Once, in Shenzhen, China, I met with a ninety-eight-year-old Chan Master who said to me when MBSR was explained to him: “There are an infinite number of ways in which people suffer. Therefore, there must be an infinite number of ways in which the Dharma is made available to people.” What he meant by Dharma was the universal teachings of the Buddha on suffering and the possibility of liberation from suffering.
When the Buddha spoke of the Dharma as the path to the “liberation from suffering,” he was referring to the suffering that we make for ourselves on top of the suffering that comes from natural and human events that are beyond our ability to control.
This “extra” suffering is called adventitious suffering, meaning “extrinsic rather than intrinsic,” “out of place,” or “accidental,” from the Latin, adventicius, meaning “coming to us from abroad” and its root, advenire, “to arrive.” In other words, it is not a given. It is this kind of suffering that we do not have to be imprisoned by, that we can do something about, that we can be entirely free of according to the Buddha, based on his meditative “laboratory investigations” of his own experience — and that of countless dharma practitioners since. And when we investigate for ourselves, through our own systematic cultivation of mindfulness in the face of the very particular and personal pain that we may be suffering at one time or another (the word “suffering” comes from the Latin, sufferre, the root meaning of which is “to carry or to bear”), we can see that much of it is indeed a form of suffering that we create for ourselves on top of what the outer circumstances bring us, which can be horrific enough without our compounding it.
It is adventitious suffering that causes us by far the vast majority of the suffering we experience. Pain of all kinds — physical, emotional, social, existential, spiritual — is a part of the human condition and so, inevitable at times. The cliché is that while pain may be inevitable, the suffering that accompanies it is optional. What this means is that how we choose to be in relationship to pain makes an enormous difference.
We can see that liberation from suffering does not mean that we get a free pass out of all suffering just by practicing mindfulness. If you are human, you are going to suffer at times. It is part of the human condition. It is inescapable. Just having a body is a prescription for suffering. Just having a mind that doesn’t know itself is a prescription for suffering. As we have seen, being attached to anything, clinging to anything, is a prescription for suffering. So we will suffer. You might also contribute to the suffering of others, sometimes without even knowing it. The question is, is it possible to investigate and befriend our suffering no matter what the circumstances? Are there commonsensical and practical ways for us to approach deeply painful experiences and not make them worse? What might be the consequences of seeing that it is possible to intentionally and mindfully work with pain and suffering when they do arise in our lives?