are ready to focus first question I have for you today, is I want you to look at these pictures and I want you to think, why or would you say these people are suffering? So we got the first image of a really lovely couple happily in love second picture is image of a drug addict perhaps the third image is a coffin, a funeral someone's unfortunately, sadly passed away and the final image is of a lady who looks like she's really enjoying that burrito or taco whatever it is.

I'm quite jealous, I'm getting quite hungry and that looks delicious What do we think, are they suffering in any way if you want you can take a moment to pause or you can just start writing down what you think but have a think okay, so hopefully you've had a quick think about why would you think these people are suffering before we look at that we need to kind of go back and look just kind of recap on the three marks of existence and hopefully it will help understand on why we would've thought all of those example or examples of different types of suffering so the first one is impermanence which is Anicca and this refers to nothing in existence being permanent so if we think about our wonderful couple in love they're very happy typically what happens in relationships I suppose we definitely see it on movies all the time you see the couple they meet each other, they fall in love and at the beginning of the relationship its this kind of this heightened sense of love and passion all those kind of things right from the beginning but slowly it starts to change so it always makes me laugh you never see the happy couple five years down the line shopping in Sainsbury and arguing over prices or that kind of thing it doesn't mean that the love is not there it just means that its changed and what can happen is, people suffer because they think back ah wasn't it great at the beginning when we met and wasn't it so wonderful and wasn't it so passionate and they kind crave that beginning part and many ways when you start a relationship you think its going to stay the same forever and of course it does change and some people suffer because of that then we have the idea of Anatta which means no self no permanent self and this is the idea that we or you don't exist as a permanent being this is what the Buddha realised through deep meditation something that he experienced himself and other people have experience this as well interestingly modern psychology there are some kind of studies in this direction as well they're starting to say that personality and the mind is this kind of collection of ideas and thoughts constantly flow very similar to the idea of Anatta that there isn't a permanent thing that's there its just a constant stream of ideas, emotions, desires all of those kinds of things and if you think about it from the perspective of a on a, you know a physics perspective on a subatomic level we know that things are on constant flux on a cellular level if you think about cellular regeneration, between seven to ten years you will have completely regenerated every single cell in you body so, that means by the time you are ten years old you are a completely different being physically because your body has completely changed the similarist idea that this permanent thing that we think is, you, isn't actually you its a collection of ideas that's constantly changing and people find that hard to let go of so the example that springs to mind is you know people are you kind of stuck in their ways and they don't to change or they don't want to try anything new and that can cause suffering in many ways, and that's just one example but Anatta can cause deeper, deeper issues according to the Buddha and all of that comes back to suffering it causes human beings to suffer just to recap, the three marks of existence is one of the Buddhist early revelations if you like and really it was the idea that we live in these kind of of illusions, we know that really when we think about it the Buddhist saying we know that nothing is really permanent yet we think they are going to stay the same and we're not prepared for that the problem is that we're not prepared for it and that's what he's trying to do, he's trying to help people prepare for the reality we are live in right okay, so have a go at matching these key terms Anicca, Anatta, and Dukkha go ahead and pause if you wish to and have a go at matching them right now okay lets have a look at the answers Anicca means impermanence Anatta, no self Dukkha is suffering usually suffering because of illusions now we looked at the this in the beginning so why are these people suffering this time we are going to think about how might they be suffering in relationship to Anicca and Anatta So I mentioned the couple at the beginning that love changes and some people they don't cope very well with that that there's suddenly their relationship starts to change particularly once we start working or maybe get a bit more serious or you start having to pay bills and you know life suddenly comes perhaps a bit more routine, monotonous definitely when children come along things definitely change now that doesn't mean that the love is not there it means that its changed but often people crave that early kind of love that they have I mentioned it before, it always surprises students my students when I say well the Buddha would say that people in love are suffering, they can't you know they, to begin with you can't get your head around it, but once you explain that love changes and we kind of cling on to early love its starts to make sense with the young, unfortunately the drug addict there's obvious reasons why he might be suffering he's might be suffering because he's effectively putting poison into his body so there's going to be some physical pain there there might be some mental anguish as well because often people, no one really does that kind of thing unless they, perhaps are driven to it or maybe they're deeply upset already so there might be some suffering that exist already that hasn't really been dealt with maybe they haven't really had much support to help them overcome the issues their issues that they've had so from a Buddhist perspective there would be physical suffering, there would mental suffering and suffering because of craving so particularly something like drugs, and addiction you have a physical craving particularly with drugs its extremely difficult to kind of overcome that, its a very hard thing to do so some drug addict might feel like the drug controls them and they actually don't have any choice anymore and that they just become a slave to the drug that they do whatever they have do just to, just to keep taking the drugs, and really they are not living a life anymore, there's no pleasure there's no happiness anymore so there's all sorts of different levels of pain and suffering that's happening there death, death is an obvious form of suffering if its you know the body can go through some pain when it starts to when people pass away not all the time, but it can happen but I think the most distinct suffering that we'd be aware is when someone that we love passes away and dies and again this kind of links to this idea of Anicca and Anatta because Anicca we want the people we love to stay with us forever even though we know, we know that death is going to happen we know that like death and taxes are the only thing that we can guarantee Um, its definitely something that's going to happen yet we are not prepared for it and this is kind of what the Buddhist trying to say that these are the conditions of reality we need to prepare ourselves for them for those kinds of eventualities I you know, you'll be think, I'm such and such child or what have you but eventually you might be a parent yourself so your identity changes as well you might you might feel a sense of sadness when you you know perhaps grow older, or you know you leave school and you go to college or university you might be sad you're not a school student anymore um because your identity has been tied up with what you have been doing something that changes there are all kinds of theses things that happening with Anatta and the young lady really enjoying the burrito you know, someway it is similar to the addicts you know, you enjoy something you're enjoying the food but eventually that's going to end and you might be sad you might be thinking.

