I am not a Buddhist really. (Just ask
Dzongsar Jamyang
Khyentse about that, and he’ll agree.) But I know some Buddhist doctrine,
and it has actually helped me stumble through life.
How many different ways to suffer are there, do you think?
There are six senses in the Buddhist world view: smell,
taste, touch, sight, hearing, and (the one we Westerners forget) the mind.
Suffering can enter through all six of these.
What enters? The six stimuli: things we like, things we
dislike, things we don’t care about, things that bring us joy, things that
bring us suffering, things that make us feel nothing at all. Things we like may
be bad for us (like alcohol). Things we dislike (like bitter medicine) may make
us suffer, though they’re good for us physically. Things we don’t care about
may be vitally important, but we don’t realize it. Joy is wonderful but it
never lasts, and its departure causes suffering. Unhappiness is suffering
itself. Indifference can lead to suffering later, through regret.
Six senses x six stimuli = 36.
All six stimuli can be past (remembering the six stimuli),
present (experiencing them in the moment), or future (anticipating them).
36 x the three time periods of past / present / future =
108.
These are the hundred-and-eight sorrows.
In some Buddhist practices, there are commemorations of the
number 108: 108 prostrations before the Lord Buddha, 108 circumambulations of
his statue. Sometimes they ring a bell 108 times at the New Year.
Try this exercise: think of something you do, something you
love or hate or don't care about in the least. It will be one of the
hundred-and-eight.
How about smoking? I smoked for fourteen years. I liked the
way it tasted back them.
So: (sensation: taste) x (stimulus: liking) x (time: past).
And now I have throat cancer, almost certainly as a result
of those fourteen years of smoking. (See also karma.)
The one-hundred-and-eight sorrows go on and on, endlessly,
so long as there’s a single unenlightened being in the entire universe.
We need to realize them, and name them, and let them go.
Then we can move on to whatever comes next.
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