Have you seen an old woman or man, frail, bent down, resting on crutches with tottering steps, infirm, youth and the arrogance of youth gone? Or someone very ill, maybe even on their deathbed? And did you realize that you too are subject to the same processes of aging, sickness, decay, that you cannot escape it?

The First Noble Truth says that in this world, dukkha exists. Suffering, insecurity, unsatisfactoriness, stress… different translations of dukkha. The Buddha taught that birth includes dukkha, decay includes dukkha, death includes dukkha; unavoidable pain and change, sorrow, lamentation, loss, despair… all include dukkha.

And to find freedom, the Buddha says first we must understand the First Noble Truth – that there is dukkha. It becomes more and more visible through practice as we give up hiding from the way things actually are, from this truth. Sickness, loss, depression, confusion, anger, jealousy, competition, guilt, betrayal. Even in pleasure, there’s a certain dukkha. Because we’re afraid it won’t last–we grasp after it, try to keep it. There’s a famous poem from Basho:

Even in Kyoto,
hearing the cuckoos cry,
I long for Kyoto.

That’s a kind of dukkha. We remember some experience, even some sitting we had and then think how it could be that way again. Maybe then I’d get ‘that’ — whatever we imagine we’d get. We’re dissatisfied because we can’t hold on. And from wanting to hold on to what is forever shifting and changing, comparing this moment to any other, is our suffering.

So that’s the 1st noble truth. The truth that we can’t hold on. Things are insecure; no matter where we look, they change. We have it for a moment and then what happens? Circumstances and conditions change. The truth of dukkha.