I have been thinking about suffering and how it seems more and more unnecessary to me. Might we let go of the terrible weight we load upon the idea of suffering?
Isn’t it strange that love has been assigned as the cause of suffering by so many people? Oscar Wilde said, “Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.” Actually, Buddha, in my opinion, is more correct in his statement that “Attachment is the cause of suffering.”
Many have misinterpreted that to mean we shouldn’t feel, or love in an emotional way. Oscar Wilde also said, “To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.” And our modern philosopher, Woody Allen, partly corroborated this with, “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving.”
I have thought long and often about the causes and cures of suffering. It seems to me that Buddha’s statement implies a few more layers of meaning before we can really understand him. When we look to the outside world for a source of love, and give “the other” responsibility for our happiness, and become attached to that person or object or situation as the source of happiness, and then the Flow moves us on, and we experience loss and change—the resistance to that is what causes suffering. The attachment to the old, comfortable reality where love was provided to us by the world is what causes us to be ripped away from being with what is, and finding love in a new form in the present moment and in ourselves.
When we create these sorts of “gaps” in our awareness—for instance, between a desired reality and the way it actually is, or by focusing on what we don’t have to such a degree that we create a void where we can’t experience the true self, or Soul—then we suffer. We suffer when we don’t experience Soul and wholeness.
Certainly physical pain is suffering, and it is a powerful distracting force for the mind. Yet ideally, if we can return to center in the midst of physical pain, and come fully present, and direct consciousness to the experience of love and Soul in the moment, pain can dissolve. Here are a few other quotes that begin to illustrate what I am thinking about:
“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.” —William Somerset Maugham
“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.” —Ben Okri
“Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you to stop suffering.” —Jane Roberts
Copyright by Penney Peirce