Growing Pain

You ask a child how old he is. He may be close to five and he will say five years old. He wants to be an adult and has this growing anxiety.

This growing anxiety doesn't end when the child grows up and becomes an adult. Once he comes to a certain age, he wants to stop it. He cannot stop it. He has initiated that process and it goes on and on.

Growth itself is not painful. What happens to the mind when we think of growth makes us painful. It is not the appearance of old age that is painful or the growing process itself is not painful.

When we think of it, that thought is painful. Why? Because the growth takes us somewhere. Brings us in one direction and we begin to anticipate what is going to happen. That is another thing we don't want.

(Pali) We get a shock - people die. I will die. That thought is so shocking. If there is anything we can do to stop it, we will do it. People spend money to stop death, growth. Not just plastic surgery but they do many things other than that to stop growing and die.


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On the one hand when we think of the problems in this life we don't want to be reborn.

On the other hand when we think of the pleasure we enjoy in one life we want repeat it, to be born again and again. You want to be reborn with a certain person in the next life. How many times have you made that vow?

This is why Buddha said once you enjoy something, you want to repeat it.

That is the nature of desire. So, that creates both in this life and the next. That is not the suffering caused by desire. Suffering caused by desire is losing what you get.

The pleasure you enjoy is not faithful to you. That pleasure will turn back to you, it goes away, impermanent. That impermanent pleasure you want to hold onto but it disappears. That person who you want to live with forever, betrays you and eventually becomes your enemy.

When you don't want it, you cannot get away from it. After some time you want it, and again the same thing happens. Therefore there is no permanent happiness in anything we enjoy.

Desire deceives us and asks us to repeat it. That is called sensual desire.


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Meditation doesn't mean sitting in one place focusing the mind and getting a little bit of concentration and forgetting the world. That is not meditation. That is a very tiny part of meditation.

True meditation is the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. You can see it coming together in practice of our daily life.


Extract from: Four Noble Truths, by Venerable Bhante Henepola Gunaratana