Satya Robyn explores the Third Noble Truth, which describes suffering as something that can cool and dissolve through letting go and creating space around reactive emotions. Drawing on Pure Land Buddhism and Ajahn Brahm's teachings, she explains how trusting the Buddha's presence and resting in loving-kindness can reduce suffering.
Hi everyone, time to talk about the Third Noble Truth, nirodha, which means something like cooling, letting go, containing, easing off, stopping. What is it that's stopping? It's that, that fire, that hot reaction, whether it's craving or pushing away, or even that blankness, I guess, which isn't really a hot reaction. But is still one of the three poisons, delusion. Pretending something isn't really happening when it actually is. It's stopping all of those things. It's sometimes described as the fire of the passions going out. Ajahn Brahm said that sometimes people in India will say the rice is getting neuroda as it cools. Down. So it's things becoming a little bit more spacious, a little bit easier to be with. It doesn't tell us on its own exactly how to get from one to the other. I guess that's what all the rest of the Buddhist teachings are about. For me, as a Pure Land Buddhist, having faith that there is this energy of the Buddha in the universe and potentially in me as well, although not always actualized, that there is loving kindness present all around me. If I just trust that it's there holding me, something starts to relax. There's a sense of okayness. The more deeply I trust in the presence of the Buddha, the more deeply okay I feel. And when I feel that kind of okay. It matters less when things go wrong in the world because there is something that holds me and steadies me. And even if I am having those big reactions, which is kind of human, right? They're not taking over in the same way because there's that sense of I'm not alone in this. And if I'm not alone in this, one way or another, things will be Okay, so nirodha, cooling down, ceasing, letting go, containing, creating some space around those big reactions when they happen. And ultimately, the more and more deeply we take refuge in the Buddha, that's what I was describing when I talked about resting in this field of loving kindness, the more okay we will be in in the face of all of these things. And next time in the Fourth Noble Truth, maybe we'll talk a little bit more about how to go from reactive to cool and spacious and okay.
