The Third Noble Truth Is How to End the Suffering

The third noble truth is the stage of suffering cessation. Since we already know the cause of suffering, thus we have to end it. It’s like you know you are sick, and you go to the doctor to check up, then you know what sickness you are having, the doctor prescribes you medicine, then you need to take medicine. Now you know how to cure and stop the sickness.

The sickness of ignorant life is unknowingly emotional attachments. Just as Buddhism teaches the cause of suffering and to stop it, you have to learn to detach from suffering and stay away from worldly desires and greed. We have to learn to detach desires and greed when necessary. By spiritual cultivation through living, you will learn and understand the world and expand your wisdom. Then you can truly love and transform your love into compassion that will lead you all to long-lasting happiness.

With an understanding of love, you will love with compassion, which you love equally regardless of your children, friends, family, or anyone who comes to your help. Equality in our society is very important, and Buddhism, Christian often teach people to love everyone regardless of their parents. My parents, your parents, their parents, family, and friends are the same as sentient beings. That sounds more like a theory, and its fact is very difficult to truly do it than easier saying.

It's normal when you love your parents more than others. Of course, you love them more because they gave birth to you and raised you up, lived and protected you since you started to know the world, and because they are the root of the family. It’s the continuous story of how you love your children. It isn’t difficult to explain that. However, you have to practice opening your heart more to look inside your deep connection and with all the other people around you, too, so that you can understand them better. You see everything in the bond, as well as the age, the sickness, and the death, which is affected by karma in the spiritual cosmic nature.

We love them, our parents, children, and family, very much. It is an attachment. But if they have to die, then we have to accept that, now it becomes detachment. Because we accept it as their karma, everybody has their own karma and their own path to manage on their own when alive. Though we know birth is the karma of past life yield result, age and sickness are living karma influences, and death is the final of living karma transformation. In cosmic nature, we are destined to age, to get sick, and our physical bodies to die. That is nature, and nobody can be exempted. It’s also the transformation and evolution of life.

However, in living our life through cultivation, we will be able to develop our love to compassion when we can truly love everybody in the way of understanding the spiritual cosmic nature, karma, and kindness that will lead us to happier and long-lasting happiness in our own wisdom.

In spiritual cosmic nature, impermanence is a strong force to lead evolution, everything that has a beginning will have an end, but through creation, cultivation, and ending, lesions are learned, recorded, and moved up to higher sophistication. That is the evolution of spiritual cosmic nature.

I watched a documentary about Tibet a while ago. There was a very old woman, she got sick and went to see a doctor. After checking her up, the doctor told her that she was very sick and her remaining time was very short. He advised her to go back home to prepare for the end time about to come. Then, the doctor just gave her some kind of medicine to help her suffer until her time. She went back home and prepared for her death just like nothing happened to her. Since they understand the nature of death, it isn’t that frightening to them.

You can also see on YouTube in Tibet there are some kinds of funerals that are very scary compared to the ones we know here. It’s called sky funeral, in which dead bodies will be brought to the wilderness and dismembered, cut off into small pieces, and fed to vulture birds. If birds can’t finish all, the remaining body, including bones, will be broken into smaller by hammers and brought to the river to feed fish.

All possessions and belongings of the dead in the house will be given away or burned. The family will not keep anything, even pictures of the person when alive. The family will throw away everything. They don’t keep anything, which means the finish is finished. There are certain conditions and factors that rationalize such traditions, as their country is on the highest top of the Himalayas mountains, where the weather is extremely cold all year around. The air is thin, and the ground is rocky, so it’s hard to move the earth to make a burial underground; thus, it has limited resources, even wood, for cremating the body. As a strong Buddhist culture is ingrained in their society, they see death as an impermanent nature, and knowing that it’s nothing more once death comes, there is no reason why they should be worried about the dead body. Hence, they believe that the last thing a human can make merit and benefit to sentient beings is to become a last meal for other living beings.

They don’t attach to the bodies, dead bodies, or anything of their deceased loved one, and so to support the dead person’s soul to easily abandon their previous life, not to attach anything to the remaining living family, but to concentrate on the need of rebirth into a new life somewhere else instead. Death is the end of all things, and so their past relationship, they know each other no more.

That is also a good point for a dead person’s soul because the dead person would know how they died, and with their dead body destroyed, they finished their physical karma. The living family also terminated the relationship for good; thus, they will have to go with the karma flow of judgment and to reborn in their next life. That is the only way. They have to be reborn and evolve somewhere else, following their own remaining karma and judgment of past life.

Back to the attachment that brings suffering, the higher the expectation, the more suffering you will be, and vice versa if you don’t expect too much. Though I’m not talking about the business world, the higher the expectation in the production standard, the better quality. In business and manufacturing, if you have high and strict quality expectations and R&D for improvement, your production is likely to yield better results.

