Don't Pile Suffering onto Yourself: New Happiness Buries Old Happiness, New Suffering Buries Old Suffering

Don’t Pile Suffering onto Yourself When You Are Not Suffering

Most people suffer easily and find happiness hard to come by. In Buddhism, the Buddha taught: “Suffering is something to be seen; happiness is something to be. That is, we should see suffering with a happy mind, but what we actually do is see suffering with a suffering mind.”

This means we are people with a real talent for pulling suffering from outside into ourselves, and we are very good at spinning suffering out of our thoughts. We can suffer over anything: whether it rains, the traffic is jammed, the sun comes out or the sun doesn’t come out, we still manage to suffer.

So the Buddha taught:
“Do not pile suffering onto yourself when you are not suffering.”

Some people are born with strong bodies and good health, but then they drink and smoke, and become sick and weak. Or they eat food full of fat or sugar. There was nothing wrong with the body at all, yet we chose to put things that do us no good into it.

Or sometimes, when someone scolds or criticizes us, we feel hurt by what happened. We were criticized only once, yet we get stressed and go on suffering for days, for months. We were really criticized just once, but by turning the other person’s words over and over in our minds, we are criticizing ourselves a thousand times, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million times, as many times as we think about it.

When will we finally stop harming ourselves? Learn to look at the things around you as they really are, and to understand the truth of life for once. Then we will understand that the suffering that arises does not come from other people. In truth, it is not other people who hurt us; it is our own thinking that hurts us.

New Happiness Buries Old Happiness, New Suffering Buries Old Suffering

In the lives we have been born into, we have been through a great deal of suffering and happiness. Sometimes, when we meet with great happiness, we think today is the happiest day of our lives. For example, when a man kneels to ask a woman to marry him, she feels so happy it is as if the world has stopped turning. But as time passes, sometimes just coming across some delicious food is enough to make her forget it all. Or take someone who meets with heavy suffering, such as being parted from a loved one: some people cry for a whole year, feeling that they are the most miserable person in the world. But then a new suffering comes along, such as walking into a table and stubbing a toe, and they completely forget the heavy suffering they went through.

See? New happiness buries old happiness, and new suffering buries old suffering, on and on.

Take the story of Queen Ubbarī in the Assaka Jātaka (one of the stories of the Buddha’s past lives). She was the chief queen of King Assaka, dearly loved by him, the apple of his eye. Later Queen Ubbarī died, and King Assaka was so heartbroken that he neglected the affairs of state.

At that time the Bodhisatta (the future Buddha) was born as a hermit who had attained the five higher knowledges (abhiññā) and the eight meditative attainments (samāpatti). Looking into the matter, he saw that the people were suffering because the king was not attending to his duties, and he wondered who could help the king. He saw that he himself had the ability, so he went to see the king. The king asked the hermit where Queen Ubbarī had been reborn. The hermit pointed to a heap of buffalo dung in the royal garden and said, “Your Majesty, do you see that heap of buffalo dung? Queen Ubbarī has been reborn right in there.” King Assaka did not believe him, so the hermit entered a meditative attainment (the fire kasiṇa) and sent heat into the heap of dung. Two worms came crawling out, one after the other. The hermit said, “There you are. Queen Ubbarī was born in here.”

The king did not know which worm was Queen Ubbarī, so he asked the hermit. The hermit answered, “The one crawling behind.” The king then asked, “Then who is the one crawling in front?” The hermit made a resolve by his psychic power to let the queen speak, and asked her, “Who are you? Where do you come from?” She answered, “In the past my name was Queen Ubbarī, chief queen of King Assaka. Through carelessness and a slip, when I died I was born as a worm in a heap of buffalo dung. The worm crawling in front is my new husband.”

The hermit asked further, “Do you still miss King Assaka?” The worm replied, “Oh… not only do I not miss him, I’m angry with him too, for interrupting just when things were getting intimate with my new husband. If I could fly, I would fly over and bite the king’s neck, and wash my new husband’s feet with his blood.”

The hermit asked further, “Don’t you remember how happy you were when you were King Assaka’s chief queen? Don’t you think of the happiness and suffering of the past?” She answered, “New happiness buries old happiness, and new suffering buries old suffering. All beings are overpowered by delusion (moha) in just this way.”

In short, all of us have known far greater happiness than this. We have known the happiness of being devas (heavenly beings) in each of the heavenly realms; we have been through that already. The happiness of being a universal monarch: we have been one before. The happiness of the meditative absorptions (jhāna) and attainments: we have had all of that already. But as time passed, we forgot. Having come into this present existence, we need only come across food we like, and we completely forget that we once tasted divine food.

In the same way, there is the suffering we feel so heavily right now: some people are heartbroken, some are parted from loved ones, lose loved ones, lose pets, some see their businesses go bankrupt and fall into debt, and we think, “Oh… why must my life meet with suffering this heavy?” Remember this: we have already been through suffering heavier than this. When we were born as beings in hell, we were tormented for many millions of years. When we were born as a peta (hungry ghost), we endured hunger for many hundreds of thousands of years. Where has all that suffering gone?

Therefore, when you are experiencing happiness or suffering in the present, know this: that happiness and suffering is very small compared with the happiness and suffering we have passed through in saṃsāra (the round of rebirth).