Pervasive Suffering | Setting in Motion the Dharma Wheel

The third aspect of suffering, pervasive suffering, has a two-fold meaning. First, it means that all beings experience suffering–that none can escape it. A second meaning is associated with the fourth skandha of volition. To explain this I will first need to discuss the five skandhas as a whole.

Buddhism teaches that a human being is made up of five aggregates or skandhas. Like all forms of existence the five aggregates are characterized by two underlying realities–coming into being (creation) and change (extinction). Once again this points to impermanence as the common thread in the three aspects of suffering. However, even this is only a coarse level of understanding. Pervasive suffering also refers to an undercurrent of consciousness in which attachment and craving can instantly change to hatred and repulsion. It is a very subtle kind of psychological suffering.
The first aggregate is form, referring to the material or physical aspects of our body. The latter four are mental, and within those there are subtler divisions. The second aggregate is sensation. The third is perception, but you can also call it conception. The fourth is volition, which as I have mentioned, plays a key role in pervasive suffering. The last aggregate is consciousness.

Sensation and perception can also be understood in terms of the processes of the mind. ‘Mind’ is a very general term, but from the perspective of Buddhist psychology we see two different things in this mind: The discriminating, or primary mind and mental phenomena. The discriminating mind is like an emperor who controls his generals, soldiers, and so on. The second and third aggregates, sensation and perception, are a part of this emperor mind, and these two can be subdivided into as many as 175 different mental states.

Discriminating mind contains–you could say owns–its mental states, such as greed, jealousy, joy, pleasure–a whole army of negative as well as positive thoughts. As such, the mind and its states mutually reinforce each other. The mental states are not the mind; they are just the soldiers doing the bidding of the mind, helping to maintain and perpetuate it. While volition is also a
mental aggregate along with sensation and perception, it works at much more subtle level. Being the aggregate that leads to action, volition ensures that all living beings are constantly in a state of motion and arising. For this reason they cannot escape from the subtler form of pervasive suffering.

Suffering pervades the three realms of existence that make up samsara6: the realm of desire, the realm of form, and the formless realm. This is so because these realms are characterized by attachment, however coarse or subtle. Take someone of great attainment whose highly refined consciousness is free from the coarser attachments of greed, hatred, jealousy, and other lower discriminations. That person has reached the samadhi of ‘neither conceptualization nor non-conceptualization’–the samadhi of infinite consciousness. In this very high state one is free from the suffering of suffering and from the suffering of impermanence, but one is still subject to pervasive suffering.

The three realms are dimensions of existence where beings reside depending on their level of their consciousness. Until one transcends these three realms, they are not free from suffering. In the realm of desire, where humans exist, we have all three levels of suffering. Even if one abides in a deep samadhi where they are free from the suffering of impermanence, that individual returns to the world of vexation when they come out of samadhi. For this reason no matter how refined the level of consciousness, as long as there is attachment, that individual will experience pervasive suffering.

The Buddha spoke of eight kinds of suffering that human beings endure: birth, old age, sickness, death, separation from loved ones, confrontation with enemies, inability to attain what one seeks and, lastly, the suffering of the five aggregates. Of these eight kinds of suffering, the first seven are contained in the five skandhas. This is called the ‘uninterrupted
suffering of the five skandhas,’ meaning that from one moment to the next, pervasive suffering is renewed by the existence of the aggregates.

According to the agamas and the Abhidarmakosha, there is another dimension of meaning to the five skandhas, namely, ‘grasping.’7 Grasping arises when a sense faculty interacts with a sense object, creating attachment, and consequently, suffering This grasping after sense experience assures the continuation of the five skandhas through life after life. The objects of grasping are not just desires, but also hatred and delusion. Simply put, grasping causes suffering and in turn, suffering causes the continuation of the five aggregates through rebirths. On this basis we hold onto the poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance which propel us into future rebirths. Then, because of the five skandhas, we give rise to vexations again. So vexations cause the five skandhas, and the skandhas cause vexations. They are inseparable, mutually causing each other.

In summarizing the five skandhas, we can say that they pervade the three realms of existence, that there is no suffering apart from the five skandhas. But Buddhism also says that through the practice of Buddhadharma we can be freed from the very source of our suffering–the five aggregates.

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