John 16:6 Meaning But Because I Have Told You These

Grief becomes a problem when it becomes you.

This is the pain-body occupying the whole field. The emotion is not wrong but it has become the entire identity.

Pema: Affection Grief grows out of affection the way heat comes off a fire. These are people who left their boats and houses to follow him, so the sorrow arriving now is the exact size of the love that got them there. Their hearts are doing what hearts do, paying the price of caring for someone who can walk out the door.

Piyehi vippayogo dukkho: Parting from the loved is suffering One of the plain forms suffering takes. They meet it at a supper table rather than as a saying: he has just told them where he is going, and the words land as a weight in the chest. Anyone who has waved a family member off at a station knows the ache before knowing the reason for it.

Soka: Grief Sorrow at loss, filling the heart the way water fills a cup. Filled is the operative word here: he keeps speaking of the Helper who will come, and none of it can get in yet, because grief has taken all the room. He says it anyway, so the words will be waiting later when the cup empties.

Anicca: Impermanence Everything that comes together comes apart. Years of walking the roads with him had the feel of something settled, and part of the sorrow is the shock of finding it was always a season. He is not taking away something they were owed, he is telling them the terms that were in place the whole time.

Attadīpa: Be an island to yourself Standing on your own ground once the teacher is gone. Ānanda wept the same way in his own teacher's last days and was told to make a lamp of himself and of what had been taught. A leaving is what turns followers into people who can carry the thing themselves, which is why he tells them his going is to their advantage.