The cessation of suffering is a possibility on the path of awakening. It is a continuously occurring experience that indicated that suffering is not permanent or solid. A classically western application is to take any statement to its extreme, as though the cessation of suffering indicated a permanent solution, a rainbow at the end of our journey. Many theistic systems posit their version of an end to suffering as a reward for compliance to their system. The Buddhist path is non-theistic. Rather than salvation it suggests that we have to do the work ourselves, learning each step of the way how to free ourselves from suffering. It relies on a path to liberation and is, hence, process oriented. The path shies away from blanket statements of finality. Even it’s base premise, that suffering exists, is posited against the fact that it also does not exist.
This cessation of suffering is possible at any time. We experience this in glimpses we refer to as gaps. There are gaps in the constant pressure of suffering that are cracks in the walls of imprisonment where sunlight shines through. In these gaps, we see beyond the suffering to the world beyond. These moments do not imply a finality to the end of suffering but simply a changeability that denies the finality of suffering altogether. Pain and the cessation of suffering are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are bound into a counter reactive interplay. The cessation of suffering happens concurrent to pain and difficult situations. Pain is a natural experience in life. Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain.
To be free of suffering we might look directly at the pain in its center. Suffering is caused by a reaction to the natural experience of pain. It is said that the experience of sentience is an experience of pain. Like it or not, pain is part of life. It marks the passage of time, as well as the important moments within. Whether it be birth, old age, sickness or death pain is a constant reminder that we are alive. Once we acknowledge this truth, we might develop an appropriate respect for our life and all of its experiences. Perhaps we will slow down and stop disregarding our existence by rushing past it like a drunk driver speeding to outrun accidents and police. Acknowledging pain and learning to love ourselves we are brought back to the present and are released from the suffering we generate trying to hide from our life.
THE MECHANICS OF SUFFERING
Desire can lead us into the vastness of the natural world, or it can boomerang back into the mind in a spinning compulsive prison. If we open to beauty we can connect to the present free of regret and speculation. But, we’d expose ourselves to the heartbreak of that naked moment. So we might try and hedge our bet by appropriating the moment in a psychological selfie. This moment is mine. However, if we are truly open, the world we are seeing is bigger than we. This is frightening. So, we will frequently choose to flee this discomfort by trying to cling to some part of our experience. As soon as we say this part is mine, the whole thing feels more manageable. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, we are off to the races on the wild carnival ride of samsara. And then, the more tightly we cling, the less we actually see. It’s as though, in the panic to be free of pain, we squeeze our eyes shut, grab the bar of the cart and hope for the best.
If pain is the necessary discomfort of life, suffering is the impacted environment around that pain. Whether physical, societal or psychological, suffering is caused by a panic-fueled gripping to the things in life. Our panic causes us to blindly adhere to things in order to avoid the pain of existence. One characteristic of clinging is lack of sight. We cling so tightly to things outside of ourselves, that we lose ourselves to them. Clinging is a process of gripping that turns fluidity into density throwing us out of step with a universe characterized by movement and change. The fiction of the self created by this clinging creates friction between ourselves and the natural movement of the universe. We become alien to our actual experience and a pathogen to the natural order. With great hubris, we pretend to the gods and believe the strength of our clinging can create permanence. Yet, no matter how strongly we grip, this clinging is not strength. It is desperation. This gripping makes us feel solid, dense and protected. In fact, we are all the more vulnerable, ignorant and adrift. Cut off from our fundamental goodness and connection to all, we find ourselves needlessly desperate and alone.
Yet, rather than stopping this wheel of confusion, and finding strength within, we redouble our efforts and sell ourselves to the nearest prophet that promises to alleviate our pain. The more we run, the greater our suffering. We grasp at projections of the external world for salvation and sustenance and fall into subservience becoming defined by that to which we cling. Our identity becomes a zip code, wardrobe, car or job. Rather than serving us, the things of life have become our masters. And like American slaves of the 18th century, we take on the names and identities of our masters. We’re a Bud drinking, Democrat who wears Nike, Levis and a Giants T-shirt who drinks Coke, but never Pepsi. Perhaps, we have also become a thing. And, we cling to this thing we call me with the most tenacity of all.
THE WEIGHT OF SAMSARA
Strangely, we try and escape pain by clinging to it. The fact that this doesn’t make sense doesn’t seem to deter us. I mean, why make sense when your already bucking the universe?