"aw" and sometimes you might start overeating because you enjoying it too much and you are not paying attention to what is good for you or not and I know that's my problem, I don't know when to stay stop sometimes particularly with food um so this is what Buddha would say these are kind of examples of suffering and just to be clear there is slight problem with the translation of Dukkha Dukkha, okay generally we are looking it as suffering but um it really is kind of an umbrella term Dukkha comes from the Parli terminology which is ancient in Indian language spoken by the Buddha the first text Buddhist text is written in this language and expose in the Parli can mean a whole mix of things so but generally different types of suffering so sometimes it is described translated as suffering discontentment, stress being unsatisfied it can mean a variety of things and that is because we all experience suffering in so many different ways you know if you think about people who got different pain thresholds some people can cope with quite a lot of pain whereas some other people can't but it is still a kind of suffering we are all different and therefore we experience suffering in a different way so the first one we are going to look at is Dukkha-dukkha um excuse me and that is pain and suffering.

This is a physical pain or obvious kind of pain.

And that would be things like if you broke your arm, you burn yourself, or um someone got hurt in an accident, or someone is really horrible to you at school or something like falling out your friends some really really obvious pain and that is known as Dukkha-dukkha so what I they have done is in the idea of Dukkha I've tried to translated in different ways so we can understand how these types of pain and suffering appear to us okay quick fire so what does Dukkha-dukkha mean? Have a minute to think about that okay I'm getting ahead of myself so Dukkha-dukkha means, um, its pain associated with physical pain, and the very obvious pain so something like bereavement someone passed away, someone has hurt himself physically, or someone has been horrible to you and has made you cry or made you really upset it is very very obvious pain that we experienced second one is Viparinama-dukkha, and that is, pain of alteration.

It looks big, big word.

Um, don't be scared of the Parli word, because um actually what it means is pretty straightforward, because it means it is related to pain caused by change.

And we as human being, we are not great at change I am yet to meet anyone who can take all types of changes, on the chin and be like yeah you know it is fun I know people who are pretty good with change.

I, myself, I am okay with change.

I don't mind it so much but I am not, there are definitely types of change that I can't really cope with initially or I get upset about Things for example you know if I recently have to change my class and I just had my class exactly the way I wanted it and because of current situation, we had to all of us have to move, and then, probably for the first 20 minutes, I was a bit like whoa, this is really annoying I've gotten to do all of this again Um, yeah, it is that kind of thing but other people it might be, um, you know, issues where maybe a relationship is fallen apart and um, two people aren't together anymore.

