The Bell

Even with the best intention—and even with a longstanding mindfulness
practice, we all have the tendency to run into the future or go
back into the past, to search for happiness elsewhere. A bell of mindfulness,
whether it is an actual bell or some other sound, is a wonderful
reminder to come back to ourselves, to come back to life here in the
present moment.
The sound of the bell is the voice of the Buddha within. Every
one of us has Buddha nature—the capacity for compassionate, clear,
understanding nature—within us. So when we hear the sound of the
bell, if we like practicing mindfulness, we can respond to that intervention
with respect and appreciation. In my tradition, every time we
hear the bell, we pause. We stop moving, talking, and thinking, and we
listen to the voice of the heart.
We don’t say that we “hit the bell” or “strike the bell.” Rather,
we say we “invite the bell” to sound, because the bell is a friend, an
enlightened friend that helps us wake up and guides us home to ourselves.
Gentleness and nonviolence are characteristics of the sound of
the bell. Its sound is gentle but very powerful.
When you hear the sound of the bell, take the opportunity to come
home to yourself and enjoy your breathing. Take a few moments to
inhale and exhale deeply and touch a little happiness. If you want to experience what the end of suffering will feel like, it is in the here and
the now with this breath. If you want nirvana, it’s right here.

Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I smile.

Embracing Suffering

If we let the suffering come up and just take over our mind, we can
be quickly overwhelmed by it. So we have to invite another energy to
come up at the same time, the energy of mindfulness. The function of
mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care
of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering
and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging
it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing
and embracing suffering without judgment.
So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather
to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her
child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of
the child. Even if the mother doesn’t understand at first why the child
is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty
is, just her act of taking the child into her arms with tenderness can
already bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while
we breathe mindfully, there is relief already.
Embracing our suffering may seem to be the opposite of what we
want to do, especially if our suffering is very large, as with depression.
Depression is one of the most widespread forms of suffering in our
time. It can take away our peace, our joy, our stability, and even our
ability to eat, move about, or do simple tasks. It can seem insurmountable
and we may think that the only thing we can do is either to run
away from it or give in to it.
But nonjudgmentally recognizing and embracing this great suffering
is not at all the same thing as giving in to it. Once you have
offered your acknowledgment and care to this suffering, it naturally
will become less impenetrable and more workable; and then you have
the chance to look into it deeply, with kindness (but still always with
a solid ground of mindful breathing to support you), and find out why
it has come to you. It is trying to get your attention, to tell you something,
and now you can take the opportunity to listen. You can ask
someone to look with you—a teacher, a friend, a psychotherapist.
Whether alone or together with your friends, you can explore what
kind of roots it has, and what nutriments and habits of consumption have been feeding your sorrow. You can discover how, through looking
deeply, you can transform this organic “garbage” into compost, which
in turn may become many beautiful flowers of understanding, compassion,
and joy.

The Pull Of Distractions

When we stop the busyness of the mind and come back to ourselves,
the enormity and rawness of our suffering can seem very intense
because we are so used to ignoring it and distracting ourselves. When
we feel suffering, we have the urge to run away from it and fill ourselves
up with junk food, junk entertainment, anything to keep our mind
off the pain that is there inside us. It doesn’t work. We may succeed in
numbing ourselves from it for a little while, but the suffering inside
wants our attention and it will fester and churn away until it gets it.
We run away from ourselves because we don’t want to be with ourselves. Our pain is a kind of energy that is not pleasant. We fear
that if we release our diversions and come back to ourselves, we’ll be
overwhelmed by the suffering, despair, anger, and loneliness inside.
So we continue to run away. But if we don’t have the time and the willingness
to take care of ourselves, how can we offer any genuine care to
the people we love?
That’s why the first practice is to stop running, come home to our
bodies, and recognize our suffering. When we notice anger or anxiety
coming up, we can recognize these feelings of suffering. Suffering is
one energy. Mindfulness is another energy that we can call on to come
and embrace the suffering. The practice of mindful breathing is essential,
because it provides us with the energy we need for the other steps
of taking care of suffering.
With mindful breathing, you can recognize the presence of a painful
feeling, just like an older sibling greets a younger sibling. You can
say, “Hello, my suffering. I know you are there.” In this way, the energy
of mindfulness keeps us from being overwhelmed by painful feelings.
We can even smile to our suffering and say, “Good morning, my pain,
my sorrow, my fear. I see you. I am here. Don’t worry.”

