Happiness

THE ALCHEMY OF SUFFERING

If there is a way to free ourselves from suffering

We must use every moment to find it.

Only a fool wants to go on suffering.

Isn’t it sad to knowingly imbibe poison?

SEVENTH DALAI LAMA

A long time ago, the son of a king of Persia was raised alongside the son of the grand vizier, and their friendship was legendary. When the prince ascended to the throne, he said to his friend: “While I attend to the affairs of the kingdom, will you please write me a history of men and the world, so that I can draw the necessary lessons from it and thus know the proper way to act.”

The king’s friend consulted with the most famous historians, the most learned scholars, and the most respected sages. Five years later he presented himself proudly at the palace.

“Sire,” he said, “here are thirty-six volumes relating the entire history of the world from creation to your accession.”

“Thirty-six volumes!” cried the king. “How will I ever have time to read them? I have so much work administering my kingdom and seeing to my two hundred queens. Please, friend, condense your history.”

Two years later, the friend returned to the palace with ten volumes. But the king was at war against the neighboring monarch. He was found on a mountaintop in the desert, directing the battle.

“The fate of our kingdom is being played out as we speak. Where would I find the time to read ten volumes? Abridge your history even further.”

The vizier’s son left and worked three years on a single volume that gave an accurate picture of the essence. The king was now caught up in legislating.

“How lucky you are to have the time to write quietly. While you’ve been doing that, I’ve been debating taxes and their collection. Bring me tenfold fewer pages—I’ll spend an evening mining them.”

Two years later, it was done. But when the friend returned, he found the king bedridden, in dreadful pain. The friend himself was no longer young; his wrinkled face was haloed by a mane of white hair.

“Well?” whispered the king with his dying breath. “The history of men?”

His friend gazed steadily at him and, as the king was about to die, he said:

“They suffer, Majesty.”

Yes, they suffer, at every moment and throughout the world. Some die when they’ve just been born; some when they’ve just given birth. Every second, people are murdered, tortured, beaten, maimed, separated from their loved ones. Others are abandoned, betrayed, expelled, rejected. Some are killed out of hatred, greed, ignorance, ambition, pride, or envy. Mothers lose their children, children lose their parents. The ill pass in never-ending procession through the hospitals. Some suffer with no hope of being treated, others are treated with no hope of being cured. The dying endure their pain, and the survivors their mourning. Some die of hunger, cold, exhaustion; others are charred by fire, crushed by rocks, or swept away by the waters.

This is true not only for human beings. Animals devour each other in the forests, the savannahs, the oceans, and the skies. At any given moment tens of thousands of them are being killed by humans, torn to pieces, and canned. Others suffer endless torments at the hands of their owners, bearing heavy burdens, in chains their entire lives; still others are hunted, fished, trapped between teeth of steel, strangled in snares, smothered under nets, tortured for their flesh, their musk, their ivory, their bones, their fur, their skin, thrown into boiling water or flayed alive.

These are not mere words but a reality that is an intrinsic part of our daily lives: death, the transitory nature of all things, and suffering. Though we may feel overwhelmed by it all, powerless before so much pain, turning away from it is only indifference or cowardice. We must be intimately concerned with it, and do everything we possibly can to relieve the suffering.

THE MODALITIES OF SUFFERING

Buddhism speaks of pervasive suffering, the suffering of change, and the multiplicity of suffering. Pervasive suffering is comparable to a green fruit on the verge of ripening; the suffering of change, to a delicious meal laced with poison; and the multiplicity of suffering, to the eruption of an abscess on a tumor. Pervasive suffering is not yet recognized as such. The suffering of change begins with a feeling of pleasure and turns to pain. The multiplicity of suffering is associated with an increase in pain.

