Pain And Suffering
I had a conversation tonight with a “life coach.” Although I feel that everyone in the business of trying to help people owes it to themselves and their clients to at least be familiar with the vast corpus of academic literature on the subject of therapy, I do recognize that there are certain angles or aspects of life that are not well addressed within the culture of conventional secular psychology.
Such as acceptance of what is. This, it has been very widely noted, is one of the keys to a happy existence. The Buddhists in particular talk about non-judgement; even Hamlet notes “nothing’s good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
And yet, some parts of life really do just suck. I asked my conversational partner how one was supposed to accept events which are so basic, so fundamentally bad, that there can be no reinterpretation of the primary experience. I am thinking here of physical pain, the death of a loved one, failure in its most primitive forms. Although we may learn from these experiences afterward, there is no denying that life in the present moment is sometimes, unavoidably, extremely unpleasant. I did not understand how one could interpret such sensations as anything but bad. Pain is real, I told her, and unavoidable.
“Pain is not optional,” she responded. “But suffering is.”
Ah.
I find this distinction very useful in my thought processes, because it separates immediate experience from how we integrate it into our lives later. Hardly a new idea, but sometimes precise language clarifies things. It also helps to have a short reminder, an easily remembered catchphrase, for an idea I want to hold closer to myself. Pain is not optional, but suffering is.
April 13th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
I found this interesting (by the way, I love the new blog feature on tribe, lets me keep track of everyone easily!), especially since it pertains to my current situation. I’ve learned a lot about suffering during the past year.
The death of Steve and his mother just sucks. There’s no other way to put it. I realized, after a couple of months, that that was where every conversation ended: with someone shaking their head and saying, “it just sucks.”
One of my fundamental issues with Buddhist philosophy is its negation of human pain, human suffering, as something real. Buddha always kind of annoyed me on that point; I mean, who other than a spoiled, sequestered prince would go out into the world after a life of protected privilege and tell people that their suffering was all in their heads? It sounds like something Bush would do, you know? “You people in New Orleans aren’t REALLY unhappy, sitting up on that roof starving and watching your whole life float away; it’s all attitude!”
Maybe there are people who are capable of eliminating the suffering, of separating themselves from it entirely and living in perpetual bliss. But I don’t want to be one of them, and if I ever met one, I think I would run away, FAST.
(Incidentally, I think that part of the attraction of Quakerism, for me, is the focus on service. If people are suffering you don’t sit under a tree meditating about it, you pick up a shovel and a wrench and do something about it.)
Have you ever read “Care of the Soul” by Thomas Moore? I really enjoyed that book, in part because it talks about the darker aspects of the soul; grief, pain, tragedy are part of our nature, part of what makes us human.
At Steve’s funeral, the pastor said something that will stick with me always. He said that when something tragic happens, we have a tendancy to ask “why did this happen.” This he said, is the wrong question; for even if we knew why, it wouldn’t change the way we’re feeling, the loss, the pain. A more important question is, “what next?” Where is the best place I can go from here?
But what do I know?
-Alice
P.S. Another book, which I also need to read, that someone suggested: “A grief observed,” by CS Lewis.
April 16th, 2006 at 10:25 am
you’re a little off base in terms of buddhism and buddha’s experience and explanation of suffering. it was many years after he left the palace before he became enlightened. as the story goes, he had to be encouraged and pushed quite a bit to teach at all.
his first teaching was the four noble truths. essentially, this is all of buddhism all rolled up into four points.
1. life is dukha (frequently translated as suffering, but probably better explained as dissatisfaction)
2. dukha comes from attachment
3. however, it’s possible to stop the dukha
4. here’s how: (this is where he explained the eightfold path - which is sort of ’sit a lot, practice a lot, find and live in the middle way)
it’s not all ‘attitude’ and he never negated human suffering, it’s the basis of the religion. suffering is part of life. no one i know has been able to separate themselves from suffering.
the middle way explains existance sort of like a romantic relationship: it’s not really the first person’s view of the relationship, but not NOT their view. it’s not the second persons’s view, but not NOT their view — all at the same time. suffering as a result of attachemnt is ‘real’ and not ‘real’ in the same way, but ‘real’ isn’t the best word to use here.
taking these ideas and viewing my grandfather’s very recent and somewhat sudden death, as well as my grandmother’s strokes and resulting mental confusion and inability to care for herself, through them is very interesting. the pain of a broken heart is huge at times and to let that pain happen, not to fight it and not to indulge in it, results in some very intense emotions.
sitting and talking to my grandmother about her own death is hard. but, knowing that death is a part of life and accepting that it will happen to her (probably soon) made it possible for me to have an honest conversation with her when she said, ‘i think i’m dying.’ she is scared and doesn’t know why she’s in the nursing home, and it’s heartbreakingly difficult; i cried the whole time because it does hurt to look her in the eye and say, ‘you might be, grandma.’
but, wishing things were different won’t make it any easier. knowing she’s dying and grandpa’s dead and aunt jeanie’s grave is still fresh hurts like hell. and that’s not ‘bad’, it’s not something to escape from, it’s something to experience fully as a gift — the gift of being human and alive.
in contrast, my father tries and tries and tries not to hurt when he thinks of his dad’s death (three years ago this october). when we visited *his* cemetary, dad coudn’t just let himself be hurt and cry. he held it in as long as he could and when the rest of us got in the car to leave he leaned against the wall and made a noise like he’d just been punched full force in the stomach.
now, everyone does this differently and no one way is more right than another. but what buddha was saying was that if we experience the pain of loss as pain of loss and don’t attach any right or wrong to it, that changes the way we relate to the suck.