Ending Suffering - Awakening Genuine Happiness

            Wetness is inseparable from water. Similarly, heat is inseparable from a flame. We can’t have one without the other.  If suffering was in the same way inseparable from human life we could stop right here. There would be little more to say about suffering except for perhaps a few words about how to manage it as best we can.

But suffering is not innate to human life. It’s a temporary contaminant. As an example consider a glass filled with dirty water. When the particulate matter sinks to the bottom the dirty water appears clear. Actually, the water’s nature never changed. It was always clear and pure. The silt was merely a contaminant that temporarily obscured the natural clarity of the water. Similarly, in the midst of distress human life appears inseparable from suffering. However, when suffering is fully understood and addressed we find that suffering is a temporary contaminant that can fall away much like silt in water. We can then see that the essence of human life. We can see that this essence is peaceful, whole, and free from suffering.

Regardless of appearance the fact is that happiness rather than suffering is innate to human life. This is not to deny the pervasiveness of suffering in human life but to merely state the fundamental truth that it is not innate – it is not hard-wired – into our life.

Because we fail to truly grasp the temporary nature of suffering we attempt to rid our self of it in misdirected ways that only lead to further suffering. We seek to alleviate suffering through romance, relationships, drugs, materialism, name, fame, self-help programs, and whatever else we can get our hands on. We have build an entire culture based on avoiding suffering by covering them over with temporary pleasures. And these efforts have failed us. At best these mistaken remedies provide only temporary relief. They fail go to the root of the problem – our false understanding of suffering. The only way to separate suffering from human life is to correctly understand its causes and permanently sever it at its root source. This is what wise men and women have known for millennia.

What is Suffering?

         Suffering, unlike physical pain, is a mental rather than a sensory experience. Suffering, or mental angst, takes various shapes and forms. It manifests as disturbing and negative emotions such as worry, fear, anxiety, rumination, mood disturbances, confusion, doubt, insecurity, a negative self-image, meaninglessness, anger, hatred, attachment, loss, and endless variations of these thoughts and emotions. The one common thread is that each of these mental experiences causes distress and suffering.

            If we observe our mental life we discover that most of our thoughts, feelings, and images are disturbing or negative. When your mind is very active stop for a few moments and take an inventory of the percentage of mental activity that is of a disturbing nature. This may reach as high as ninety percent. That’s how our mind works. We ruminate on fearful and negative thoughts and emotions. In contrast, moments of what we call pleasure and happiness are far more fleeting. It’s the presence of these ongoing and persistent disturbing emotions that we commonly label suffering. The more intense they are the more we experience suffering.

            The experience of suffering gets automatically upgraded as we ruminate on these disturbing emotions. At times it’s as if we cannot get away from them. They pull us into their negativity for hours at a time causing a complete loss of perspective and self. We become these disturbing emotions. We become suffering. At least that is how it seems at the time. Our body reacts to this mental distress. We then have a mind/body problem. Disharmony is now disharmony in the body.

            So we can say that suffering is the feeling of dread and mental discomfort that arises from our uncontrolled preoccupation with negative thoughts and emotions. We usually acknowledge suffering when we feel overt distress. However, from the perspective of an individual who has realized a genuine, profound, and sustained peace and happiness most of what we ordinarily call happiness is known for what it is – suffering in disguise. We have learned to settle for very little happiness and mistake what we have as being the real thing. So many of us simply do not know that our lives are filled with a certain sense of loss, malaise, incompleteness, and subtle distress. We don’t know what it feels like to be free of all suffering – gross and subtle. We don’t know what it is to be truly peaceful and happy. As a result we settle for scraps and miss the gold.

            In summary, suffering is the mental distress caused by disturbing and negative emotions. When recognizable our suffering is gross or apparent. When unrecognized it is subtle, disguised, and mistaken for ordinary life.

The Origins of Suffering

         The next question is how do these disturbing and negative emotions arise? If we can identify how they arise we can determine how to best deal with them. In medicine we call this making a diagnosis that then leads us to the precise and correct therapy. If we have the wrong diagnosis we will apply the wrong remedy.

What is the trigger for our negative thoughts and emotions? There are several answers here. To be precise, four answers. They are each correct, but not equally correct. The first answer is that adverse outer events are the cause of the disturbing emotions that lead to suffering. The second answer is that both the mind and outer events are the cause of suffering. The third is that the mind itself is the cause of suffering. And the fourth answer is that suffering is neither a result of the mind nor of outer circumstance. Don’t get confused here. Read on.

            In order to get to the heart of the matter let’s take these one at a time. No one could rationally deny that a poor person living on the street in a cardboard box or an individual in the midst of a severe illness is suffering. It is apparent to all of us that outer circumstances can trigger disturbing emotions and suffering. To deny this is to defy conventional logic and experience.

            The second answer suggests that both inner attitude and outer circumstance combine to determine the presence and intensity of suffering. This more flexible and expansive perspective – the mind/body perspective – acknowledges the inter-dependence and inter-action of outer circumstances and our inner life. It’s also impossible to deny this formulation of the problem.  We know from our experience that adversity and our reaction to it determine our degree of suffering. This is a more complete and matured understanding than exclusively blaming outer adversity.

A more subtle and difficult leap is to understand that the mind itself is the primary cause of suffering, An unstable and undeveloped mind is highly susceptible to outer adversity. A moderately developed consciousness is less susceptible. However, a highly developed mind is immune to the winds of outer experience – including disease, aging, and death. As it is not part of our ordinary experience we are unfamiliar with this possibility. We cannot imagine moving through these great life transitions without suffering. However, this is what we see in all fully realized beings across time and cultures. In ordinary life we can get a sense of this extraordinary possibility by observing the large variation in how adversity is experienced amongst different individuals.