These correspond to three modes of suffering: visible suffering, hidden suffering, and invisible suffering. Visible suffering is evident everywhere. Hidden suffering is concealed beneath the appearance of pleasure, freedom from care, fun. A gourmet eats a fine dish and moments later is gripped by the spasms of food poisoning. A family is happily gathered for a picnic in the country when a child is suddenly bitten by a snake. Partygoers are merrily dancing at the county fair when the tent abruptly catches fire. This type of suffering may potentially arise at any moment in life, but it remains hidden to those who are taken in by the illusion of appearances and cling to the belief that people and things last, untouched by the change that affects everything.

There is also the suffering that underlies the most ordinary activities. It is not easy to identify or so readily localized as a toothache. It sends out no signal and does not prevent us from functioning in the world, since, on the contrary, it is an integral part of the daily routine. What could be more innocuous than a boiled egg? Farm-raised hens may not have it so bad, but let’s take a brief look into the world of battery farming. Male chicks are separated at birth from the females and sent straight to the grinder. The hens are fed day and night under artificial lighting to make them grow faster and lay more eggs. Overcrowding makes them aggressive, and they continually tear at each other’s feathers. None of this history is apparent in your breakfast egg.

Invisible suffering is the hardest to distinguish because it stems from the blindness of our own minds, where it remains so long as we are in the grip of ignorance and selfishness. Our confusion, born of a lack of judgment and wisdom, blinds us to what we must do and avoid doing to ensure that our thoughts, our words, and our actions engender happiness and not suffering. This confusion and the tendencies associated with it drive us to reenact again and again the behavior that lies at the source of our pain. If we want to counteract this harmful misjudgment, we have to awaken from the dream of ignorance and learn to identify the very subtle ways in which happiness and suffering are generated.

Are we capable of identifying ego-clinging as the cause of that suffering? Generally speaking, no. That is why we call this third type of suffering invisible. Selfishness, or rather the feeling that one is the center of the world—hence “self-centeredness”—is the source of most of our disruptive thoughts. From obsessive desire to hatred, not to mention jealousy, it attracts pain the way a magnet attracts iron filings.

So it would seem that there is no way to escape the suffering that prevails everywhere. Prophets have followed upon wise men and saints upon potentates, and still the rivers of suffering flow. Mother Teresa toiled for fifty years on behalf of the dying of Calcutta, but if the hospices she founded were to disappear, those patients would be back on the streets as if they’d never existed. In adjacent neighborhoods, they’re still dying on the sidewalks. We gauge our impotence by the omnipresence, magnitude, and perpetuity of suffering. Buddhist texts say that in the cycle of death and rebirth, no place, not even one the size of a needle’s point, is exempt from suffering.

Can we allow such a view to drive us to despair, discouragement, or worse yet, indifference? Unable to bear its intensity, must we be destroyed by it?

THE CAUSES OF SUFFERING

Is there any way to put an end to suffering? According to Buddhism, suffering will always exist as a universal phenomenon, but every individual has the potential for liberation from it.

As for human beings in general, we cannot expect suffering to simply vanish from the universe, because, in the Buddhist view, the universe is without beginning or end. There can be no real beginning because nothing cannot suddenly become something. Nothingness is a word that allows us to picture for ourselves the absence or even nonexistence of worldly phenomena, but a mere idea cannot give birth to anything at all.

As for a real end, in which something becomes nothing, it is equally impossible. As it happens, wherever life exists in the universe, so does suffering: disease, old age, death, separation from loved ones, forced coexistence with our oppressors, denial of basic necessities, confrontations with what we fear, and so on.

Despite all that, this vision does not lead Buddhism to the view held by certain Western philosophers for whom suffering is inevitable and happiness out of reach. The reason for that is simple: unhappiness has causes that can be identified and acted upon. It is only when we misidentify the nature of those causes that we come to doubt the possibility of healing.

The first mistake is believing that unhappiness is inevitable because it is the result of divine will or some other immutable principle and that it will therefore be forever out of our control. The second is the gratuitous idea that unhappiness has no identifiable cause, that it descends upon us randomly and has no relation to us personally. The third mistake draws on a confused fatalism that boils down to the idea that whatever the cause, the effect will always be the same.

