The First Noble Truth and Flight
To live is to know pain.
This is the truth that the Buddha laid down as the unshakeable foundation of his teaching.
We sometimes hear it as, "Life contains suffering." Or, "There is dissatisfaction." At times, the modern word "stress" is used.
The word the Buddha used, in the ancient Pali language, is dukkha. It refers to the axle of a wheel that's set a little off. And so, the whole ride is bumpy, all the way along.
The interesting (and wonderful) thing about the foundational teachings called The Four Noble Truths, beginning with this first one, is that each of them is not simply a philosophical statement - each is a training and a practice.
The Buddha said that this simple truth is to be known. That is, when we suffer, we should notice that we are suffering, touch the pain with our awareness and dive fully into its waters with the naked body of our being, experiencing it with every atom of our existence.
This man, Siddhartha Gautama, is kindly telling us, accross the field of time, "First, know what troubles you in its absolute entirety, with your body, with your heart and with your lungs, flying into the dark caves of your pain on the wings of the breath."
But why would we want to do this? Who wants to suffer? Isn't the whole point to make the troubles go away?
Each of us must investigate this teaching for ourselves. Across two and a half millennia, those who have tried sincerely, with patience and with effort, have found it to give life. They reported and report discovering that by training in this way, the suffering transforms into freedom, the way the clouded heavens transform into the sun and azure sky.
Like a child that has scraped a knee and comes running for a hug, suffering can be transformed if we acknowledge how much it hurts, and if we give it love and kindness, embrace it with our care and tenderness and warmth, experiencing it as we breathe in, and sending the pain itself compassion as we breathe out.
If we learn how to suffer skillfully, the suffering will turn from ice to water and flow on. New experience will come to take its place. The crying child will smile and run to play again.
Just as this holds true in ordinary states of consciousness, it holds true in the extra-ordinary realms.
In fact, when we take flight on the wings of our plant allies, it is especially important to know how to suffer well.
Some of what we see may terrify us. After all, they say that to connect to the ground of being and the source of all that's good, we must enter the light and the shadow fully.
As we fly, we may be cleansed of our mistakes by being shown the nature of our errors and feeling fully all the pain they brought to others and ourselves. Our many wounds, known and unknown, may be healed by being deeply experienced in a way that felt too dangerous when they were handed out by life or when we, unknowingly, inflicted them upon ourselves.
We may see how small we are in the grand order of the universe. We may see how small the universe is in the grand order of our hearts. The awe of both may terrify and make us quake and tremble.
And so, we must breathe. And when difficulty comes, we must practice this First Noble Truth - life contains pain. The pain is to be known.
This training, and all the great teachings on it passed down from pumping heart to pumping heart across the generations, allows us to surrender to the great healing and inspiring power of nature itself, to her infinite wisdom, to her infinite ways of making the broken holy and whole and shining and complete.
Let's study this noble truth. By honoring it, by surrendering completely, by breathing and caring and holding and rocking our sorrow within the strong arms of kindness and of love, we will be made free and grow strong and help our families and be there for our neighbors and plant good, sacred seeds into the sweet and holy earth to nourish and to feed everybody and to protect the many wondrous people who will be born when the amazing bodies we possess today are gone and are themselves turned into offerings to all that is forever.
By knowing our pain, we will be able to forgive each other, to sit under the great tree of peace together, to share all knowledge across all tribes and with that knowledge craft the keys to protecting the earth and all its many beings for as long as the rivers flow and as long as the sun still rises.