Examining Uncomfortable Experiences

Two days ago it was the anniversary of Ajahn Chah’s birth. Many aspects of his life are well worth recalling and reflecting upon.

Certainly one of them is the practical approach he used to teach and encourage us. He always emphasized the importance of reflecting on the Four Noble Truths and the experience of dukkha–suffering, dis-ease, discontent–and the different ways we create dukkha within the heart.

In this, Ajahn Chah embodied the quality of fearlessness – he had no fear when looking at the uncomfortable aspects of his own experience.

By contrast, there is a tendency many of us have to try and run away from the uncomfortable experiences in our lives, to gloss them over or put some kind of spin on them. Instead, we need to look at them closely, without feeling intimidated.

I remember an example Ajahn Chah gave about this. He said, “Sometimes you get a splinter in your foot. It’s kind of small, and you don’t feel it all the time, but every once in a while you step in a particular way that causes you to be irritated by it. So the thought arises, ‘I really have to do something about this splinter.’

“Then you carry on and forget about it. But the irritation keeps returning until at one point you say to yourself, ‘I really need to do something about this splinter now. It’s not something I can put up with anymore.’ Finally, you dig it out. The experience of dukkha is the same.”

It’s not as if we’re experiencing dukkha all the time; for the most part, we live incredibly comfortable lives here. But there’s this recurring sense of dis-ease, discontent, dissatisfaction.

We need to make a strong determination to investigate it, understand it, resolve it, relinquish it, not shrink back from it, and really try to dig it out.

We are trying to understand the nature of the human condition – the condition that keeps us cycling back to that feeling of dis-ease. It’s a willingness to patiently put forth effort and to work with our experiences.

This is an opportunity for us to learn how to do that in our daily lives and to learn how to do that in our formal meditation.

It’s possible to be carrying that investigation with us at all times.

This reflection by Luang Por Pasanno is from the book Beginning Our Day, Volume One, (pdf) pp. 8-9.