In the Western world, they develop and emphasize production quality from micro to macro scale of their society, economies, and infrastructure based on past judgment… they achieve much better results than other parts of the world. That’s the reason we know a lot of Asian cities are learning and have become westernized. People seek more work and opportunities to improve their jobs, work, and life. So, they are moving to cities. Cities become larger to support the huge number of people living in them, though, at the same time, infrastructure and services become scarce and not able to cope with demands.

I had a chance to go to Japan years ago, I and my family were sitting in the train station in the Tokyo center to have our morning coffee and watch people walking in the station.

I would say I got dizzy just by looking at the huge number of people moving around. When trains arrived, I had the feeling of thousands and thousands of people getting off and waiting to get in all directions.

Singapore

And so, Bangkok, it is not so different at all. It’s even worse in India. If you come slowly onto a train, there will be no seat for you. You must stand, and you don’t even have space to move your body. People are just packing into a small space on the train.

In some other developed westernized cities like Singapore, the population there are all living in a city, and many people get stressed, depressed, and have other mental troubles because of various reasons for living in a big and crowded city.

Singapore is famous for having very high death and suicide rates because people become so stressed in life living in crowded and expensive city. They can’t handle the stresses, so they suicide, and they kill themselves by jumping down high-raised buildings. So, in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, many people jump down high-raised buildings and die. You see that when a city comes to the point of stress in all aspects of life, it can be dangerous or even a disaster. As people seek material comfort, they move to big cities, and they fall into the harsh life that the cities have to offer. That is why we are talking about craving, desire, and attachment. Everything suffers in terms of mentality.

In Buddhism's four noble truths, we already know what suffering is and its causes. However, our bio-mechanism in physical life is robotic. For instance, sexuality. It’s the imminent desire of biological living beings, especially humans and animals.

People often get such high desires either passively or actively from their inner urges, causing sexual cravings. Sexual craving can also cause serious consequences if the person is not able to control himself/herself emotionally when they are not satisfied with basic need. They could commit criminal acts of raping others. Some other times, when committing sex crimes, they would also kill their victims to hide their crimes. That is very destructive of both their and the victims' life.

In the US, most college students would take loans to pay for their tuition, as is their desire for advancement in education. They will decide to study this and that, and if they finish school, they can find work and start to pay for their debts many decades later. Others don’t even finish school, then what happens to them is having a lot of debt with the government or private lenders while receiving no credibility from failed schooling. That’s the debt price for the desire for education. Desires come with a condition; every desire comes with a condition.

In spirituality, we always talk about compassion. It’s often implied as love without condition. However, to love with compassion, one must be able to have an understanding of the conditions they encounter and the impermanence forced by spiritual cosmic nature.

When you say love, compassion, it’s when you must be able to say: “I love you, I respect you. I don’t force you anything, and I love you. Thus, you can go anywhere you like. I don’t manage your life; I don’t force you to have sex with me. I don’t force you to only eat the food I cook. I don’t force you to go where I want to go. You have your life. I love you. I love you the way that I respect your freedom, I respect your choices, you have the right to say what you want.” That’s the love of respect and non-attachment, with kindness and a good mind for one to be loved for their own good and evolution. This love will bring happiness to all sides.

The Constitution of Compassion

In America, our country’s constitution is written clearly to guarantee freedom. Our constitution is a compassionate constitution. They guarantee all freedoms, but why? Because our society is so discriminated against one another. Based on emotion and ignorance, we need the Constitution to guarantee for everyone, that’s compassion. Those laws have been instilled in our everyday life; it is compassion. It’s called the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. It comprises nineteen amendments.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, abridging the freedom of speech, of the press, the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Second Amendment

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Third Amendment

No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Fifth Amendment

No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces or in the Militia when in actual service in time of War or public danger. Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Sixth Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Seventh Amendment

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, then according to the rules of common law.

Eighth Amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Ninth Amendment

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Tenth Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.

Thirteenth Amendment

Slavery shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Fourteenth Amendment

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Fifteenth Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude ...

Nineteenth Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. The five basic important social freedoms it protects: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. Together, these five guaranteed freedoms make the people of the United States of America the freest in the world.

According to the constitution guarantee, you can express anything you want, and everybody can believe in whatever religion. As I have discussed before, religion is important for our humanity.

People are all at different levels of spirituality, and each religion may suit them at each stage of spiritual evolution. That is compassion, that is the spiritual love in the constitution guaranteed, and everybody has the right to access free information that benefits them.

People can assemble for whatever purposes, to go to a temple, to go to churches, to come to class to study spirituality, practice meditation... People have the right to live on whatever path they choose on their spiritual journey, to be entitled to work freely, in-discriminate, no racism, everybody has the right to earn equal income, everybody has the right to attain their position, not because you are women, and you can’t become president. It’s not because you are black. You earn less money. It would be unfair.

A while ago, people took to the street to protest for days after the death of George Floyd. They were fighting for their rights to be equal, to be treated as better, equally human. We know every action yield karma. If we allow somebody to commit wrong things to somebody else, it means we allow them to commit against us, so fighting for equality is very important under the constitution, though difficult. That is the compassionate nature of society in its evolution.