If unhappiness had immutable causes, we would never be able to escape it. The laws of causality would have no meaning—anything could come from anything else, flowers could grow in the sky and light create darkness and, as the Dalai Lama says, it would be easier “not to go to all the trouble of constantly ruminating over our suffering. It would be better just to think about something else, go to the beach, and have a nice cold beer!” Because if there were no cure for suffering, it would be pointless to make it worse by stressing over it. It would be better to accept it fully and to distract oneself so as to feel it less harshly.

But everything that occurs does have a cause. What inferno does not start with a spark, what war without thoughts of hatred, fear, or greed? What inner pain has not grown from the fertile soil of envy, animosity, vanity, or, even more basically, ignorance? Any active cause must itself be a changing one; nothing can exist autonomously and unchanging. Arising from impermanent causes, unhappiness is itself subject to change and can be transformed. There is neither primordial nor eternal suffering.

We all have the ability to study the causes of suffering and gradually to free ourselves from them. We all have the potential to sweep away the veils of ignorance, to free ourselves of the selfishness and misplaced desires that trigger unhappiness, to work for the good of others and extract the essence from our human condition. It’s not the magnitude of the task that matters, it’s the magnitude of our courage.

THE FOUR TRUTHS OF SUFFERING

Over 2,500 years ago, seven weeks after attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha gave his first teaching in the Deer Park outside Varanasi. There he taught the Four Noble Truths. The first is the truth of suffering—not only the kind of suffering that is obvious to the eye, but also the kind, as we have seen, that exists in subtler forms. The second is the truth of the causes of suffering—ignorance that engenders craving, malice, pride, and many other thoughts that poison our lives and those of others. Since these mental poisons can be eliminated, an end to suffering—the third truth—is therefore possible. The fourth truth is the path that turns that potential into reality. The path is the process of using all available means to eliminate the fundamental causes of suffering. In brief, we must:

Recognize suffering,

Eliminate its source,

End it

By practicing the path.

WHEN AFFLICTION BECOMES SUFFERING

Just as we distinguished between happiness and pleasure, we also have to clarify the difference between unhappiness and ephemeral discomforts. The latter depend on external circumstances, while unhappiness is a profound state of dissatisfaction that endures even in favorable external conditions. Conversely, it’s worth repeating that one can suffer physically or mentally—by feeling sad, for instance—without losing the sense of fulfillment that is founded on inner peace and selflessness. There are two levels of experience here, which can be compared respectively to the waves and the depths of the ocean. A storm may be raging at the surface, but the depths remain calm. The wise man always remains connected to the depths. On the other hand, he who knows only the surface and is unaware of the depths is lost when he is buffeted by the waves of suffering.

But how, you might ask, can I avoid being shattered when my child is sick and I know he’s going to die? How can I not be torn up at the sight of thousands of civilian war victims being deported or mutilated? Am I supposed to stop feeling? What could ever make me accept something like that? Who wouldn’t be affected by it, including the most serene of wise men? The difference between the sage and the ordinary person is that the former can feel unconditional love for those who suffer and do everything in his power to attenuate their pain without allowing his lucid vision of existence to be shaken. The essential thing is to be available to others without giving in to despair when the natural episodes of life and death follow their course.

For the past few years I’ve had a friend, a Sikh in his sixties with a fine white beard, who works at the Delhi airport. Every time I pass through, we have a cup of tea together and discuss philosophy and spirituality, taking up the conversation where we left off several months earlier. One day he told me: “My father died a few weeks ago. I’m devastated, because his death seems so unfair to me. I can’t understand it and I can’t accept it.” And yet the world cannot in itself be called unfair; all it does is reflect the laws of cause and effect, and impermanence—the instability of all things—is a natural phenomenon.

As gently as possible, I told him the story of the woman who, overwhelmed by the death of her son, came to the Buddha and begged him to restore the boy to life. The Buddha told her that in order to do so, he needed a handful of earth from a house that had never experienced any death. Having visited every house in the village and come to see that none had escaped bereavement, the woman returned to the Buddha, who comforted her with words of love and wisdom.

