Living a Dhamma a day Our dark nights

Living a Dhamma a day
Our dark nights

Dark night phase are stages in our life where we witnessed, experienced suffering, doubts, temptations, depression, stressed, despair. From pain, questions arise and changes begin. Dukkha is samsara but dukkha is also the beginning of its end, because majorities this is our first entry into the Dhamma.

The Buddha’s first dark nights phase is seeing the 3 messengers : sickness, old age and death. That lead him to question the existence of life and seek answers. We, too have seen these messengers in our life. Some of us dark nights are extreme because of the conditions we grew up in or genetically prone.

Interestingly, in one sutta, the Upanisa the “ aging-death “ in the 12 link is replaced with suffering. From this factor emerged faith.  For example, in seeking answers out of our dark nights, we may find therapy that temporarily fix our issues but we also seek answers of existence. Along the way we meet the right kind of friends and faith of the Dhamma rises.

Emerge out of faith is the joy or happiness of second jhana and so begins the transcendent arising link ending with nibana.

"Just as, monks, when rain descends heavily upon some mountaintop, the water flows down along with the slope, and fills the clefts, gullies, and creeks; these being filled fill up the pools; these being filled fill up the ponds; these being filled fill up the streams; these being filled fill up the rivers; and the rivers being filled fill up the great ocean — in the same way, monks, ignorance is the supporting condition for kamma formations, kamma formations are the supporting condition for consciousness (12 forward link)....birth is the supporting condition for suffering, suffering is the supporting condition for faith, faith is the supporting condition for joy, joy is the supporting condition for rapture, rapture is the supporting condition for tranquillity, tranquillity is the supporting condition for happiness, happiness is the supporting condition for concentration, concentration is the supporting condition for the knowledge and vision of things as they really are, the knowledge and vision of things as they really are is the supporting condition for disenchantment, disenchantment is the supporting condition for dispassion, dispassion is the supporting condition for emancipation, and emancipation is the supporting condition for the knowledge of the destruction (of the cankers)."

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel277.html




The Buddha is ruthlessly honest. This passage meant, from ignorance we suffer. At the same time, from suffering, comes released and freedom. The passage also implied that we won’t seek the path unless we suffer enough! Just as the pond won’t overflow until it is filled up first.

"New Beginnings are often disguised as Painful Endings." -Lao Tzu