The 'Normalcy' of Suffering

"The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors, which make for the ultimate good of the individual. As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering and bliss."

-- James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh"

Suffering, the Buddha said, is the normal, unenlightened condition of all sentient beings. That our ordinary self-consciousness is a state of suffering, that there are specific causes of such suffering, that there is the possibility of ending suffering, and that there is a path which can lead to the end this suffering and the bliss of nirvana are the Four Noble Truths, the essence of all Buddhist teachings. Indeed, the idea that facing and overcoming one's passions - i.e., one's suffering - leads to the 'salvation' of a wider and deeper consciousness is a lesson that can be found in virtually all of the world's great religious and wisdom traditions.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

“Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being.”
― Jean-Yves Leloup

“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.”
― Mother Teresa

“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.”
― Orson F. Whitney

“As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.”
― Byron Katie

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

Eckhart Tolle: Freedom from the Ego

Eckhart Tolle

". . . (T)hinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence."

-- Eckhart Tolle --

Being free of the smaller self, free of ego, is the transformational goal of all the world's great wisdom traditions. In self-forgetting we awaken to the divinity within each of us, indeed, to the divinity that infuses, pervades and supports all we see. We become whole and realize that we are part of the Whole, rather than isolated individuals.

How is such a transformation of the psyche to be achieved, however? Best-selling author, Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher of no small repute, emphasizes that the key to overcoming the limitations of the ego lies in our present moment awareness.

"All that is required to become free of the ego," he notes, "is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Only Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness."

With Oprah, co-hosts of "A New Earth"
web seminar. (Available here.)

"Spiritual realization," he continues, "is to see clearly what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away. The Buddha," he points out, "was probably the first human being to see this clearly, and so anata (no self) became one of the central points of his teaching. And when Jesus said, "Deny thyself," what he meant was: Negate (and thus undo) the illusion of self. If the self - ego - were truly who I am, it would be absurd to deny it."

[Tolle, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," pp. 78-79.]

Lama Surya Das: On Dealing with Anger

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

-- Aristotle --

There are three basic causes of human suffering, according to Buddhist teachings: ignorance, desire, and anger. Of these, it would seem, anger is perhaps the most-readily identifiable as well as potentially the most damaging to one's self, to others and to the environment.

For most people, a certain degree of anger bubbles just under the surface of their persona, thus recognizing and learning to manage one's innate anger in a mindful manner is a readily achievable aim for each of us. Moreover, efforts in that direction forwards all of us on our common spiritual path.

"The true battlefield is the heart of man, as Dostoevsky said, not wars," Lama Surya Das points out in the attached two-part video. "Wars are not fought over borders. It's not weapons that kill people, it's people that kill people."

"So why," he asks rhetorically, "is this occurring? It is occurring from the greed, and meanness, and cupidity, and fear, and insecurity, and intolerance of people. And we see that all throughout history and all around the world today. So we live in a violent era, a volatile world, and we all see violence and hot wars - shooting wars - in (scores of countries) today. But also we have domestic violence in our homes, and in families, and children being beaten, and all kinds of violence being acted out."

"Also," he notes, there is "aggression, basic aggression that we act out almost every moment, which is aggressively trying to change things from as they are. We are always fighting with reality as it is. This is what Buddhists call 'the basic aggression' - insisting or wanting things to be different from as they are."

"I think it is important to remember that there is nothing in the Dharma that tells us never to be angry," writes Das in "Awakening the Buddha Within," his best selling-book on Buddhist practice. "Anger is a human emotion and it doesn't automatically disappear. Also it has its own logic, its own intelligence and function. If you bottle up and swallow your anger too often, you are going to make yourself ill."

"Meeting the challenge of ill will is not about denying, repressing, or suppressing anger. It's about staying up to date with anger and other emotions by experiencing and releasing their energy moment by moment rather than storing them up. It's about not carrying grudges, or blaming yourself, or turning your anger inward and becoming depressed and despondent. Ideally we should be able to be sensitive enough and aware enough not only to feel life fully but also to let it go."

[Lama Surya Das, "Awakening the Buddha Within," p. 138.]

The Only Thing 'Unchangeable' Is the Inevitability of 'Change'

If there is one thing that Einstein showed decisively, it is that there is nothing permanent in this universe. Even time and space, he demonstrated, are relative. Even the order of events may change for two observers, one moving slowly and the other moving at close to the speed of light.

If there is anything permanent at all, in fact, it may be the fundamental axiom that "nothing is permanent." Everything is always dynamic and in the process of change. The only thing that is unchangeable, it seems, is the inevitability of change itself.

The "permanence" of "impermanency" - we all age, sicken and, eventually die - was one of the telling factors that prompted the Buddha to teach, in the first of his "Four Noble Truths," that to the unenlightened mind this (our human experience) is dukkha, a certain "unsatisfactoriness" or "insufficiency" that is conventionally translated as "suffering."

Even our most pleasurable moments are actually instances of suffering, the Buddha taught, as we know inherently that these momentary pleasures will end, and always all too soon. Even relaxing on the beach in a tropical 'paradse' one is liable to think, with a sinking feeling in one's stomach, "Oh, but I have to fly home on Saturday!" At best, therefore, even these most paradisiacal moments are impermanent and insufficient to imbue us with any sense of true and lasting happiness. They are, thus, dukkha.

Recently, author Judith Johnson discussed "Embracing the Permanence of Impermanency" on the Huffington Post. "Emotionally," Ms. Johnson writes, "many of us yearn for permanency by seeking to alter the terms and conditions of our lives."

