Doing Something About Suffering

Suffering = Pain x Resistance. When pleasure and grasping are included, the formula can be rendered as: Suffering = Experiential Intensity x Reactivity. This opens up two pathways to end suffering: remove pain (experiential intensity) or eliminate reactivity. Buddhism is about practicing with reactivity, because that’s the factor we can bring under our control. There is freedom from suffering (based on freedom from reactivity), but there is also freedom to reduce pain when that’s possible. This leads to a question about “Engaged Buddhism” or as this talk explores: the “Buddhism of Engagement.” Engagement, based on freedom, comes from what we choose to do, not from what we feel we have to do.

Om Podcasten

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the Guiding Teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the Center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom, and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within Western cultural horizons while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodied practice.