The Defects of Samsara | Step 13 of Awakening in 30 Steps

The Defects of Compulsive Life Inspire Disinterest.

It’s not that life is suffering, it’s that the compulsive, mindless, unconscious life called samsara is suffering. In order to prompt our waking up from the long sleep we are asked to take a sobering inventory of just how dissatisfying it is to continue to sleep walk.

The Six Types of Suffering of Compulsive Life are:

1) Uncertainty - we never know what to expect in the next moment. We can find no certain ground.

2) Dissatisfaction - all our pleasures and successes are short lived. We find no lasting peace.

3) Death - nothing lasts, all we have built and relied on falls apart. We lose everything.

4) Rebirth - it’s exhausting to rebuild again and again.

5) Vicissitudes - compulsive life is a terrifying roller coaster ride of highs and lows. There is no stable ground.

6) Alone - even with others we still feel alone. No one can ever know our experience totally. No one can pass the threshold of death with us into the next life.

How is it that we forget the above challenges and continue to expect certainty, lasting peace, permanence, stability, and companionship? Why don’t we learn that it’s not working out the way we want it to?

At this step we juice press how painful, terrifying, exhausting and lonely a mindless, hedonic life actually is in order to motivate us to seek an alternative.

Learn more about the gradual path of awakening with the Lam Rim Meditation course.