"We dream of utopias where only good and happy things come our way. We want financial security and happy families, good health, and access to the fountain of youth. When we find a deep and abiding friendship or love, we want it to retain its intensity and deliciousness. Often, we resort to manipulating our loved ones and ourselves to perpetuate the exhilaration. Yet the tighter our grip, the faster its fleet."

"What becomes permanent," Johnson observes, "is often only that which has solidified in our minds -- our prejudices, habits, beliefs and inclinations." And there is the rub. It is how we think, and at what level of consciousness we interact with our "reality," that determines whether or not we we suffer in our lives. But, fortunately, "like rock," Johnson notes, our prejudices, habits, beliefs and inclinations "can be altered if we use wisdom."

To end suffering, the Buddha concluded, one must end this vain, yet continual clinging and craving; both of which center in the mind and its attitudes (or conditioned ways of thinking). To do this, Buddha taught, it is first necessary to have a right understanding of impermanency and the ultimate insufficiency of "things" to provide lasting happiness. Next, one should refrain from engaging in speech, actions and ways of making money that perpetuate craving and clinging, either in oneself or in other beings. ("After all," as one wag recently put it, "it is exceedingly hard to reach enlightenment with a suffering creature on the end of one's fork.")

Finally, one must energetically engage in discriminating between what causes, promotes or prolongs craving and clinging, and what does not. Then with a rigorous meditative and contemplative practice one works to eradicate the thinking and thought structures that cause clinging and craving.

As Ms. Johnson notes on Huffington Post:

"As long as our myopic vision persists, we tend to live in a fixed, uncompromising relationship with the world around us. Those who disagree with us are likely to be perceived as wrong, their viewpoints discredited as inferior and therefore not meriting consideration. Such a dynamic all too often rules our politics and our most intimate relationships. When we live this way it is as though we dance a rigid box step rather than fluidly and expansively expressing our being."

Realizing that our "things," our "experiences" - even our very "thoughts" and long held "ideas" - are impermanent, it is then possible to overcome "our myopic vision." To do so, however, we need to cultivate a proper understanding and view of our life experience, to refrain from engaging in improper speech, actions and livelihood, and to expend the energy we thus preserve in engaging in at least a minimal meditative and contemplative practice, rather than wasting all that energy cursing the perfidy of the gods and the fickleness of fate and our fellow beings.

Beyond Perceptions and Conceptions to 'Acceptive Consciousness'

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

In our ordinary consciousness we see the world as a manifested reality of "things" - animal, mineral and vegetable. But at the smallest levels, physicists tell us that our "world" consists of granular, distinct quanta (or, sub-particles) of energy, which are "realized" by the act of observation. Because of this, it has been said that modern physics has become "the study of the structure of consciousness."

Humans, with our many layers of consciousness, are capable of "envisioining" our world at both levels. In his most personal writing, "Some of the Dharma" Beat-writer, Jack Kerouac, set this out rather poetically:

---FORM IN THE NORM---
 Instead of bothering with one side of the coin
  or the other, throw it away---in the same way,
   instead of either bothering with arbitrary conception
    of manifested phenomena or non-manifested non-phenomena,
     the coin of existence,
                                       throw it away----
                                                                  Rest beyond conception.

Richard M. Bucke (1837-1902)

Richard M. Bucke, one of the first Westerners to attempt a "scientific" explanation and synthesis of the mystic or enlightenment experiences recorded in the world's wisdom traditions, discussed four progressively higher states of consciousness in his iconic work "Cosmic Consciousness" (sometimes referred to as "The Hippie Bible.")

At the lowest state of consciousness, the simplest animal organism will respond to stimuli. This receptive consciousness, may be illustrated by a simple earth worm recoiling from the prick of a needle. 'Reception' of the stimulus begets a reaction.

At a higher level of consciousness, what Bucke called perceptive consciousness, the "perception" of a stimulus will provoke a reaction. Thus, the second time you take your dog to the vet for its shots, your dog will react when it merely sees the needle.

At the higher level of ordinary human consciousness, what Bucke called conceptive consciousness, the mere "idea" of the stimulus will provoke a response. If you tell a child that he or she is going to get a shot, that the doctor will poke a needle into her arm, the mere thought (or "concept") causes a "response," most often tears.

Bucke speculated that there is yet another higher level of consciousness beyond 'ordinary' human, "conceptive consciousness" - a level he called cosmic consciousness - and he compared the recorded experiences of saints and sages, from Lao-Tze to Jesus, and from Paul, Mohammed, St. John of the Cross and Shakespeare to his mentor, Walt Whitman - in order to outline the parameters of what this higher state of consciousness is. He theorized, like so many before and after, (see, "Pain, Sex and Time" by Gerald Heard, or the "evolutionary enlightenment" teachings of Andrew Cohen), that humankind is inexorably evolving towards this higher state of consciousness and awareness.

In that higher state (known in the West as "enlightenment" and in the East as 'samadhi,' 'moksha,' 'nirvana' or, simply, "liberation") ordinary consciousness, with its "conceptions" that crystallize the world, moves to a higher all-inclusive awareness that is beyond stimuli. For that reason, I call it "acceptive" rather than "cosmic" consciousness. It is in this state of "acceptive consciousness" - beyond the labelling and attachments of our egoic conceptions - that the spiritually adept has an experiential realization and radical acceptance of both the 'manifest' and 'unmanifest' realms or worlds. It is "the ineffable" or what, I believe, the Buddha pointed to as "suchness."