Body And Mind Together

Each of us has a body, but we aren’t always in touch with it. Maybe our
body needs us, our body is calling us, but we don’t hear it. We’re so
caught up in our job, our computer, our phone, or in our conversation,
we can forget we even have a body.
If we can get in touch with our body, then we can also get in touch
with our feelings. There are many feelings calling to us. Every feeling
is like our child. Suffering is a hurt child crying out to us. But we ignore
the voice of the child within.
The process of healing begins when we mindfully breathe in. In
daily life, very often our body is here but our mind is off in the past,
in the future, or in our projects. The mind is not with the body. When
we breathe in and focus our attention on our in-breath, we reunite
body and mind. We become aware of what is going on in the present
moment, in our body, in our perceptions, and around us.
When we bring our mind home to our body, something wonderful
happens; our mental discourse stops its chattering. Thinking can be
productive, but the reality is that most of our thinking is unproductive.
When we think, it may be easy for us to be lost in our thinking.
But when we use our breath to bring our mind home to the body, we can
stop the thinking.
When you come back to yourself and breathe mindfully, your
mind’s attention has only one object, your breath. If you continue to
breathe in and out mindfully, you maintain that state of presence and
freedom. Your mind will be clearer and you will make better decisions.
It’s much better to make a decision when your mind is clear and free
rather than in the sway of fear, anger, and worries.
When I was a young monk, I believed that it took a long time to get any kind of insight. The truth is, there are insights that can come
right away. When you practice mindfulness of breathing, you know
right away that you are alive, and that to be alive is a wonder. If you can
be aware that you have a living body, and notice when there’s tension in
your body, that’s already an important insight. With that insight, you
have already begun to diagnose the situation. You don’t need to practice
eight years or twenty years in order to wake up.
Breathing mindfully isn’t something hard to do. You don’t have to
suffer while breathing. You’re already doing it all day long. You don’t
need to struggle to control your breathing. In fact, breathing in can
become a real pleasure. You just allow yourself to breathe in naturally
while focusing your attention on your in-breath. It’s like the morning
sunshine on a flower that has closed overnight. The sunshine doen’t
interfere with the flower. The sunshine just embraces and subtly permeates
the flower. Embraced by the energy of the sunshine, the flower
begins to bloom.

Stopping And Acknowledging Suffering

When suffering arises, the first thing to do is to stop, follow our breathing,
and acknowledge it. Don’t try to deny uncomfortable emotions or
push them down.
Breathing in, I know suffering is there.
Breathing out, I say hello to my suffering.
To take one mindful breath requires the presence of our mind, our
body, and our intention. With our conscious breath, we reunite
our body and mind and arrive in the present moment. Just breathing
in mindfully already brings us a surprising amount of freedom. With
each breath, we generate mindful energy, bringing mind and body
together in the present moment to receive this caring acknowledgment
of our suffering. In just two or three breaths taken with your full
attention, you may notice that regret and sorrow about the past have
paused, as well as uncertainty, fear, and worries about the future.

Generating Mindfulness

The way we start producing the medicine of mindfulness is by stopping
and taking a conscious breath, giving our complete attention to
our in-breath and our out-breath. When we stop and take a breath in
this way, we unite body and mind and come back home to ourselves.
We feel our bodies more fully. We are truly alive only when the mind is
with the body. The great news is that oneness of body and mind can be
realized just by one in-breath. Maybe we have not been kind enough to
our body for some time. Recognizing the tension, the pain, the stress
in our body, we can bathe it in our mindful awareness, and that is the
beginning of healing.
If we take care of the suffering inside us, we have more clarity,
energy, and strength to help address the suffering violence, poverty,
and inequity of our loved ones as well as the suffering in our community
and the world. If, however, we are preoccupied with the fear and
despair in us, we can’t help remove the suffering of others. There is an
art to suffering well. If we know how to take care of our suffering, we
not only suffer much, much less, we also create more happiness around
us and in the world.

