an insight into dhukka

Siddhartha’s dhukka

Raj Arumugam (Director, TTS – www.ttsworld.com.au)

Each one of us is possessed of Buddha nature, and so it is that Siddahartha’s pain is ours too, as is the pain of all sentient beings. This is an effective point of entry for understanding dhukka.

Siddhartha’s life of ease

We know the Buddha as the Enlightened One, as the One who gained nirvana, and the One who shows all beings the way to that abiding state.
But, using one’s imagination, and entering through that imagination to the life of Siddhartha (which was what the Buddha was known before nirvana), one can perhaps understand the element of dhukka (unsatisfactoriness; incompleteness; suffering) in Siddhartha’s life.
As a prince, Siddhartha led a life of luxury. The Buddhist tradition provides various examples:
- he had a palace for winter, one for summer and one for the rains
- he had many items of luxury at his disposal.
Suddhodhana, the prince’s father, ensured that the young prince was always surrounded by luxuries and pleasant things.
This sense of ease and luxury in Siddhartha’s life is most aptly conveyed in the following lines fromThe Life of The Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli:

I was delicate, most delicate, supremely delicate. Lily pools were made for me at my father’s house solely for my benefit. Blue lilies flowered in one, white lilies in another, red lilies in a third. I used no sandalwood that was not from Benares. My turban, tunic, lower garments and cloak were all made of Benares cloth. A white sunshade was held over me day and night so that no cold or heat or dust or grit or dew might inconvenience me.

Siddhartha’s pain

Yet even Siddhartha’s life could not have been without pain, without dhukka.The life of total freedom, the life where all pain ceases would be his when Siddhartha becomes the Buddha, but until then pain, and unsatisfactoriness – dhukka - will follow Siddhartha, even as it will follow any being, until nirvana.
The first clue we have about this pain, Siddhartha’s pain, is when we learn that his mother, Mahamaya, died when he was but seven days old.
Even though Suddhodhna and Mahamaya’s sister Mahapajapati undoubtedly took good care of the child, the loss of one’s own mother is always a cause of pain. We can, by an exercise of our empathy, feel that pain creeping later in Siddhartha’s life. Even as the Buddha, as legend has it, he visited his mother who at that time resided in another world system, Tushita, so that he may declare the Dharma to her. One sees the Buddha’s profound love for the being who had borne him – and one imagines the pain of Siddhartha, as a child perhaps between seven and ten years old, when he learns that his mother had died when he was but seven days old.

There is another incident in which we can again imagine, this time perhaps more vividly, the pain Siddhartha must have endured and seen in his life before enlightenment. He was about eleven years old when Devadatta, his cousin, using a bow and arrow, shot down a swan.

Siddhartha rescued the swan and nursed the swan. Certainly the future Buddha’s perfect compassion and love comes clearly through in this incident; but one can, as one visualizes the young child with the swan in his hands, stroking it tenderly, and nursing the swan, one can also imagine easily the pain the child must have suffered at seeing the suffering of another being.
One can understand that such a child, so sensitive and endowed with deep compassion, must have been quite disturbed by the violence and aggression of his cousin.
Siddhartha may, at this stage, have had the first inkling of the First Noble Truth that he would propound as the Buddha: The Noble Truth of Dhukka.

Universal dhukka

But what is the significance of Siddhartha’s suffering or dhukka?
In as far as each one of us is endowed with the Buddha nature (though not fully realized by each), Siddhartha’s dhukka is our own. (Every other’s pain is ours too.) This pain can be an effective start point for our own meditation on the First Noble Truth of Dhukka – on the unsatisfactory, impermanent nature of human life; on incompleteness and suffering.
Empathizing with the pain of a child who learns that his biological mother is not alive, that she died when he was but seven days old; and visualizing – truly and actually visualizing – a young and sensitive child’s first encounter with the aggression and violence of his fellow-human being(s) cannot but bring for us a fresh insight into the nature of dhukka.

By extension, one then reviews one’s own experiences of dhukka, of unsatisfactoriness and links this dhukka with Siddhartha’s suffering – linking it further with the dhukka of all living beings, all sentient beings, linking it to the dhukka in all existence. That way is a good and clear way of understanding Siddhartha’s pain, of understanding our own pain, of understanding the unsatisfactoriness in all existence, of gaining full insight into the nature of dhukka.

One finds then that this understanding does not lead one to despondency and hopelessness – but to an insight into dhukka that opens doors for its ending. Understanding this leads to freedom. For the journey never starts without Siddhartha’s dhukka.

Raj Arumugam (Director, TTS – www.ttsworld.com.au)

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