I also told him the story of Dza Mura Tulku, a spiritual master who lived in the early twentieth century in eastern Tibet. He had a family, and throughout his life he felt a deep affection for his wife, which she reciprocated. He did nothing without her and always said that if anything should happen to her, he could not long outlive her. And then she died suddenly. The master’s friends and disciples hurried to his side. Recalling what they had heard him say so often, none dared tell him the news. Finally, as tactfully as possible, one disciple told the master that his wife had died.

The tragic reaction they’d feared failed to occur. The master looked at them and said: “Why do you look so upset? How many times have I told you that phenomena and beings are impermanent? Even the Buddha had to leave the world.” No matter how tenderly he’d felt for his wife, and despite the great sadness he most surely felt, allowing himself to be consumed by grief would have added nothing to his love for her. It was more important for him to pray serenely for the deceased and to make her an offering of that serenity.

Remaining painfully obsessed with a situation or the memory of a departed loved one, to the point of being paralyzed by grief for months or years on end, is evidence not of affection, but of an attachment that does no good to others or to oneself. If we can learn to acknowledge that death is a part of life, distress will gradually give way to understanding and peace. “Don’t think you’re paying me some kind of great tribute if you let my death become the great event of your life. The best tribute you can pay to me as a mother is to go on and have a good and fulfilling life.” These words were spoken by a mother to her son only moments before her death.

So the way in which we experience these waves of suffering depends a great deal on our attitude. It is therefore always better to familiarize ourselves with and prepare ourselves for the kind of suffering we are likely to encounter, some of which will be unavoidable, such as illness, old age, and death, rather than to be caught off guard and sink into anguish. A physical or moral pain can be intense without destroying our positive outlook on life. Once we have acquired inner well-being, it is easier to maintain our fortitude or to recover it quickly, even when we are confronted externally by difficult circumstances.

Does such peace of mind come simply because we wish it to? Hardly. We don’t earn our living just by wishing to. Likewise, peace is a treasure of the mind that is not acquired without effort. If we let ourselves be overwhelmed by our personal problems, no matter how tragic, we only increase our difficulties and become a burden on those around us. If our mind becomes accustomed to dwelling solely on the pain that events or people inflict on it, one day the most trivial incident will cause it infinite sorrow. As the intensity of this feeling grows with practice, everything that happens to us will eventually come to distress us, and peace will find no place within us. All manifestations will assume a hostile character and we will rebel bitterly against our fate, to the point of doubting the very meaning of life. It is essential to acquire a certain inner sense of well-being so that without in any way blunting our sensitivities, our love, and our altruism, we are able to connect with the depths of our being.

WOUNDED BEINGS

Some people have known so little affection and so much suffering in their early life that they are deeply wounded. It is hard for them to find a place of peace and love within themselves and consequently to trust others. Sometimes, however, they develop the healing and empowering faculty of resilience, which makes them less vulnerable to difficult situations and helps them to transform such situations into personal strengths and to find their way in life. But they may also carry these wounds for a long time in their relationships. It is well established that newborns and infants need a great deal of loving-kindness and affection to grow in an optimal way. Bulgarian and Chinese orphanages, where infants are rarely touched by their caretakers, let alone given affection and love, offer well-known and tragic evidence that the brains of neglected infants do not develop normally. I have witnessed extraordinary changes in infants from Nepalese orphanages, who at first seemed like inert, “absent” little beings and blossomed into wonderfully lively children within months of having been adopted by loving parents who constantly related to them with affection, touched them, and spoke to them.

