PART TWO

Answers from the Forest

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

—Kahlil Gibran

 

Consider this: only the attempt to escape suffering exceeds the magnitude of suffering.

Most human enterprises, even the spiritual ones, are designed to transport us away from the experience of pain. Drugstores are continually expanding their inventory of painkillers for every kind of physical ailment; movie theaters, restaurants, and entertainment centers have proliferated to accommodate the faithful patrons who seek to ease the suffering of boredom and discontent; psychiatrists have a three-month waiting list for patient appointments; the 900 number for Psychic Connection has never been busier. We seek, we ask, and, still not finding the panacea for our pain, we seek some more, until the seeking itself becomes the suffering.

Then one day, we finally run out of places to go and things to do. Relief, after all, is not just a swallow away. Our heads bowed down in defeat and bitter disillusionment, we have nowhere else to look but inward. This is the moment when we are ready to learn; this is the time when the teacher appears.