Healing Medicine

The main affliction of our modern civilization is that we don’t know
how to handle the suffering inside us and we try to cover it up with all
kinds of consumption. Retailers peddle a plethora of classic and novel
devices to help us cover up the suffering inside. But unless and until
we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to
life, and happiness will continue to elude us.
There are many people who have enormous suffering, and don’t know how to handle it. For many people, it starts already at a very
young age. So why don’t schools teach our young people the way to
manage suffering? If a student is very unhappy, he can’t concentrate
and he can’t learn. The suffering of each of us affects others. The more
we learn about the art of suffering well, the less suffering there will be
in the world.
Mindfulness is the best way to be with our suffering without being
overwhelmed by it. Mindfulness is the capacity to dwell in the present
moment, to know what’s happening in the here and now. For example,
when we’re lifting our two arms, we’re conscious of the fact that we’re
lifting our arms. Our mind is with our lifting of our arms, and we don’t
think about the past or the future, because lifting our arms is what’s
happening in the present moment.
To be mindful means to be aware. It’s the energy that knows what
is happening in the present moment. Lifting our arms and knowing
that we’re lifting our arms—that’s mindfulness, mindfulness of our
action. When we breathe in and we know we’re breathing in, that’s
mindfulness. When we make a step and we know that the steps are
taking place, we are mindful of the steps. Mindfulness is always mindfulness
of something. It’s the energy that helps us be aware of what is
happening right now and right here, in our body, in our feelings, in our
perceptions, and around us.
With mindfulness, you can recognize the presence of the suffering
in you and in the world. And it’s with that same energy that you
tenderly embrace the suffering. By being aware of your in-breath and
out-breath you generate the energy of mindfulness, so you can continue
to cradle the suffering. Practitioners of mindfulness can help
and support each other in recognizing, embracing, and transforming
suffering. With mindfulness we are no longer afraid of pain. We can even go further and make good use of suffering to generate the energy
of understanding and compassion that heals us and we can help others
to heal and be happy as well.

What Suffering is Made Of

There is the suffering of the body, including the sensations of pain,
illness, hunger, and physical injury. Some of this suffering is simply
unavoidable. Then there is the suffering of the mind, including anxiety,
jealousy, despair, fear, and anger. We have the seeds, the potential
in us for understanding, love, compassion, and insight, as well as the
seeds of anger, hate, and greed. While we can’t avoid all the suffering
in life, we can suffer much less by not watering the seeds of suffering
inside us.
Are you at war with your body? Do you neglect or punish your
body? Have you truly gotten to know your body? Can you feel at home
with your body? Suffering can be either physical or mental or both,
but every kind of suffering manifests somewhere in the body and
creates tension and stress. We are told that we should release the
tension in our body. Many of us have tried very hard! We want to
release the tension in our body, but we can’t release it. Our attempts at
reducing tension in us won’t work unless we first acknowledge that
it’s there. When you cut your finger, you just wash it and your body knows
how to heal. When a nonhuman animal living in the forest is injured,
she knows what to do. She stops searching for something to eat or looking
for a mate. She knows, through generations of ancestral knowledge,
that it’s not good for her to do so. She finds a quiet place and just
lies down, doing nothing. Nonhuman animals instinctively know that
stopping is the best way to get healed. They don’t need a doctor, a drugstore,
or a pharmacist.
We human beings used to have this kind of wisdom. But we have
lost touch with it. We don’t know how to rest anymore. We don’t allow
the body to rest, to release the tension, and heal. We rely almost
entirely on medication to deal with sickness and pain. Yet the most
effective ways to ease and transform our suffering are already available
to us without any prescription and at no financial cost. I’m not suggesting
that you should throw away all your medications. Some of us
do need to use certain medicines. But we can sometimes use them in
smaller quantities and to much greater effect when we know how to let
our body and mind truly rest.

The Four Noble Truths

The very first teaching the Buddha gave after his enlightenment was
about suffering. It’s called the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha’s Four
Noble Truths are: there is suffering; there is a course of action that
generates suffering; suffering ceases (i.e., there is happiness); and there is a course of action leading to the cessation of suffering (the
arising of happiness).
When you first hear that suffering is a Noble Truth, you might
wonder what’s so noble about suffering? The Buddha was saying that
if we can recognize suffering, and if we embrace it and look deeply
into its roots, then we’ll be able to let go of the habits that feed it and,
at the same time, find a way to happiness. Suffering has its beneficial
aspects. It can be an excellent teacher.

Did the Buddha Suffer

When I was a young monk, I believed that the Buddha didn’t suffer
once he had become enlightened. Naively I asked myself, “What’s the
use of becoming a Buddha if you continue to suffer?” The Buddha did
suffer, because he had a body, feelings, and perceptions, like all of us.
Sometimes he probably had a headache. Sometimes he suffered from
rheumatism. If he happened to eat something not well cooked, then
he had intestinal problems. So he suffered physically, and he suffered
emotionally as well. When one of his beloved students died, he suffered.
How can you not suffer when a dear friend has just died? The
Buddha wasn’t a stone. He was a human being. But because he had a lot
of insight, wisdom, and compassion, he knew how to suffer and so he
suffered much less.