Whether or not we benefit from affection and love at an early age thus greatly influences our ability to give and receive love later in life, and simultaneously our degree of inner peace. If we consider the categories first described by Mary Ainsworth and applied by Phil Shaver and his colleagues to adolescents and adults,¹ a “secure” person will not only enjoy a high degree of well-being but will be naturally open to and trusting of others. She is open to emotions and memories, exhibits high “coherence of mind,” and is nonhostile during disagreements with others and able to compromise. She generally copes well with stress. An “anxious and insecure” person will lack self-confidence and doubt the possibility of encountering genuine benevolence and affection, while yearning deeply for it. Such a person will be less trusting, more possessive and jealous, and will fall prey to nagging suspicions, often on a purely imaginary basis. She is excessively ruminative and vulnerable to depression, and tends to become overly emotional when stressed. An “insecurely avoidant” person will rather keep others at bay than risk further suffering. Such a person will avoid becoming too intimate with others, either in a fearful way or by silencing all emotions in his mind and retreating within the cocoon of self-absorption. He has high self-esteem, but his self-esteem is defensive and brittle; he isn’t very open to emotions and memories, and is often bored, distracted, “compulsively self-reliant,” and not very caring.

According to Shaver and his colleagues, the emotional style of parents, principally the mother, influences considerably that of the child. If the mother has an “avoidant” style, there is a 70 percent chance that the child will “learn” the same style while interacting with his mother. The same is true for the secure and anxious styles. The best gift one can thus give to a child is to manifest loving, open, and peaceful qualities oneself and to let the emotional alchemy work its way.

Are such emotional styles acquired during the first years of life engraved in the stone of unchanging traits? Fortunately not. Phil Shaver and his colleagues have also shown that insecure anxious and avoidant persons can change considerably toward a more secure emotional style precisely by being exposed to affection and other positive emotions.²

How can we help deeply wounded persons? By giving them enough love so that some peace and trust can grow in their hearts. How can they help themselves? By engaging in a meaningful dialogue with a human and warmhearted psychologist using methods that have proven to be efficient, such as cognitive therapy, and by cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, and mindfulness.

MAKING THE BEST OF SUFFERING

While suffering is never desirable, that does not mean that we can’t make use of it, when it is inevitable, to progress humanly and spiritually. Suffering can provide an extraordinary lesson capable of making us aware of the superficiality of many of our daily concerns, of our own fragility, and, above all, of what really counts deep down within us.

Having lived several months on the verge of death in terrible pain, Guy Corneau, a Canadian psychiatrist, finally “let go.” He stopped fighting a pain that could not be soothed and opened himself to the potential for serenity that is ever present in us.

This opening of the heart only became more marked in the following days and weeks. I was plunged into nameless beatitude. A vast fire of love burned within me. I only had to close my eyes to partake of it, long and satisfying draughts. . . . And then I understood that love was the very fabric of this universe, the common identity of each being and each thing. There was only love and nothing else. . . . In the long run, suffering helps us to discover a world where there is no real division between external and internal, between the body and the mind, between me and others.³

We can learn from suffering if we use it wisely. On the other hand, resigning ourselves to it with a simple “that’s life!” is like renouncing from the get-go any possibility of the inner change that is available to everyone and that allows us to prevent suffering from being systematically converted into misery. Just because we are not defeated by such obstacles as illness, animosity, criticism, or bad luck in no way means that events do not affect us or that we have overcome these obstacles forever; it only means that they no longer block our progress toward inner freedom. If we do not wish to be confounded by suffering and we want to put it to the best use as a catalyst, we must not allow anxiety and despondency to conquer our mind. The eighth-century master Shantideva writes: “If there is a cure, what good is discontent? If there is no cure, what good is discontent?”

MANAGING SUFFERING

If it is possible to relieve mental anguish by transforming one’s mind, how can this process be applied to physical suffering? How do we endure crippling, virtually intolerable pain? Here again we should distinguish between two types of suffering: physiological pain and the mental and emotional suffering it unleashes. There are certainly a number of ways to experience the same pain with more or less intensity.

Neurologically, we know, emotional reactions to pain vary significantly from person to person, and a considerable percentage of pain sensation is linked to the anxious desire to suppress it. If we allow that anxiety to overwhelm our mind, the most benign pain will soon become unbearable. So our assessment of pain also depends on our mind. It is the mind that reacts to pain with fear, rejection, despondency, or a feeling of powerlessness; instead of being subjected to a single agony, we accumulate a host of them.