The last post was about the First Noble Truth in Buddhism: life is suffering. ‘Suffering’ is the commonly used English translation of the Sanskrit word dukkha. I agree with Triangulations blogger that dukkha is more accurately translated as ‘unsatisfactoriness’ or ‘dissatisfaction’.
In my experience, dissatisfaction occurs when I attach to the thought, ‘this shouldn’t be happening’ in reaction to whatever is happening.
Can suffering end completely? Here is what I have learned about that:
While I don’t claim to know anything, I offer a synthesis of what I have learned from personal conversations with my teacher, and from studying other sources I trust.
When an individual becomes fully awakened spiritually, that individual stops generating dissatisfaction for him/herself. Awakening means there is no attachment to ‘I, me and my story’, and dissatisfaction stops. Completely.
That does not mean that suffering stops for other people. There are terrible, horrible abuses and injustices happening in the world all the time. The awake person is not blind to the suffering of others or immune to physical pain. The awake person is simply not contributing to the incessant noise of dissatisfaction, and therefore is able to help other people who are still dissatisfied.
True awakening, true and complete freedom from dissatisfaction, is extremely rare. The end of dissatisfaction is possible, but if it ends for you, chances are, it will continue for others, so in that sense, it is not over.
The awake person lives for the purpose of helping people who want to wake up. In order to relate to others, depending on the context, the awake person may seem to be very ‘normal’ or very ‘eccentric/otherworldly’.
Finding a True Teacher can be the end of seeking and the beginning of the end of dissatisfaction if you allow yourself to be guided.
Svaha 
I agree that much dissatisfaction can be ended by attitude and mental habits. But if an “awakened” person’s son died or family got killed in a car crash or they got 50% of their body burned in an explosion or they had bone cancer or they were starving and watching their family die in front of their eyes, I imagine there would still be lots of dissatisfaction. Hell, there should be.
Hi Sabio, good point. The awake person does feel the full spectrum of emotions.
There would absolutely be sadness, grief or physical pain in response to the examples you gave, which would be only natural and human. However, because the awake person does not attach to ‘this shouldn’t be happening’, there is no dissatisfaction.
The awake person has thoughts, feelings and sensations in response to stimuli just like everyone else. The difference is, the thoughts and feelings about the traumatic event do not become a part of the structure of ‘me’ for the awake person. When there is no attachment to the sense of self, deep emotion and tremendous compassion are absolutely very active, without the personal story about ‘poor me’.
When thoughts and feelings are fully allowed, without judgment, they are not a problem.
This is my understanding based on observation, reading and asking questions. I love talking about these things and I’m so glad you are here bringing up very good points!
‘Spiritually awake’ is a synonym for ‘enlightened’. I like it because there are less assumptions and religious ideas about what it means.
http://jameswoodteachings.com/2009/06/the-well
Thanks for the heads up about email notifications! I’ll check that out.
:)
Hi Elena, yes! cultivating awareness of dissatisfaction seems kind of strange, but it’s definitely better than what I was doing before too :) Thank you again for being here and sharing how you live the teaching.