No mud, No lotus

Both suffering and happiness are of an organic nature, which means
they are both transitory; they are always changing. The flower, when it
wilts, becomes the compost. The compost can help grow a flower again.
Happiness is also organic and impermanent by nature. It can become
suffering and suffering can become happiness again.
If you look deeply into a flower, you see that a flower is made only
of nonflower elements. In that flower there is a cloud. Of course we
know a cloud isn’t a flower, but without a cloud, a flower can’t be. If
there’s no cloud, there’s no rain, and no flower can grow. You don’t have
to be a dreamer to see a cloud floating in a flower. It’s really there. Sunlight
is also there. Sunlight isn’t flower, but without sunlight no flower
is possible.
If we continue to look deeply into the flower, we see many other
things, like the earth and the minerals. Without them a flower cannot
be. So it’s a fact that a flower is made only of nonflower elements. A flower can’t be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with everything
else. You can’t remove the sunlight, the soil, or the cloud from
the flower.
In each of our Plum Village practice centers around the world, we
have a lotus pond. Everyone knows we need to have mud for lotuses to
grow. The mud doesn’t smell so good, but the lotus flower smells very
good. If you don’t have mud, the lotus won’t manifest. You can’t grow
lotus flowers on marble. Without mud, there can be no lotus.
It is possible of course to get stuck in the “mud” of life. It’s easy
enough to notice mud all over you at times. The hardest thing to practice
is not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by despair. When
you’re overwhelmed by despair, all you can see is suffering everywhere
you look. You feel as if the worst thing is happening to you. But we
must remember that suffering is a kind of mud that we need in order to
generate joy and happiness. Without suffering, there’s no happiness.
So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to
embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world,
with a lot of tenderness.
When I lived in Vietnam during the war, it was difficult to see
our way through that dark and heavy mud. It seemed like the destruction
would just go on and on forever. Every day people would ask me
if I thought the war would end soon. It was very difficult to answer,
because there was no end in sight. But I knew if I said, “I don’t know,”
that would only water their seeds of despair. So when people asked me
that question, I replied, “Everything is impermanent, even war. It will
end some day.” Knowing that, we could continue to work for peace.
And indeed the war did end. Now the former mortal enemies are busily
trading and touring back and forth, and people throughout the world
enjoy practicing our tradition’s teachings on mindfulness and peace. If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful
lotuses. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can
produce happiness. We do need some suffering to make happiness possible.
And most of us have enough suffering inside and around us to be
able to do that. We don’t have to create more.

Suffering and happiness are not separate

When we suffer, we tend to think that suffering is all there is at that
moment, and happiness belongs to some other time or place. People
often ask, “Why do I have to suffer?” Thinking we should be able to
have a life without any suffering is as deluded as thinking we should be
able to have a left side without a right side. The same is true of thinking
we have a life in which no happiness whatsoever is to be found. If
the left says, “Right, you have to go away. I don’t want you. I only want
the left”—that’s nonsense, because then the left would have to stop
existing as well. If there’s no right, then there’s no left. Where there is
no suffering, there can be no happiness either, and vice versa.
If we can learn to see and skillfully engage with both the presence
of happiness and the presence of suffering, we will go in the
direction of enjoying life more. Every day we go a little farther in
that direction, and eventually we realize that suffering and happiness
are not two separate things.
Cold air can be painful if you aren’t wearing enough warm clothes.
But when you’re feeling overheated or you’re walking outside with
proper clothing, the bracing sensation of cold air can be a source of
feeling joy and aliveness. Suffering isn’t some kind of external, objective
source of oppression and pain. There might be things that cause
you to suffer, such as loud music or bright lights, which may bring
other people joy. There are things that bring you joy that annoy other
people. The rainy day that ruins your plans for a picnic is a boon for
the farmer whose field is parched.
Happiness is possible right now, today—but happiness cannot be
without suffering. Some people think that in order to be happy they must avoid all suffering, and so they are constantly vigilant, constantly
worrying. They end up sacrificing all their spontaneity, freedom, and
joy. This isn’t correct. If you can recognize and accept your pain without
running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there,
joy can also be there at the same time.
Some say that suffering is only an illusion or that to live wisely
we have to “transcend” both suffering and joy. I say the opposite. The
way to suffer well and be happy is to stay in touch with what is actually
going on; in doing so, you will gain liberating insights into the true
nature of suffering and of joy.