I absorbed a disappointment at work the other day. A situation I thought would probably go a certain way took a twist that left me with a painful choice. What I decided, though I am sad about it, seems like the right way to go for the peace and well-being of the clinic. But what I really want to explore is this feeling of disappointment. It served to coalesce several lines of thought I have been focusing on recently. The first is a question I have been pondering for about as long as I can remember pondering anything:
Why does it seem to be impossible for us to be born happy, live happily and die the same way?
Let me first say that I have always had a certain mistrust for the idea that unhappiness is a necessary precursor to happiness. This seems to be a concept which many people take as a given, that in order to appreciate joy we must have sorrow and that the capacity for one is roughly proportional to the other. I find this, at best, reductive and facile. To my mind, it is akin to saying that one must live in the Third World to appreciate living in the developed world, or one must be divorced to appreciate marriage. And once we think about it seriously, are we really suggesting that the more we suffer, the more capacity we have for happiness? I find this ridiculous on the face of it. If I had a burn over 90% of my body would I therefore inevitably have an absolutely enormous capacity for joy (redcutio ad absurdum)? Of course, it's perfectly possible that this idea of the need for suffering in order to comprehend happiness might nonetheless be true, but I have never seen any convincing evidence to support it. (Though it is essential to the development of compassion, there is no denying that).
To my mind, the more important question is this: is it theoretically possible to live a life without emotional pain? I know it's not likely, but is it possible? We have all known people who seem to have a greater than average capacity for finding what is pleasant in life. Is there a place on the far end of that continuum where a person goes through an entire life without suffering?
I would contend that the answer is no. But why is this? I think it must be because in order to be living beings we must grow, and the capacity to grow comes about through butting up against our limitations, either external or internal. When this happens, we become frustrated and unhappy. We seek a solution or response that will alleviate this suffering. But the suffering must come first.
Let's take an early-in-life example. An infant is perfectly content to be fed, changed, burped, held, and put down to sleep. (I know, I know, they also cry a lot, but mostly they are brought back to contentment fairly easily). But at some point the baby "aspires" to something more, wishes to see more or move more. This is a frustrating impulse when the child does not yet have the capacity for controlled voluntary movement. The frustration leads to repeated attempts to get past the frustration by developing the skill required to overcome the barrier to the fulfillment of desire. A more subtle example from adulthood is when we wish for things to be a certain way in a milieu (work, for example), but the reality of personalities, administrative limits, and many other factors makes this impossible. This frustration is compounded by the fact that each person with whom one works (or lives, or whatever) also has a vision of a perfect environment which inevitably does not coincide with yours. Thus the development of a physical skill or the persuasion of language will not suffice in these situations to overcome suffering. Instead, the growth must be in the emotional and/or spiritual realm, where we learn to choose between acceptance, confrontation, or escape. As one of my mentors said, in every difficult situation there are only three constructive actions: change it, leave it, or accept it. We can all think of several other responses (bitch about it, get angry, hate the perceived perpetrator), but these are more or less purely destructive.
Another source of suffering to consider: when we love we will suffer. The Loved One will leave or disappoint or die. This is inevitable unless you die first, in which case the other person (or animal or whatever) in the love equation will suffer. Suffering is simply part of love. To my way of thinking, this fact deepens and reifies what passes between two or more people. But this is probably a subject for a post all its own.
So suffering is essential to our growth as thinking, feeling, loving human beings. Though some people seem to be born wiser than others, it still is true that every one of us must go through this process of emotional growth (anger, frustration, consideration, formulation of a possible response, trying out that response, evaluating and deciding on a future course if that one doesn't work). Wisdom simply isn't possible without it.
But wisdom is not the only outcome of suffering tempered by wisdom. I have been dealing with grief in several forms lately and while, if given the choice, I would have selected some other state of being, there is a distinct upside. Wednesday, when I was actively grieving the lost opportunity at work, I realized that the feeling of grief seems to open up a trap door to a reservoir of comfort. This is hard to describe, but I suspect most if not all of us have experienced what I am talking about. In Sailing Home, Norman Fischer speaks eloquently of seeing "to the bottom of the feeling, through the turbulent waters caused by your stickiness, to the calm clear depth". It is as if we have been living in the parched top six inches of our lives and only by going to depth, miles down—which requires sadness, anger, grief, pain, despair, betrayal, some strong stimulus—can we find the cool underground stream of our selves, a flow of being we hadn't even guessed existed. This is why, as I said in my last post, the way out is down. We must discover what is down there in order to go on; we cannot survive on bread alone, but must have the water of our deepest emotions to thrive. I suspect this is why, no matter how intelligent and well-informed they may be, young people (except those who have suffered out of proportion to their age) still seem rather callow in the view of those who are more mature. I'm still not recommending suffering as a hobby, but it does seem to have its uses.