We cling to our pain by clinging to our desire to be rid of pain. All this binds us further into servitude and
suffering. When we fight pain, or run from its possibility, we create an unnecessary suffering around the pain. Like muscles clenching around a wound, the reaction to pain can actually cause more damage and long term suffering than the initial wound. While that initial layering is protection, only by eventually exposing the wound can it heal. And while we know this instinctively with regard to physical pain, we don’t seem to understand this psychologically very well. We rarely think to expose the trauma beneath the layers of psychological obfuscation and touch the actual pain. And so this pain never really heals. In fact, it becomes more and more inflamed like an emotional sore toe, causing more pain each time it’s touched. In time, this clenching reaction not only fails to heal the wound, it becomes systematized in body and mind and is triggered by the most innocuous circumstances. Therefore, through fear of pain we cling for dear life, and squeeze the life out of living. This is the ground by which the pain of living becomes a life of suffering. The vicious cycle of our mental suffering is a fractal of a larger global experience referred to as samsara, or as Kerouac so coined, “the wheel of quivering meat conception.”
Samsara has the weight of the entire line of sentient existence, it’s patterns deeply rooted in cosmological, personal and societal experience. It would be daunting to try to undo this karmic momentum. But, rather than turn this heavy wheel backwards, suppose we supplant the erroneous view at the very root within ourselves? We can begin the process of unraveling by admitting that we are human. This admission implies that we are not perfect, that we fail and are frail and broken experience much pain in our lives. But, we can learn to own our pain by eschewing judgement and aggression and looking directly into ourselves with kindness and love. We can leave useless judgments at the door, and enter into the inner sanctum of our fear with care and caution. Instead of panic fueled by ignorance and past injury, perhaps we can train the mind to awaken and experience the confidence to redirect, that karmic stream at the very outset?
LIBERATION WITHIN
In order to do this, we need to proceed carefully. An overly assertive incursion would be
knee without hitting the walls around the incision? Its like that. Slowly, with great love, so we learn to trust. Then we can see, feel, taste and touch the wounds that are generating so much confusion and perhaps empower them the strength of our compassion. Maybe, this would give that frightened part of ourselves enough of a sense of confidence that it might let go of the wound and open. And what will we find there? Maybe the process itself is the answer. Perhaps there is nothing to find, nothing to be and no problems to solve. Perhaps, by caring, enough to look and developing awareness into the darkest places, we find strength. Maybe we are enough as we are. Enough at our core. Enough in our very being.
When we connect to our basic sense of goodness, we develop a wholesome attitude toward life. Pain is not a punishment and pleasure is not a reward. Our existence becomes a blessing and our desires are not a needs but rather compliments. Without the intensity of need, we’d have no reason to cling as though our life depended on it. And, generally our life does not depend on the things to which we cling. In fact, our life might depend on letting some of them go. By acknowledging our ill-ease or discomfort, we can release the clinging and find thespace around pain, allowing it to change and become a learning experience. When we let go, we allow experience to supercede the object. When we enjoy something, the enjoyment is enough, the object only an avatar. When we get in touch with our basic goodness, we know, quite naturally, that we are enough. Therefore, we could enjoy that dress if we don’t have to have it. We could love that car if it didn’t define us. We could appreciate our job if we knew that it was there to serve us and not the reverse. We are more important than the job, or the money or the things that serve us. We can sit back and enjoy our food because we aren’t starving. We might even look around and regard the company at dinner with appreciation and something of a smile.
CESSATION
We become liberated from the bondage of suffering when we release our grip on that which we feel will alleviate our pain, accept the pain as it is. And then we can look outward to the rest of the world. This happens intermittently throughout our life. In fact, it happens intermittently throughout our day as little gaps of silence within the suffering. By opening our heart to the pain, we can begin to see the space around it, and the gaps within the density. These gaps have no weight, and so cannot compare to the tremendous intensity of suffering. But, they represent the way beyond suffering nonetheless. It is about training the mind to the gentle subtleties of life. The moments we can feel beyond the panic into the fullness of the truth of existence. In time, we begin to trust this silence more than the screaming. We begin to know that we are enough right from the outset and don’t need to change a thing. Even pain.
Pain is our entry into life. The work is to convince ourselves that it is not a punishment and rather than check out, we can check in. Pain is the gateway. I have a supplication I use for my internal work.
I am blessed by this pain. I feel because I am alive. May this moment connect me to my own life and to the lives of all who are experiencing pain. May I not run from this moment, but use this opportunity to become more deeply connected to my life.
Or, as a friend of mine suggested “Damn yo’ bring it on!”