Or it could be again death we can't cope with losing love ones or someone we are very close to it really can just knock us for sick it takes us probably, you know, a very long time to be able to find ourselves again and cope and there's evidence also in history we think about big changes in history you often, you know, I am sure you learn this in school in history the big changes but sometimes you have to think how long did it take for things to change Slavery, the abolition of slavery is a really good example it took so long for slavery to be abolished in this country and given you we have slavery in this country middle of 60th century.

And um, even then the slavery after slavery was abolished, it still took a very long time for banks to stop fundings for slave plantation in the States.

They were still giving mortgages to these slave plantations by British banks.

Um, it took a long time for slavery to properly end and, even then, after that, it took even longer to bring rights to people of colour in this country.

Some people would argue that that still quite hasn't happened yet.

So you can see there's a long history where people have had this kind of status quo, this way of living they don't quite want to let go off it and suffrage movement is not a good example, it took so long for women to get the right to vote and then the right to become lawyers, to get a degree to become doctors, all of these kind of things it took a very very long time it takes a long time to change the viewpoint of society because it is pain associated with it we kind of like the way things are When they change, it kind of knocks us for sick so, and we can link that to this idea of impermanence the idea of the self.

You know, who am I do I believe in this change What a Buddha would say, well, you are not you you have to roll the time these thoughts, these ideas, are constantly changing.

And even though you think this is who you are today tomorrow you will be someone different and in 5 years time , you are going to be someone different so just be open to it.

That is what the called Buddhist Buddhism is trying to say effectively okay, quick fire What does Viparinama-dukkha referred to? Okay, it referred to suffering caused by the change when we don't want things to change and the last one is Sankhara-dukkha slightly tricky this one but you've got this I know you've got it you'll be fine This is kind of related to the Skandhas, the mental formulations that we have in our mind what happens is we perceive an object that's just an object, its, there's no kind of attachment to it, there's not anything if I look at my pen, there's nothing inherently good or bad about this pen but what we do as human beings is attach certain ideas to them and certain feelings and Sankhara-dukkha is a type of suffering that happens when we distort experiences we that have of physical things, including human beings that might be something like you are perhaps are having a day where you are feeling slightly vulnerable um, not your best self, there might be a huge number of reasons that you might in those circumstances and that impacts on how you feel in that moment and then you go to say hello to one of your friends in the morning and they kind of maybe not acknowledge you properly or they don't really give you the response that you want and what we do, our brains starting going quickly, very quickly, oh they don't like me anymore what have I done, and actually it might have nothing to do with what your friend has greeted you it might actually have more to do with how you are reading or distorting the situation and that again can cause us suffering and that's what Sankhara-dukkha refers to its almost background suffering and it can be linked to general dissatisfaction with life itself What does Sankhara-dukkha refer to? And okay, this is suffering that is caused by our minds distorting things in the world seeing things in a negative way when they might not actually be negative Okay, right, I have talked a lot at you well done for sticking with me and now its your turn to go and have uh to put this into practise I'm just going to move my face over here um, have a go at this task so you task today is Create a grid go back through some, uh choose some, a couple of experiences, and create a grid explaining how different experiences might lead to different types of suffering So what might lead to Dukkha-dukkha, What might lead to Viparanama-dukkha and what might lead to Sankhara-dukkha and you the support box, what I suggest, is you work backwards, start with a type of pain then think about what is most likely to cause that pain then explain why its most likely to cause that pain and if you're still stuck in examples I've put some here, you can use the idea of chocolates use the idea of being born, which is actually quite challenging, but I think you're up for it breaking you leg is another example and if you want to be extra clever, and I'm sure many of you do, try linking it to Anicca, and Anatta So well done for another great lesson I really hope you enjoyed it and that you learned lots of great new things and some interesting terminology um, what I would like you to do know is two things, I want you to go afterwards do the quiz so that we can kind of make sure we are consolidating some of the knowledge we have picked up today and the other thing that you can do that's going to help and its actually quite interesting I'm sure the people in your life are always asking you, what are you doing at school, what you doing at school go and tell them, go and tell what you have learned because it will help you remember some of the main ideas that we have learned today, so go ahead and do those two things and I will see you next time Bye.