Which leads back inevitably to the Four Noble Truths the Buddha propounded. The first is that there is suffering (or dissatisfaction). That reflects the discussion above, wherein suffering is an essential part of the human experience. The Buddha is not saying that all suffering is unnecessary, but that it exists for all of us. He could have stopped there; perhaps the Third Noble Truth might then have been, "So get over it". But instead he proposed a radical idea, that there could be an end to suffering. Considering what I have just been saying, doesn't this mean that we would stop growing at the point we stopped suffering? Not necessarily. What I think the Buddha meant is that suffering is useful to a point and then no further, that, in fact, there comes a time when we must transcend suffering in order to continue to grow. This reminds me a bit of how one must treat orchids; once the flowers have finished blooming, the entire stalk must be cut off so a new one can grow. But if you also cut off all the leaves and dig the plant up by the roots, it will just die. So a certain degree of pruning (suffering) is essential to our flowering, but then we must leave well enough alone and go deeper. This is the core of what we are doing in meditation and in studying the Dharma. True wisdom is coming to the point of no preference, where grief is not bad and joy is not good, but all is acceptable. That, I believe, is nirvana.
Let me first say that I have always had a certain mistrust for the idea that unhappiness is a necessary precursor to happiness. This seems to be a concept which many people take as a given, that in order to appreciate joy we must have sorrow and that the capacity for one is roughly proportional to the other. I find this, at best, reductive and facile. To my mind, it is akin to saying that one must live in the Third World to appreciate living in the developed world, or one must be divorced to appreciate marriage. And once we think about it seriously, are we really suggesting that the more we suffer, the more capacity we have for happiness? I find this ridiculous on the face of it. If I had a burn over 90% of my body would I therefore inevitably have an absolutely enormous capacity for joy (redcutio ad absurdum)? Of course, it's perfectly possible that this idea of the need for suffering in order to comprehend happiness might nonetheless be true, but I have never seen any convincing evidence to support it. (Though it is essential to the development of compassion, there is no denying that).
To my mind, the more important question is this: is it theoretically possible to live a life without emotional pain? I know it's not likely, but is it possible? We have all known people who seem to have a greater than average capacity for finding what is pleasant in life. Is there a place on the far end of that continuum where a person goes through an entire life without suffering?
I would contend that the answer is no. But why is this? I think it must be because in order to be living beings we must grow, and the capacity to grow comes about through butting up against our limitations, either external or internal. When this happens, we become frustrated and unhappy. We seek a solution or response that will alleviate this suffering. But the suffering must come first.
Another source of suffering to consider: when we love we will suffer. The Loved One will leave or disappoint or die. This is inevitable unless you die first, in which case the other person (or animal or whatever) in the love equation will suffer. Suffering is simply part of love. To my way of thinking, this fact deepens and reifies what passes between two or more people. But this is probably a subject for a post all its own.
So suffering is essential to our growth as thinking, feeling, loving human beings. Though some people seem to be born wiser than others, it still is true that every one of us must go through this process of emotional growth (anger, frustration, consideration, formulation of a possible response, trying out that response, evaluating and deciding on a future course if that one doesn't work). Wisdom simply isn't possible without it.
But wisdom is not the only outcome of suffering tempered by wisdom. I have been dealing with grief in several forms lately and while, if given the choice, I would have selected some other state of being, there is a distinct upside. Wednesday, when I was actively grieving the lost opportunity at work, I realized that the feeling of grief seems to open up a trap door to a reservoir of comfort. This is hard to describe, but I suspect most if not all of us have experienced what I am talking about. In Sailing Home, Norman Fischer speaks eloquently of seeing "to the bottom of the feeling, through the turbulent waters caused by your stickiness, to the calm clear depth". It is as if we have been living in the parched top six inches of our lives and only by going to depth, miles down—which requires sadness, anger, grief, pain, despair, betrayal, some strong stimulus—can we find the cool underground stream of our selves, a flow of being we hadn't even guessed existed. This is why, as I said in my last post, the way out is down. We must discover what is down there in order to go on; we cannot survive on bread alone, but must have the water of our deepest emotions to thrive. I suspect this is why, no matter how intelligent and well-informed they may be, young people (except those who have suffered out of proportion to their age) still seem rather callow in the view of those who are more mature. I'm still not recommending suffering as a hobby, but it does seem to have its uses.
Which leads back inevitably to the Four Noble Truths the Buddha propounded. The first is that there is suffering (or dissatisfaction). That reflects the discussion above, wherein suffering is an essential part of the human experience. The Buddha is not saying that all suffering is unnecessary, but that it exists for all of us. He could have stopped there; perhaps the Third Noble Truth might then have been, "So get over it". But instead he proposed a radical idea, that there could be an end to suffering. Considering what I have just been saying, doesn't this mean that we would stop growing at the point we stopped suffering? Not necessarily. What I think the Buddha meant is that suffering is useful to a point and then no further, that, in fact, there comes a time when we must transcend suffering in order to continue to grow. This reminds me a bit of how one must treat orchids; once the flowers have finished blooming, the entire stalk must be cut off so a new one can grow. But if you also cut off all the leaves and dig the plant up by the roots, it will just die. So a certain degree of pruning (suffering) is essential to our flowering, but then we must leave well enough alone and go deeper. This is the core of what we are doing in meditation and in studying the Dharma. True wisdom is coming to the point of no preference, where grief is not bad and joy is not good, but all is acceptable. That, I believe, is nirvana.
No comments:
Post a Comment