Suffering is a state of unease or dis-ease. It is unpleasant, it is painful and it can be overpowering.
In that state, you can feel powerless, hopeless, alone or worthless. Or you can feel unbearable rage, jealousy, anxiety, pain, including extreme physical pain or any of those awful emotions that we are all so familiar with.
But suffering can also be relatively less ‘severe’. You can experience it as a general (meaning non-specific) state of anxiety, distress, dissatisfaction, purposelessness, sense of failure, boredom, lack of direction or motivation. Often, we may not even have a name for it but we know that we are not feeling as good as we’d like to feel or have felt at some other time.
All of these, extreme and less extreme, are forms and states of suffering. I’m sure you’ve experienced at least some of them from time to time.
But what most of us don’t realize is that the human condition is an ongoing condition of suffering. This is why the Buddha stated in the first of his 4 Noble Truths: There is suffering.
In other words, we are always in a state of suffering because that is the nature of the human experience which is a CONDITIONED existence/experience.
As I said earlier, there are the more extreme and obvious forms of suffering which most of us can identify and relate to. All of these together with a more subtle, less obvious but more pervasive form of suffering which is a general lack of satisfaction with life is what the Buddha referred to in his Noble Truths and which in Pali (the language that the Buddha spoke) is known as ‘Dukkha’.*
Now you may doubt this. You might ask:
Are we always in a state of suffering? Are we always in a state of dissatisfaction? I don’t feel it. I am mostly happy or contented or okay. Sure, I get angry or tired or fearful from time to time but the rest of the time, I’d say I’m pretty okay.
**Have you ever tried to sit still for 5 minutes and do absolutely nothing? Most of us have trouble doing this. Why? Because we are in a general state of unrest which compels us to constantly be taking action, to be doing something.
Now, you may have some evolutionary explanation for this – it was a necessary adaptation to a hostile environment in which the human had to constantly remain alert and on guard.
I am saying that whatever ‘explanations’ we may have, the fact remains that we are in a constant state of unrest. And this constant state of unrest, this constant bubbling undercurrent of unrest is a state of suffering.
I know that we are used to thinking of ‘suffering’ as something more extreme, but I am intentionally choosing to keep with the meaning of suffering as used by the Buddha. The reason is, that
Once we understand that this general state of unrest or change or impermanence or dissatisfaction or suffering is in fact NO DIFFERENT to any other state of suffering in that its ultimate CAUSE – IGNORANCE – is the same, we are that much closer to seeing the way out of suffering.
Alright, I’d like to now talk about ‘doing suffering’.
To ‘do suffering’ means to actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously participate in the things that cause our suffering and one of the things that we participate in, mostly unconsciously/automatically, is IGNORANCE or LACK OF AWARENESS
Let’s just briefly consider what some of these things may be. Let’s start with some very obvious ones – abuse of substances, money, people, through the use of drugs, alcohol, food, power, position and so on. These cause our personal suffering but they also result in the suffering of others.
Now, a few less obvious ones – making our happiness conditional upon other people and things – demanding that people behave the way we want them to, insisting that we cannot be happy unless we have a life partner, a certain kind of job or lifestyle, a certain kind of body. All these give rise to our suffering.
But all of these causes of suffering have their source in one thing:
Ultimately, there is only one fundamental cause of suffering and that is IGNORANCE.
Now, ignorance is not stupidity, rather it is UN-AWARENESS. So, what is this UN-AWARENESS that we have that causes our suffering? Or, put it another way, what is the LACK OF AWARENESS that we have that causes our suffering?
In its most simple yet profound terms, it is the lack of awareness of OUR TRUE NATURE.
So, what is our ‘true nature’?
Well, it is our nature before or outside our conditioning, both individually/personally as you, Jane, or as me, Lucy as well as collectively as the human species.
Now, you might be thinking,
‘Oh, come on, are you suggesting that we are able to undo decades of our individual/personal conditioning and millennia of our human conditioning? And are you suggesting that this is the only way out of suffering?
Yes, kind of, but pay close attention. I am not suggesting that we can ‘undo’ our conditioning whether individual/personal or collective. And neither am I suggesting that it is desirable. But I am suggesting that rather than ‘undo’ anything, we can step into a different state of being – an unconditioned state of being which is our TRUE NATURE and I am declaring with utmost certainty that we can do this in an instant.
