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English Dharma Talk 2 - Dukha
The practice of the Lazy Day is a very deep practice to stop the habit of doing things. It is to be lazy, not to do anything, not to think about anything, not to be anxious about anything. You are there, you are present, you are free. Each step is a realization, a celebration of life. This practice is connected to a story of building two bridges in Vietnam for children to go to school. The first bridge is named the bridge of understanding, and the second bridge is the bridge of love. Love is made of understanding; if you don’t understand, you cannot love. Therefore, the bridge of understanding comes first.
A practice for stopping thinking and being carried away by feelings is abdominal breathing. You bring your attention fully to the rising and falling of your abdomen. When a strong emotion comes, you should not stay in the heart of the storm but go down to your abdomen, below your navel. An emotion is like a baby, and you are the mother; you have to hold your baby, not run away from it. This leads to the first teaching of the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths:
- Ill-being (dukkha): The condition of ill-being, which we have to acknowledge and look deeply into.
- Origination (samudāya): The making of ill-being, how it has come to be.
- Cessation (nirodha): The absence of ill-being, the hope that ill-being can be transformed.
- Path (mārga): The way to arrive at the cessation of ill-being.
The Four Noble Truths can be understood as two pairs of cause and effect. The first is ill-being and the path leading to it, the Eightfold Ignoble Path. The second is the presence of well-being (the cessation of ill-being) and the path leading to it, the Eightfold Noble Path. The path of eight right practices is: Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. The first element, Right View, is right understanding. Most of our suffering comes from our wrong perceptions. We must not be a victim of our perceptions, but always question them. In the Buddhist path, the word for view, dṛṣṭi, often means wrong view, because any view taken from a single point is not complete. The attachment to views, kiến thủ, is a great part of our suffering. The practice is to untie the knots of our wrong views.