Dear Reader, this blog is a direct continuation of the last two, Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 1 and Part 2: Seriously, this is not one of those to try skipping ahead to get to the punchline. If you haven’t already done so, go back and read the last two blogs prior to reading the continuation here.

Just a a little refresher for those of you who have read the past blogs, below is yet more evidence to support my contemplations on the topic that everything is dukka. The evidence is organized into themes, based around the best examples I found to help prove to myself an assertation I had heard many times from my teachers — that everything is suffering. Moreover, I sought to understand not just the conclusion, but the WHY: Why everything in the world must be suffering, what it is about the nature of the world and everything in it that guarantees that every leaf I turn, every rock I look under, every new corner I turn, I will always find the suffering innate in this world.

• If the things we love are the source of dukka, where can we possibly hope to find sukka? : A few years ago, my friend’s husband gave him an ultimatum: Adopt the kid they had always planned on or divorce so that he could find another partner to raise a kid with. My friend was torn, he really didn’t want a child, but to save the life he had and loved with his husband, he acquiesced. Fast forward a few years and this friend is quite unhappy, the child he adopted has developmental issues, and has been a huge burden, especially during the pandemic. Watching him it is so clear that we invite, and then endure, tremendous suffering for what we love. In fact, nothing else other than what we love could possibly motivate us to endure the kind of suffering we do, if we didn’t love the thing we ‘do it for’ we would say “fuck it” and be done. If I didn’t love Eric I would have said fuck it and left NY. If Eric and I both didn’t love the life we imagine money will buy we would say fuck it and be done with his abusive jobs. It’s not only present suffering either — how many times do folks commit crimes to give their kids a better life, kill to protect themselves, seek revenge to protect a wounded ego — we regularly invite future suffering for the stuff we love.  Just imagining that we have something we love, even for a moment, is the seed for all the suffering we endure in this world as we seek to cling to that thing.  But if the things we love are what brings us dukka, where should we look to find sukka?

• The only thing keeping me here is my bondage — I was watching a play about slavery and in it a slave man decides he is going to runaway. In a scene where he goes to tell his sister about his plans he says, “out there is freedom, the only thing for me here is my bondage, there is nothing else keeping me here.” He invites his sister to join him in the escape, but she refuses, she has two young children –too young to be on the run– and she feels she can’t leave them. Her children are her bondage. In that moment, I got a brief understanding that the things and people we love are our tether to this world; it is because of Eric, my family, friends, enjoyments of various hobbies and places, my comforts and the joys I take in being loved, having the things I believe make me a me, that I can’t just flee to freedom like that sister in the play. The thing is, if all that is here is my bondage isn’t everything dukka? Just because someone with Stockholm syndrome begins to empathize with, love and depend on their captors, it doesn’t mean they aren’t in captivity. Any “sane” person looking at someone with Stolkholms realizes the patient is just deluded, that in fact they are in bondage,  and of course bondage is dukka.

• Waiting to suffer is suffering — My mom was hit by a car and my brother was so angry at the man who hit her. He said it wasn’t fair that man walked away with just a ticket while my mom had to endure so much injury and pain, while the family had to suffer to help her. I told him it was fair, the world is fair, everyone has to suffer injury, death, struggle for their families; the only difference was the timing and the details. We take turns, this was my family’s turn to struggle, another time will be that man’s turn. The more I think about it though, the more I see that waiting for a turn at suffering is suffering in and of itself. Afterall, I started this practice motivated by the deep distress of being a hypochondriac: Even when I wasn’t ill, I was stressed and afraid of my eventual illness, of “my turn”. Though we can sometimes ‘put it out of our heads’, ignore impending suffering, on some level we all know it is coming. The thing we don’t necessarily notice is that it is already here. It is here because if everything were candy canes and rainbows, we wouldn’t need to do so much ignoring and fantasizing and hoping and striving and planning for something better. It is here because the fear and stress of waiting to suffer is just another kind of suffering, a suffering that differs only in degree, not kind.

