Question: Is dukkha, or suffering, occurring because of the arising of I-thoughts?

No, not because of the arising of I-thoughts but rather because of the identification with the content of I-thoughts.

Let’s go back a step and ask, “What makes suffering possible?” The short answer is: “I-thoughts, provided that I identify with the content of such thoughts, are what make suffering possible.”

How did we get here?

Remember that, in the Direct Path teaching, there are only three categories of direct experience: perceiving (“the world”), sensing (“the body”), and thinking and feeling (“the mind”).

Explore: go assiduously through all of the following cases:

• Is there suffering when there is just seeing, just hearing, just smelling, just tasting, and just touching? No–in all five cases.  
• Is there suffering when there is just sensing? No.
• Is there suffering when there is an arising thought like “2 + 2 = 4” or an arising feeling like “How sad that is for John”? No and no.

Then–to ask this again–where does suffering come from?

Initially, it can be said that it comes in three cases:

• In pain
• In me-feelings
• In I-thoughts

“Pain” is the label supplied by the mind as in “My leg is hurting; I hope it’s not broken.” Me-feelings refer, e.g., to “I am hurt,” “I am lonely,” “I don’t like Jane,” and so on. And I-thoughts refer to, for instance, “I am the knower,” “I am the doer,” and so on.

Notice that I said that suffering comes in three cases. Is that really true?

No, pain and me-feelings can, in fact, be reduced to I-thoughts. Ramana Maharshi called these “aham vritti”–meaning I-thought-movements or, even, I-thought-turnings. Pain and me-feelings are just I-thought-agitated-movements. Thus, “pain” is one kind of I-thought; a me-feeling a second type of I-thought.

But then is suffering the direct result of an I-thought arising? No. Who is aware of this I-thought? I, awareness, am aware of this I-thought.

So long as I abide, knowingly, as the awareness that’s aware of this I-thought, I experience no dukkha; I know no dukkha; I know only peace. It’s only when I come to believe and feel that am, as it were, on the inside of this I-thought and thus that I assume the part of the one involved in this thought that I suffer. And suffer. And suffer.

Know that you’re not an I-thought; know that it’s OK that I-thoughts arise; be the awareness that knows, or is aware of, every I-thought. Stabilize here and be totally free.