In fact, we have all experienced such instants when we have momentarily been transported, as it were, into a totally different state of consciousness, as for instance when we ‘lose ourselves’ in the magic of a shockingly beautiful sunset or in the euphoric experience of a musical sojourn or in the intoxicating mystery of being in love.
They would likely have been brief, sometimes lasting no more than a few seconds before our conditioned mind jumped in and hauled us savagely back into its consciousness of misperceptions, illusions, false beliefs, doubts, received ‘wisdom’, rational knowledge and learned scripts.
Stepping out of our conditioned state of consciousness and stepping into our unconditioned state of consciousness or our true nature is not only possible and do-able, it is NECESSARY. It is how we STOP DOING SUFFERING.
Note, I did not say it is how we end suffering because, unless we are willing, like the Buddha, to make an end to our suffering a NON-NEGOTIABLE, it is unlikely that most of us ever will put a complete end to suffering and experience the absolute and ongoing state of NIRVANA or LIBERATION.
However, what most of us are quite capable of doing is to reduce considerably our experiences of suffering, to increase considerably our experiences of joy and peace and to reset our default state of being from ‘OKAY-COPING-AVERAGE-DEPENDENT’ to ‘JOYOUS-PEACEFUL-POWERFUL-FREE’
So, how do we step out of our conditioned state of consciousness and stay in it for longer and longer periods of time and thus live our lives increasingly from it?
By practicing being in it. Yes, it’s as simple and mundane as that.
And how do we do this?
In 2 steps:
1. We become familiar with our conditioned state of consciousness. In other words, we watch or observe our thoughts, our feelings, our sensations, our stories as they arise within us. We do this without judgment, without attaching or averting. We do this as if we are watching leaves float down a stream.
2. We take note of the fact that we are the AWARENESS that is watching/observing
The more we do this, the more we identify with the Awareness that we are and which is our true nature,, the less our conditioning, its stories, its imperfections, its false beliefs, its demands and its judgements dictate our happiness and wellbeing.
In fact, we begin to experience the true source of our wellbeing, our happiness, our peace, our limitlessness, our power which are all who and what we truly and naturally are.
So, this is how we stop doing suffering.
Are you ready to stop doing suffering? Are you ready to make it one of your daily NON-NEGOTIABLES?
I joyously urge you to!
*Dukkha is a complex term and includes in its meaning the quality of impermanence which applies to everything including the impermanence of our experience of happiness as well as our experience of peace or anger and ultimately, of physical life.
Hopefully, you will see how attachment to things that are impermanent (which is everything, including our attachment to ‘happiness’ or to a certain person or even to an idea, is a cause of our suffering.
Likewise, you will see how aversion to things that are impermanent including our aversion to ‘suffering’ or to a certain person or to an idea is also a cause of our suffering.
When I encourage you to make ‘not doing suffering’ a NON-NEGOTIABLE, does that imply that I am encouraging you to develop an aversion to suffering? No, not at all. I am encouraging you to 1) recognize, understand and accept the existence of suffering in ALL its forms without having a quarrel with it and 2) choose a different way to be, one which naturally allows the experiences of suffering to diminish while increasing and enhancing the experiences of happiness and peace.
**The example I used above is just a quick way of getting you to recognize the ongoing state of unrest that we all experience but which we are mostly unaware of. And whilst you may not see how this in itself can be a cause of our suffering, consider the fact that, if you didn’t feel compelled to do anything, you would in fact be feeling quite contented. Or, looking at the same thing in another way, that the feeling of needing to do something causes you (further) unrest.
Next consider what your need for action reflects – your dissatisfaction with the state you are in. Then consider what kind of action it drives you to. Is it action that actually improves the quality of your life? Is it action that encourages attachment to something like checking your text messages or your email or calling someone because you don’t like feeling ‘alone’. Or is it action that encourages your aversion to being still? And so on…
Finally, consider how this kind of action/trigger – reaction happens in almost every area and every moment of your life, at least until you become more mindful and make different choices from your Awareness of your true Nature.
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