• There are no happy endings in this world, only stories that haven’t finished yet: I was rewatching Westworld and I came to an episode where some of the characters –bandits — have successfully stolen a safe and are trying to get it open. Here is the thing, in this show, the characters are reborn countless times, each life is just a variation on their last, small differences, but for these bandits the story line, the thing that drives them, is always the same, get and open the safe. This life, they are finally able to open the safe, inside it is empty. The scene hit me really hard, and I realized it is a powerful ubai for life: So often we struggle, labor, fight for what we want and we fail to get it, it is instant tragedy, spending lifetimes trying to crack a safe only to have it be empty. Of course, there are times the safe is full –we strive and struggle and are ‘rewarded’ with just what we want, it’s a happy ending with boku bucks. The problem though is that the story isn’t over; with a bunch of money, a host of new problems arise. For bandits, there is the consequences born of stealing money. Even if it was well gotten, with money (with anything) comes the fear of loosing it, the need to protect and preserve it. Ultimately it will be used up, and then there is the need to find at least as much as you had before to keep up the lifestyle that you had become comfortable with. When you play it forward –past the fake happy ending — it seems like whether the safe is empty or full, it is functionally the same;  neither temporarily getting ,nor not getting, quenches my thirst or stops the efforting. There is no happy ending, there is a pause –at best — and then more struggle. Stories without happy endings are called tragedies (no matter how many comic relief moments they have), and this world is an endless story without a happy ending, it is a tragedy, it is dukka.

• If getting what I want really made me happy, why the hell am I so damn stressed and sad: Back in early April, when it was time to head home from a fairly pleasant winter in Miami, all I wanted was to stay and enjoy more time here. As we were driving home, my mom got into an accident and I turned right back around and have been in Miami to help care for her since. I got my wish, more time in Miami with family, but this has been one of the saddest, scariest and most stressful periods in my life. It got me thinking that I frequently get exactly what I want, and yet, rather than being satisfied, I am stressed. Foundational to birth and becoming, to every action, is want, followed by belief that fulfilling said want will lead to sukka. But over and over I get what I want, and I suffer just the same. In fact, in many cases I suffer because of getting what I want…

• A world where every activity is a risk is a world of dukka — I was getting ready to go meet my brother and some family friends for dinner the other night. It was a gathering I was really looking forward to, a way to destress a little from a very intense week dealing with mom stuff. In the shower, I did the quick ‘new normal’ risk calculation: These friends had recently recovered from Covid, so the chance they were carriers was low, my brother and his wife tested that AM. It was safeish; I could enjoy. Then I thought more about it and realized that everything I do, all the activities I enjoy, the stuff that brings me comfort and delight, it comes with risk. Covid makes this so clear, but its always been this way, it is a product of having a fragile body, clinging to breakable things, of everything we do having 2 sides, coming with unforeseen consequences. I read about a study that shows that the human brain actually tries to shield us from the reality of our deaths, categorizing information about death as something that happens to others, but doesn’t relate to us. The researchers hypothesis that humans need to be desensitized to our own mortality to function in life. Folks are hardwired to to ignore risk and to believe it doesn’t apply to them. If we were truly cognizant of the risks of an activity, it wouldn’t be fun anymore; enjoyment requires ignoring, closing our eyes to ever present risk, or assuming a situation –a life –that is safe and comfortable now will continue to be so as long as we are in it. But just because we ignore stuff it doesn’t make it untrue, just because we believe we are exempt from mortality, risk, it doesn’t mean we are. We live in a world of omnipresent risk, and omnipresent risk is just another way to define dukka.

• Easier doesn’t mean easy, it proves degrees of hard: I was reading the news and there was an article about a study that concluded that having more money makes people happier in their day to day life. There is no threshold either, more money = more day-to-day happiness. The reason being that money tends to solve problems, it makes life easier. The story hit me because I so obviously agree, money makes life easier in many ways. Which got me thinking… Since my mom’s accident, having money has certainly made stuff easier; I have a flexible salaried job (and savings), I don’t have to worry about lost wages taking care of her. I have used money to free up time on day-to-day stuff, a meal service so I don’t need to worry about cooking, a laundry service so I don’t need to worry about cleaning. Mom has a concierge doctor, so she got immediate referrals for a pulmonologist when lung issues arose last week and the doc was super fast communicating prescription and med history to the hospital and rehab facilities. Money has definitely made some stuff in this situation easier, but  things are still exceptionally hard. Now, finally I understand your answer so many months ago, ” hot and cold are on opposite ends of the same temperature scale. Or how 0 and 100 are on opposite ends of a number scale”. If you need to demarcate stuff on a scale of how hard they are — if sometimes it is relatively harder/easier — it doesn’t mean stuff is easy, it actually proves that degrees of hard/difficulty are what define living in this world. It can be more hard, it can be less hard. But the scale is the scale of struggle, degrees of dukka is what the world slides along.