Satisfaction

Satisfaction
by Tawachai Onsanit

“Where can we find people to satisfy us
We can’t even satisfy ourselves
Impermanence, Unsatisfactoriness, and Not-self
Knowing them beforehand will ease our minds.”

The above is a translation of a Thai verse often recited by one of our parents. It says at least three things. The first one is that things always change. There is the truth of suffering in one form or another, subtle or obvious. And then all phenomena are conditioned and not in our complete control.
The second message is that if we look outside of ourselves in order to gain satisfaction, we will be disappointed.

The third is the hope that we can be at ease with ourselves if we look inward and focus on our own minds.
The Buddha encourages us to apply the three perceptions of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self to all phenomena. The teaching on not-self is the most fundamental and unique.
Not-self means a process of being conditioned. Being conditioned involves a process of formation into an entity from many components that often can not be easily recognized once transformed. And this entity will not be under its own control since it faces impermanence.
Impermanence and unsatisfactoriness are actually rooted in not-self. Since any thing conditioned can not stay in its original status forever, it bounds to cause suffering to a certain degree whether we can recognize it or not. To know this ahead of time, then, is to be ready when it happens and to give us time to find the remedy.
The next question is how to spot and know these three perceptions. According to the teachings of the Buddha, to follow the Noble Eightfold Path is the answer. The path consists of the three-pronged approach of moral principles, meditation, and wisdom.
Moral principles help to set us up for meditation. Meditation is the way to achieve wisdom. But in the process, each will help to reinforce one another. As we progress on our own path of practice, our minds will be more at ease, and the end of suffering will be nearer.
Meditation is the way to train our minds to “know.” Appropriate attention is required in this endeavor. This sounds simple enough. What is needed for the practice, however, is persistence and an appropriate level of effort. The Buddha gives a simile of a musical instrument that requires tuning the strings with proper tension in order to make the right sound.
What do we train our minds to know? The answer is to know how we can use the realizations about impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self in our own practice to bring about the end of suffering. So instead of the Buddha’s teachings being just a theory to us, we practice so that we can know and see for ourselves.
The Buddha himself meditated by using the method of “mindfulness of breathing” on the night of his enlightenment. We might ask what is the essence of this technique. The idea is to know the state of our own minds in any particular moment. We will find out eventually that our minds move very quickly. When the mind is more concentrated, however, it starts to be aware faster and sharper. The mind that keeps focusing on the breath properly and long enough will eventually be aware of itself. This is what it means when we say the mind “knows.” This is a basic skill that we all can develop if we try.
Looking back at the introductory verse, we can conclude that in order to keep our minds on even ground, we must make use of the knowledge from our life. The Buddha teaches that things in life are unstable. We suffer because of our desire to have more or to not have things we do not want. The fundamental realization behind all this is that all things are conditioned. When we practice meditation, it helps to change our reactions to what is happening around us, but most importantly, to what is happening in our own minds. At this point we can develop an important quality called equanimity. It is described as a beginning of the ability to let go of many things that have cluttered our minds. By fine-tuning our knowledge we can keep our minds at ease.