The Task in Relation to Suffering
How we can learn to see things as they are—and, in the process, find freedom
By Ajahn Pramote | Translated by Bruce Evans
Part 1 of 2
Keep practicing. Don’t be discouraged. The reward of meditation practice awaits us if we keep up the practice. People are searching for happiness in the world, but it’s never full or satiated, this worldly happiness. It’s always lacking and imperfect. It’s like a drug. You take it, inject it, or inhale it, and you feel good momentarily. Then suffering arises again. Then you get hungry. There is no real happiness in the world.
When we come to practice meditation, we aren’t aiming for happiness. We are aiming to learn suffering. Make sure you have the right objective. If you’re practicing for happiness, you won’t find it. Happiness is an illusion. When suffering is reduced, you feel happy. When suffering increases, then you feel suffering. But if we have the proper aim in practicing meditation, we will be practicing to learn suffering. When we learn suffering, then our mind lets go of suffering. The mind transcends suffering. When the mind has transcended suffering, we don’t have to talk about happiness. That’s just a freebie. Simply not having suffering—that’s happiness.
But if you aim for happiness, you will have even more wanting. When there is no happiness, you want it, and when there is happiness, you want it to last forever. But in reality, there will soon be suffering. You can’t have happiness all the time. When the mind has desire, wanting arises. The mind struggles, and suffering arises again. The worldly way is to feed desire all the time. We want, and we try to constantly feed our wants. We hope that by feeding our wants we will be happy, but the happiness only arises momentarily. Then you want something else. There is no fulfilment or satisfaction with worldly happiness.
If we know suffering, we know that the task in relation to suffering is not to get rid of it. The Buddha did not teach us to get rid of suffering. He taught us to know suffering. Once we know suffering as it is, seeing the truth as it really is, we see that this body is itself suffering and the mind is itself suffering. When you see suffering clearly, the mind will unwind its attachment.
To see suffering is to see things as they are. The Buddha said that, through seeing the truth, seeing the body and mind, seeing physicality and mentality as they really are, there will arise disenchantment. With disenchantment, clinging is released; with the release of clinging, there is liberation. When there is liberation, there is the knowledge that one is liberated. Birth—the action of the mind clinging to eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind—is ended. The holy life—that is, the practice of the dhamma—has been completed. There is no further task to be done for purity and liberation.
Worldly work is never completed. For instance, today you cook a meal to eat; tomorrow you have to find something to eat again. Today you have a shower; tomorrow you have to shower again. You buy a house, then you have to repair it. There’s no end to it. But knowing suffering, knowing the body and the mind as they really are, leads to the end of the tasks of our mind.
The science of the Buddha is an amazing science. Others searched for ways to resolve suffering. Some of them could see that if you had wanting, you would have suffering. They were clever. They searched for ways to destroy wanting by tormenting it: If you want to eat, don’t eat; if you want to lie down, don’t lie down. But they were only half clever. They knew that wanting was the cause of suffering, but they did not know how to deal with things in order to get rid of wanting. They used the method of denying it.
Another group sought to get rid of suffering by satisfying desires: If you want to eat, eat. If you want to lie down, lie down. If you want to travel around, then travel around. Whatever you desire, satisfy it. Whenever you satisfy a desire, the desire goes away and you feel comfortable.
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1August 18, 2026 182 3