Buddhism, Suffering, Joy

The Dalai Lama, perhaps this planet's most famous spokesperson for Buddhism, seems to smile and laugh a lot. And yet the teachings of Buddhism start with the Buddha's 1st Noble Truth: the Truth of Suffering. What's the connection? How did the Dalai Lama get that joyful smile if he does practices designed to address human suffering as directly as possible?

We perhaps tend to think that walking the so-called "spiritual path" will feel quite blissful. We perhaps think that we will somehow transcend our neurosis, become better people, and attain some higher state of consciousness. However, Buddhist teachers tell us again and again that we must look directly at our experience: at our anxiety, our boredom, our fear of death, our constant effort to maintain our "self identity," and our ongoing passion, aggression, and ignorance - the so-called Three Poisons, found at the center of the Tibetan Wheel of Life, driving what Buddhists call "samsara," the ongoing round of experience of birth, life, and death. Buddhist teachers throughout the centuries have offered to their students various skillful means enabling them to look directly at experience - what some have called "the dualistic fixation" that causes so much suffering of all types. If we want to escape from a prison, first we must understand that prison, to know its layout so that we will know how to get out.

The Buddhist practices that I know about help us to look directly at experience, to experience the present; because if we wish to find this elusive something-or-other called "truth," we will do so only in the present moment. And that means looking at our awareness, moment by moment. I feel pretty certain that the Dalai Lama does that. What happens when we do it? And how do we do it?