Practical Wisdom with Dr. Rick Hanson Why We Suffer—and How to Stop Adding to the Pain
Sep 10, 2025
A guide to telling pain from the extra suffering we add through craving and reactivity. Short practices for resting in an already-present calm and warmheartedness. A framework for receiving, deepening, and including that inner peace. Reflections on impermanence, longing, and two complementary paths: gradual training and uncovering natural well-being.
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Discovering Your Natural State
- Your natural state includes peacefulness, acceptance, ease, lovingness, and innate wisdom that are directly observable.
- Settling into and deepening this natural state reveals a stable inner refuge beneath personality and disturbance.
Threefold Practice From John Makransky
- Rick Hanson recounts meeting John Makransky who frames practice as receiving, deepening, and including.
- Including others' true nature naturally cultivates compassion and love toward them.
Three Characteristics Reduce Shock
- Buddhist three characteristics are impermanence (anicca), no independent self (anatta), and dukkha (unsatisfactoriness).
- Recognizing these reduces shock and increases equanimity when life brings loss or change.
