As a teenager I came up with a number of ways to deal with everyday suffering. A couple of them I devised for dealing with delays and disappointments. These were especially useful while travelling in Asia. Changing a traveller’s cheque in a provincial Indian bank in the 1970’s could be a gruelling task.

In Buddhism, faith is not dependent on belief in dogmas. It is essentially a confidence in the truth of three propositions:

(i) There can be no freedom from suffering, and no true lasting happiness in the unenlightened state.

Some defilements respond to Dhamma practice almost immediately. Before long we see an overall decline in the frequency of their occurrence, their intensity and their duration. Observing this is energizing: it boosts our faith in the Dhamma as a tool for genuine transformation of the mind.

In the present day, a gathering of even five or six arahants would be a marvellous events. But on the full moon day of February, in the year following the Buddha’s enlightenment, a completely unplanned meeting of 1,250 arahants took place at the Bamboo Grove Monastery in Rajagaha. The teaching that they received on that day has come down to us in abbreviated form as the ‘Ovāda Pātimokkha’.

We can only take responsibility for those things over which we can exercise deliberate control. We cannot, for example, forbid ourselves in advance from experiencing a desire to say something hurtful to another person. But we can resolve not to act upon that desire if it should arise.

How do we look at people who think nothing of the suffering they inflict on others in their pursuit of sense pleasures, power and status?

How do we look at people whose hatred leads them to physically and verbally abuse others, or event to maim and kill innocent people?

16th January is Teachers Day in Thailand. It is also the day that Ajahn Cha passed away. Every year, to commemorate his passing, over a thousand monks and nuns and several thousand lay Buddhists gather at his monastery for six days of Dhamma practice.

One of my favourite stories of the great Tibetan master Milarepa concerns the last words he spoke to his student and Dhamma-heir, Gampopa. When Gampopa finally took leave of his master after many years of hard practice, he requested the blessing of a final teaching.

Difficult external situations are sometimes unavoidable. But the frustration that comes from not wanting to have to be faced with them is always self-created.