Why Life is Suffering
The Buddha famously taught that life is suffering, and he located the source of
this in desire, thirst, or craving. The happiness we seek is unattainable because our
thirsts are unquenchable. This implies that we would be happy if only our desires
were fulfilled. Happiness, then, is a state of fulfillment or “desirelessness,” a state
completely free from dissatisfaction or want. But, having said this, it is clear that
the Buddha’s message is not that happiness is to be achieved by fulfilling our
desires, but that we suffer because we mistakenly conceive of happiness in this
way. It is because we seek happiness in the fulfillment of desire that happiness is
unattainable. Why is this?
First, the stream of desires is endless. No sooner is one desire satisfied than
another one takes its place—a sad phenomenon sometimes called the
“satisfaction treadmill.”1
Never content with the present moment, we seek
happiness in the future, in the satisfaction of some new desire. As any beginning
meditator knows, dissatisfaction and restlessness gnaw on us constantly. The
untamed mind is never free from the grip of desire, not even for a moment. If to
be happy is to satisfy all of our desires, and if the stream of desires is endless,
then lasting happiness is unattainable. Some new desire, some unsatisfied want,
always appears to disrupt whatever satisfaction we might experience.
Second, desire often assumes the form of grasping or attachment. To a large
extent, we seek happiness in our possessions. We covet material things, of course,
but also pleasure, health, knowledge, status, praise, and recognition. We are
1
See Irvine (2006), p. 106.
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attached to our family and friends, our pets, our material possessions, our bodies,
our minds, our careers, our reputations, our health, our physical appearance, our
youth, and, of course, life itself. Can we achieve lasting happiness by acquiring
and holding on to the things we covet? No, according to Buddhism, for the
following simple reason: all things are impermanent. In one way or another, all
that we care about, everyone and everything, slips from our grasp. Material
possessions crumble into nothingness. Children grow into adults. Relationships
end. Health fades. Youth fades. Beauty fades. If this is not obvious, consider this.
Death represents the loss of everything we value, and no one escapes death. In
Buddhism, impermanence (aniccata) is one of the three marks of all conditioned
phenomena. Because all things are impermanent, we cannot achieve lasting
happiness by acquiring the things we desire. These things eventually fade away,
and with it our happiness.
Third, the things we think will bring us lasting happiness simply don’t. We
tend to think: If I only I had the right job, a good marriage, enough money, a new
house, then I would be happy. Yet nothing desired, once acquired, is a source of
lasting satisfaction. Of course, we derive some satisfaction from achieving our
goals, but it soon fades. Psychologists call this “hedonic adaptation.”2
This is
another of the three marks of existence: dukkha. All conditioned phenomena,
according to the Buddha, are marked by “unsatisfactoriness.” This is rooted in the
first mark of existence. Our experience of satisfaction is itself a conditioned,
dependent phenomenon. It fades like everything else.
Fourth, if happiness is to be found in the fulfillment of desire, then we must be
able to control things—people, situations, and events. To be happy, things must go
our way. And this means that we must have the power to make things go our way.
Yet, realistically speaking, not much is under our control. Sensing this, we
immerse ourselves in worry. When our will is thwarted, as it so often is, we
experience frustration. When people don’t behave as they’re “supposed” to
behave, we experience anger and resentment. Worry, frustration, anger, fear,
resentment, jealousy, despair, disappointment, heartbreak, and many other
conflictive emotions are bound up with our efforts to control things. Although it is
happiness that we seek, it is suffering that we create for ourselves and for others.
According to Buddhism, the problem is not just that we have limited power
2
See Irvine (2006), pp. 105-106. There are ups and downs in life, but the evidence suggests that there
is an individually variable happiness “set point” to which people eventually return. See Haybron
(2011).
