On occasion of Asalha Full Moon, Ajahn Dhammasiha offers reflections on the Four Noble Truths.

Whenever we experience pain and disappointment; when we feel hurt, offended, depressed, upset; we usually search for some EXTERNAL cause for all this suffering.

Maybe we come to the conclusion that our boss, or our mother in law, or our spouse, or the kids, or the politicians and those in power are to blame for the fact that we are hurting.

Or else it's the weather; or some sickness, some virus; or perhaps the mozzies or this or that...

This conclusion is not necessarily wrong. We may even be able to eliminate some specific suffering we experience by changing or manipulating the behaviour of the people that cause us harm.

However, this approach will never get us out of suffering completely:

First of all, often we don't have the power to change the persons that cause us pain. There are so many external causes of our suffering that are completely outside of our control.

Secondly, even if we can change one person, then someone else will come along and do things we don't like. Removing external causes will only give us a short break, it never removes suffering permanently.

Instead, the Buddha looked at the INTERNAL causes of suffering, namely craving, attachment, clinging, delusion of ownership, ignorance and so on.

This approach has two huge advantages:

First, as it's internal, we actually have control over it - it may not be easy to abandon craving and attachment, but at least it's possible.

Secondly, once we get rid of craving and attachment completely, all suffering is gone as well; and even better, it can never come back, we've found a permanent solution 😊⁠⁠Dhammagiri Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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#suffering #buddhism #dhamma #fournobletruths #attachment #craving #vipassana