Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

Disease is an inevitable part of life. No one can finish their
life without succumbing to deadly sickness of some sort,
unless they die by some more unnatural means.
Recognizing sickness as a fact of life, we should be careful
not to become dependent on medicines as a means of curing
all of our suffering. In the end, medicine alone will not be
enough to achieve that goal.
The Buddha taught four kinds of suffering: dukkha-vedanā,
dukkha-sabhāva, dukkha-lakkhaṇa, and dukkha-sacca.
Dukkha-vedanā is suffering as a feeling. This is how most
people understand suffering, and so they think that by
simply avoiding painful, unpleasant feelings they can be free
from suffering. Such people tend to live in great fear of
sickness and are quick to seek out medicine, medication and
even drugs to solve all of their physical ailments.
Dukkha-sabhāva means suffering as an existential reality. It
means suffering is a part of life, something that cannot be
avoided. Old age and death cannot be avoided; hunger,
thirst, the need to urinate and defecate likewise cannot be
avoided by anyone. A person who realizes this will tend to
shy away from medicine as a cure to suffering and try
instead to find a more comprehensive solution. This sort of
person is naturally inclined towards meditation.
Dukkha-lakkhaṇa means suffering as an inherent
characteristic of all arisen phenomena. Even pleasant
experiences are unstable, uncertain, and therefore
unsatisfying. Knowledge of this sort is true wisdom that can
only come from meditation practice; it is outside of the realm
of non-meditative understanding.
When a person tries to meditate for the first time, they will
generally make an attempt to force their meditation to
become stable, satisfying, and controllable. As they
progress, however, they will come to see that nothing they
experience is any of these things. They may even give up
meditation entirely, thinking that it is the meditation itself
that is responsible for the unsatisfactory state of affairs,
instead of accepting the truth that all experience is
impermanent, unsatisfying, and uncontrollable. Actually, it is
not difficult to understand intellectually how nothing lasts for
more than an instant, is therefore unable to satisfy, and thus
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