“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”
“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”
~All quotes by Thich Nhat Hanh
I’ve been seeing some suffering in myself and others recently and it has me looking at the first Noble Truth which is most often translated as “suffering exists.” The Buddha describes suffering in the Dammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting Rolling the Wheel of Truth, “Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering…” [1]The Buddha continued that this ennobling truth about suffering is to be fully understood so we can move towards seeing the causes of suffering, the path and ultimately the way out, the end of suffering. While the first truth tells us this state of dissatisfaction in real, the dissolution of suffering is also real, so we can see that suffering is not a permanent life sentence.
Some teachers find it helpful to make a distinction between pain and suffering. We have the equation from Shinzen Young, “suffering equals pain times resistance.” There is the oft-invoked statement that pain is unavoidable while suffering is optional. Suffering sounds like we’ve made a bad choice. Merriam Webster Dictionary describes suffering as a “conscious endurance of pain or distress,” which adds the element of knowing to lasting pain. I think what gets a bad rap about suffering, is not that it exists, but in the sustaining it, the way we keep it going after the event, after everyone goes home from the party and we are left chewing over all the times we forgot people’s names or how no-one used coasters or complimented the faro salad.
The word the Buddha is recorded as using is dukkha, which literally refers to an ill-fitting hub of a wheel giving it a wobbly roll. Dukkha according to the Venerable Ajahn Sumedho is translated as “incapable of satisfying,” or “not able to bear or withstand anything.” The word is nuanced and includes the full range of painful experiences, from the store being out of my favorite brand of oat milk, to the death of a loved one. Dukkha includes all things we find unsatisfactory, painful, or irritating.
In the Attadanda Sutta, the Buddha spoke about being afraid of the hostility he saw in people. Only when he discerned that there was a thorn in their hearts that could be removed—he saw what would ease this hatred and violence. This is how he describes removing the thorn, ‘“For whom there is no “I-making”/All throughout the body and mind/ And who grieves not for what is not/ Is undefeated in the world. For whom there is no “this is mine”/ Nor anything like “that is theirs”/Not even finding “self-ness,” he/ Does not grieve at “I have nothing.”’[2]
The line that really resonates with me is “who grieves not for what is not.” This is the judgment and subsequent dissatisfaction that arises from inserting my preference between the event and myself. This is the resistance that does not want things to be as they are because they are untidy, hurtful, and unsatisfactory. This situation is not giving me what I want…at all. This is especially true when we encounter others who are suffering. It is this energy of friction, this rawness, that is the thorn.
The nun Patacara who lived at the time of the Buddha spoke about this thorn, “My thorn, indeed, has been removed! Buried in the heart, so hard to see. That grief which had overcome me— Grief for my son — has been dispelled.” [3] For me, whether I call it pain or suffering is not the point. It is the thorn that we insert into our hearts that drives this mass of suffering.
One way to bring our mindfulness to the way we pierce our hearts is to notice our thoughts as we suffer. When we notice our reactivity to an event, we can check in with our belief and our response. We can start with the question, “how is this event wrong?” and notice our emotional response to the wrongness. Are we apathetic, frustrated, confused, irritated because we wanted something else? When I can stop and see my grievance, such as, “those kids are rotten,” or “she shouldn’t be behaving like that,” or “he’s got to stop drinking,” I can uncover the thorn in my heart—the friction which comes from wanting this different for me. Dharma teacher John Martin uses the simple check-in question, “is suffering present?” The answer becomes clear—of course there is!
There’s the suffering of the other person who is perhaps tired, angry or caught in addiction, and then there’s the suffering or dissatisfaction of myself who wants it to change. When we see suffering, the best medicine is to notice it for what it is—suffering. Then we can ask, “what am I adding to the suffering?”
This doesn’t mean we walk by cruelty and injustice with a happy smile as suffering blossoms all around us. It means that when we take action—it’s not personal. The suffering isn’t coming at me. It’s just suffering, the stuff that life is made from. We can learn that suffering is not the problem, the grief we feel for wanting something different is. This is the thorn that comes with the territory of self-interpretation—the arena of I, me, and mine. When I step outside of this narrow focus, I can see the suffering for what it is…suffering, pain, dislike, wanting something better. This business of thorn removal takes some time and determination—but the reward the Buddha spoke of is to be “undefeated in the world.” I think this also means we are undefeated by the world—capable, resilient, and healed.
May we all trust our light,
Celia
[1] “Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting Rolling the Wheel of Truth” (SN 56.11), translated from the Pali by Ñanamoli Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 13 June 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.nymo.html .
[2] “Attadanda Sutta: Arming Oneself” (Sn 4.15), translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 2 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.15.olen.html .
[3] “Pañcasata Patacara: The Soothing of Grief” (Thig 6.1), translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 2 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thig/thig.06.01.olen.html .
The early life of the Buddha describes him as a small child sitting beneath the Rose apple tree seeing the pain of living beings. When a spring field was plowed, he looked at the bodies of the dead and mangled insects trampled by the horse and cut by the plow, being eaten by birds and other living beings, and felt deep compassion and sadness for the pain and loss of their lives. He was able to come home to himself and meditate to be stable in the presence of this suffering. When we dampen our ability to feel our sadness, we also dampen the ability to know our compassion and our own stability that leads to happiness. This belief in stoicism and cutting off from knowing suffering is an example of Thich Nhat Hanh’s message of “present moment, wonderful moment,” grasped the wrong way and used as a shield to deflect our own compassion from ourselves.
Knowing when things are bad when we are in pain and not denying it but caring for our own experience means that all moments have the capability to be wonderful because of our efforts—not because they are wanted or pain-free. Happiness comes when we learn to stand in the midst of our pain and open our hearts to it and know we can be there for this too. It is recognizing suffering and moving forward with the intent to care for our own pain. That is a wonderful gift, the ability to be unafraid of our feelings and to know we are capable of showing up for ourselves. It is this ability, the cultivation of the loving heart and the intersection of compassion which can create the conditions for equanimity and joy for ourselves and others.
