The Eightfold Suffering: How Much Suffering Have You Experienced?
The Eightfold Suffering (Asuba) is the eight types of suffering experienced by all sentient beings due to reincarnation across the six realms.
1. Suffering of Birth: A baby cries and suffers from the very moment it is born. This is because there is the suffering of being battered by wind and blades, and many other forms of pain that a baby alone understands – like a mute person eating bitter almonds, unable to express the pain in their mouth.
2. Suffering of Aging: In life, we grow from young to old and then to old, which is a natural law. A Zen master once said, 'Skin becomes wrinkled like an old hen's, steps like a crane's, and a dragon's chime. Even if you have mountains of gold and jade, you cannot escape old age, illness, and decline.'
3. Suffering of Illness: In life, the four elements are not in harmony, leading to a proliferation of diseases. Not only are minor illnesses painful, but serious illnesses are even more so. Long-term illness is truly a suffering within suffering – unable to find a cure, unable to die, truly agonizing!
4. Suffering of Death: In life, there is birth and there is death; no one escapes birth and death, this is an immutable, objective reality throughout history.
5. Suffering of Love and Separation: We have affection for our parents, spouses, brothers, and sisters. When there is separation due to death, it is incredibly painful. 'Returning Heaven without skill, cannot replace it, tears like rain, heart like being cut,' the sorrow and grief are profound and unbearable.
6. Suffering of Enmity and Hatred: Whenever we see someone who has wronged us, we feel great pain. Especially those who harbor grudges within the family, or who are in conflict, their relationship is inseparable and cannot be separated, living together is full of shock and horror – truly painful.
7. Suffering of Unsatisfactoriness: In life, we seek pleasure in the five sensory realms – sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch; or in the five desires – wealth, beauty, fame, food, and sleep. We relentlessly pursue these desires, only to find them unattainable. For example, people seek fame and glory, only to end up in a mountain like Sun Wukong; they seek offspring, only to break up their family; they seek wealth and prosperity, only to end up poor and miserable; they seek longevity and health, only to die young – this is the pain of not getting what you want, not getting what you wish for.
8. Suffering of the Intensification of the Five Aggregates: This refers to the five aggregates – color, sensation, thought, volition, and consciousness – as a burning fire within our hearts. We constantly feel a sense of blockage, frustration, and misery in our hearts, which is difficult to express and difficult to articulate.
The Eightfold Suffering, as described above, is something everyone experiences firsthand and cannot avoid. Now, how many sufferings have you personally experienced in your daily life?
