Greetings,

Let me begin by thanking everyone for walking this path with Thaddius and me on his transition and rebirth. It has been such an eye opening experience and has really deepened my respect for practice. I am certain that Thaddius nor I could not have done this without all the love and support we have felt from its very beginning. May my sharing of this experience with you give you the courage to share your difficulties with others. May we learn a new way of sharing our pain. May the next Buddha be Sangha.

This month we are continuing our exploration into the 3 characteristics. As I said last month, the characteristics of existence are that all phenomena are conditioned. They are subject to change, and they are not personal. This being subject to change means that they are irritating - change in and of itself brings about a lot of irritation and dissatisfaction. If something is a conditioned thing, then unless the conditions are perfectly set, and never shift in any way, it will certainly change. There's no way around it and everything in our human physical world is subject to change. Everything is subject to conditions coming together in a certain way for things to happen the way they happen. That's the impermanent nature of existence. Last month we looked at experience from its impermanent nature, this month we want to look at experience, even the same experience from its Dukkha nature.

The root cause of the Dukkha is that we do not prepare for the changing nature of things. For instance, our bodies are constantly changing. We can have a pleasant experience, and we feel great, but we still get bombarded with unexpected unpleasantness. We've always lived in and out of both pain and pleasure in our bodies. And yet, every time some unpleasant sensation comes, we are almost shocked. Like it shouldn't be here. I shouldn't feel this way. Something's wrong. We get stuck in fear that once unpleasantness comes, it will never go away. It will be here permanently. We think this even though we have seen unpleasantness come and go in our bodies our whole lives.

Practicing with Dukkha is about coming to the realization that inherent in this life is this constant change. Dukkha is what we experience when we resist this change. It shows up in five ways – Birth, aging and death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with what we don't want is stressful; separation from what we want is stressful; and not getting what we want is stressful. The more you practice getting to know these five aspects of Dukkha, the more you feel into your resistance. Get to know that resistance. Watch how it shows up. When does it show up? What are the conditions that lead to it? When is it present, when is it not present? The more you become friends and companions with the resistance to difficulty (Dukkha) - the more you become friends with experience, life, existence, just as it is.

Dukkha will not reveal itself to you if you are in a resistant state of mind because Dukkha itself, is found in the resistance. It is subtle and obscures the truth about resistance. You have to be soft, and kind in order to see Dukkha. You need a gentle, non-judgmental attitude. The more subtle you get with one of the above five aspects of Dukkha, the more you will start seeing your resistance. In other words, you will start seeing Dukkha. And the more you see Dukkha, the more you want to soften into that resistance. The more you soften into the resistance, the more you're going to be able to see that the resistance doesn't make any sense because you're pushing against something that already exists, or you’re grasping for something that doesn’t exist. This is mind blowing stuff here.

Over the course of the month, Dukkha will be showing up. First and foremost, because we are practicing with Dukkha. Secondly, practicing with Dukkha is like asking the universe to show you where you are resistant – in other words, to show you where you’re suffering. Finally, Dukkha reveals itself as an opportunity for you to understand the limitations of resistance and see through it towards liberation.

With a deep bow...

Tuere