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over the world; rather, we have no power at all. The self, understood as a center of
power and control, as a doer of deeds, an initiator of actions, does not exist. When
I think, there is no “I” that makes thoughts appear. When I raise my arm or speak,
there is no “I” that makes my arm rise or my lips and tongue move. There is no
actor or agent behind my actions. The “I,” understood as an actor or agent, as a
center of power and control, is an illusion. This is the third mark of existence:
no-self (anattā). Understood as a general metaphysical thesis, the no-self doctrine
amounts to the claim that all things lack a substantial core. All things at every
moment are in the process of coming to be or in the reverse process of ceasing to
be; there is no time when something simply is. There are no “beings” but only
“becomings.” This includes myself. My life is a transformational process, but
there is no enduring entity that undergoes this process. My thoughts and actions
are events, and they are bound up with everything else that happens. They cannot
be disentangled from the causal matrix and assigned to a separately existing,
substantial self.
We regard many things as possessions, and these things are intimately bound
up with our sense of selfhood. Every “my” points to an “I.” I look upon my body,
for instance, as my body, not just as a body. But my body is not a possession. It is
something I make use of, but only temporarily. It is subject to disease, old age,
death, and decay. Sooner or later, it will slip from my grasp, like everything else.
Because all things are impermanent, there is nothing that persists from one
moment to the next—including myself and everything I conceptualize as mine.
This can’t be reconciled with the attitude of possessiveness. Possessiveness
insists that things remain the same. But nothing remains the same. The object of
my possessiveness now is not the same as the object of my possessiveness a
moment from now. Possessiveness rests upon the delusion of permanence. The
delusion is thinking that we can arrest the process of change and somehow make
something remain the same from one moment to the next, from one day to the
next, from one year to the next.
There are a number of reflections that bring home in a powerful way just how
deep our attachments are. Imagine that all your physical possessions are destroyed.
How devastating would this be? Imagine losing your ability to remember things
or to learn new things, to see, touch, or hear. Imagine that you lose your career.
Imagine that everyone you care about dies. Imagine that you’re diagnosed with a
fatal condition. The truth is that this is (or soon will be) happening to us, but we
don’t face this fact. It’s too frightening. We live with the comforting delusion of
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permanence. (But, importantly, the inevitability of loss is frightening only
because we cling to “I” and “mine.”)
Ultimately, we suffer because of an existential contradiction: the contradiction
between the deep attachments that we have—to our lives, to our bodies, to our
minds, to youth, to health, to people, to our material possessions, to our mental
possessions (e.g., knowledge, memories)—and the fact that all things, without
exception, are impermanent. The suffering of life resides in this contradiction. We
cope with this contradiction by denying it or ignoring it. This is delusion. We
delude ourselves into thinking that what is impermanent is really permanent, or
we just don’t think about it. It’s not that we are ignorant of this contradiction. We
just refuse to think about it, or we disguise the facts.
Once again, Buddhism teaches that all phenomena have three characteristic
marks: impermanence, selflessness, and unsatisfactoriness. We have seen how the
attitude of possessiveness is related to the first mark. It is also related to the other
two. That all things lack a self implies that there is nothing to possess. If I am
possessive of my car, what is it exactly that is the object of my possessiveness?
What is there to grasp, to hold on to? The Buddhist answer is “nothing.” Also,
why is it that I should try to possess anything? Only because I imagine that my
possessions will bring me happiness. If I think of happiness in terms of the
enjoyment of my possessions, then of course I cling to these possessions. But if all
things are unsatisfactory in the sense that possessing things is not a source of the
happiness we seek, then the attitude of possessiveness is based on delusion.
Buddhism challenges the conventional conception of happiness. The Buddha
tells us that happiness, as we ordinarily conceive of it, is an illusion. True
happiness cannot be found in possessing things or satisfying our cravings. Rather,
it involves an abiding sense of fullness and inner peace, an inner serenity that does
not depend upon our life circumstances. If I see things as they really are, I will
cling to nothing. Material things flow in and out of my life. So do people. My
body will eventually die and decompose. Life ends. This is just how things are.
Happiness is the natural expression of understanding, really understanding, that
all things are impermanent. The Buddha was once asked whether he could sum
up his teaching in a single sentence. He replied that he could, and that this was
“Cling to nothing.”3