The Eight Sufferings Happen Every Day

📖Master’s Reading

In this life, eight or nine times out of ten things do not go as we wish. This is not fate toying with us but the normal state of the Sahā world. The "birth, ageing, sickness and death" we face are the inevitable law of the body; while "parting from loved ones, not getting what we want, meeting those we resent," and the "suffering of the flourishing five aggregates" of ungovernable emotion, are the torment the mind faces daily. These eight sufferings are our day-to-day ordinary life.

Many, meeting suffering, blame fate, not knowing the eight sufferings are the very nature of saṃsāra. The Dharma teaches us to know suffering not to endure it passively but to learn to face it with wisdom. In truth there is nothing under heaven that is absolutely "suffering"; it is often because we lack wisdom and do not know how to handle it. All suffering springs from inner clinging; when you fix your eyes on suffering and will not let go, suffering torments you without end.

True practice is bravely facing the source of suffering. Learn to transform the mind, and you truly "take suffering as your teacher." See clearly that pain is only a fleeting phenomenon; try to handle and season it as one prepares ingredients, and the once-unswallowable bitterness turns into the sweet wisdom of life. See through the nature of suffering, set down clinging, and you transcend the tangle of the eight sufferings and gain great freedom.

🌱Reflection for Daily Life

• Transform the mind and take suffering as teacher; hardship turns into sweet wisdom.
• Understand that the world's eight sufferings are the Sahā world's normal state.
• Do not waste your energy blaming fate as unfair.
• When suffering comes, transform the mind and season it like cooking.
• Learn to take suffering as teacher, transforming it into sweet wisdom.