Many of you Dear Readers have perhaps already read my big ‘ah-ha moment’ blogs on everything is dukkha. These were so powerful and poignant, that I skipped ahead and published them real time. But, of course, there is a back story, a progression, a series of contemplations that brought me to that big ah-ha moment and in this next chapter of my blog I will share the trail of thoughts that got me there.

During my long lockdown, I had been reading one of LP Thoon’s sermons and it stressed the importance of understanding causality. In particular, it talked about needing to identify the cause of our suffering. For several weeks the idea had preoccupied me and, amidst the stress of my many medical surprises, I had begun to fixate more on identifying and tracing the causes of my suffering. As a result, around the summer of 2021, dukka had again become a dominate theme/ focal point of my practice.

Then, in October 2021, Mae Neecha asked for my help editing LP Thoon’s autobiography and I was left hanging on his repeated statement that everything was suffering. In truth, I had heard this before, from LP Thoon, from Phra Arjan Dang, from Mae Yo and Mae Neecha. I had heard it, but I suddenly realized that in my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe it. Even in the face of the dukkha I experienced during Covid, the dukkha I was experiencing from my own medical scares, I still held the view that dukka was half the picture: Dukka was part of our experience of the world, but there was also sukkha (happiness).  I mean there had to be right? I feel happiness, its the other side of the dukka coin, it seemed logical — experiential — and yet here are all these teachers I trust and respect telling another story. I decided it was worth exploring whether or not I could find truth in the assertion that everything is dukka, and I set myself to the slow task of gathering daily evidence to see what my own inspection of the topic uncovered.

The blogs of this chapter capture my thoughts along the way, and a reprisal, in context, of my final ah-ha that everything in this world must indeed be suffering.