Consider the following. What is the difference between the beggar in the street and the monk in a wet and dirty cave? Both have similar outer circumstances. In one case there is suffering and felt deprivation and in the other the peace and joy of the search for inner freedom.  The only difference lies in how the mind holds the outer circumstance. To deny this higher truth and understanding is to deny the observable fact that irrespective of outer circumstances ones mental attitude towards that circumstances determines the absence, presence, or degree of suffering. This is a challenging yet true understanding. This is good news as we can’t control all outer circumstances and people, but we can control our mind.

            The fourth answer is the most difficult and subtle yet it is our greatest hope. I will only address this briefly. Here we state that suffering is neither caused by our mental attitude nor by outer adversity. Suffering, from this perspective is caused by a loss of an awareness of our deepest self – our human essence. When we recognize and rest stably in our deepest essence we are immune from outer adversities and afflictive thoughts and emotions. From this point of view when we touch into our deepest home we find that suffering does not live there irrespective of the attitude and meanderings of our mind or the unpredictability of outer circumstance. Once you see this you will understand why suffering can be permanently eradicated through a thorough and complete understanding of suffering, the full development of consciousness, and the realization of our true nature.

            So why are each of these answers valid even though they appear dissimilar from each other? It’s because they reflect an increasingly subtle understanding of the nature of human suffering. The more sophisticated our understanding the closer we get to the full and actual truth of suffering. The more subtle our understanding the closer we come to our final goal – the permanent eradication of suffering.

            If we think that outer events are the only cause of suffering then the only available remedy is to control outer experience. To some extent this can reduce suffering, and of course it’s important to avoid unnecessary external triggers of suffering. But we would all agree that as a single strategy used over the long-term this is an ineffective approach that in itself may lead to further suffering. We can neither control all individuals or outer circumstances nor the personal process of aging, disease, and death. So we cannot hope to eradicate suffering by merely attending to outer circumstances. This is only a partial and temporary solution.

            If we expand our understanding to consider both the inner and outer aspects of suffering we extend our possible remedies. We care for the outer aspects of life – for example, taking care of our body and avoiding harmful circumstances – and at the same time we concern our self with our psychology and reactive mental patterns. The upgraded mind/body perspective allows us to make greater progress in our effort to deal with suffering.

            If our understanding shifts to an even subtler level we realize that the mind itself is the primary source of all suffering. This is a very difficult expansion in understanding. It takes time and inner development to move away from our focus on the role of external circumstances. But with such an effort we will discover that how we relate to adversity – the state of our mind – determines whether or not we suffer or the degree to which we suffer. If we are convinced of this very subtle understanding our main effort to eradicate suffering turns inward towards the development of consciousness. Through this effort we progressively free our self of mental afflictions – regardless of our outer circumstance. In this way we undermine the mental causes of suffering and arrive at the final step in the permanent eradication of all suffering.

            Let’s ground this last point in our ordinary experience. All of us have watched others deal with adversity. Even in the most difficult circumstance of death we observe great variation in how people respond. Some collapse into despair, fear, and great suffering. Others move through with grace and peace.
What is the difference between these individuals? Death is the same in all. The difference lies in their mental state alone. Perhaps we can see in our own life how that as we have grown and matured we progressively handle adversity with greater peace and ease. Now imagine extending this capacity with further inner development. You can then see how it is possible to move over time towards the full eradication of suffering.
            To gain a full, permanent, and final freedom from suffering we must go even further. We must go beyond our usual notions of mind to discover the underlying essence of the mind that transcends cognition and our usual sense of “I.” This is a high degree of inner development. We then discover that our true nature is characterized by an open, vast, still, and peaceful spaciousness where suffering cannot exist in any form. We are not accustomed to this natural joyful presence. For far too long in exile from it. – like refugees in a foreign land.  But once we touch our true source we know with certainty that suffering is an experience that is limited to our runaway cognitive mind  – a result of hyper-mentation. Our natural self – like water freed of silt – is free of all suffering. This is the ultimate and final remedy.

            Let’s again try to ground this very subtle accomplishment in our ordinary experience. We all know a time when our cognitive chattering mind stopped, and we experienced a state of consciousness without the usual thoughts and feelings. This may have occurred in a communion with nature, at the peak of athletic activity, while dancing, or playing music, at the moment of sexual orgasm, or at other times. At such a moment the mind is still, our experience is spacious, our heart is open, and we know a peace that surpasses understanding and does not allow for suffering. If we could stretch these moments out and make them our life we would know for certain that suffering can be permanently eradicated. If it can be gone for a moment it can be gone for a lifetime. We would know that suffering is only a contaminant of human life and cannot be simultaneously present when we live in the spaciousness and openness of our natural and deepest self. 

Of course these moments are now only transient, but to know that they are possible for you at all is to know the issue is not whether suffering can be brought to an end but learning how to stabilize through inner development our essential nature. We do not need to create this natural state of being. It is always there. We only need to learn how to access, recognize, and stabilize it. Then suffering will permanently end. So it is here we realize through our own experience that suffering at its most subtle understanding is neither about our mental attitude nor outer circumstances. It is about living in our true and essential nature.

            When free of the constraints of suffering armoring of the heart comes to an end, isolation and disconnectedness end, and the heart opens to a large embrace. A mind free of suffering opens the heart. We know this from our own life. When we feel happy and mentally clear our heart naturally opens to others. And this openness and reaching out connects us to others and to life around us. We are no longer living in the delusional separateness of a hyperactive mind but in the reality of our interconnectedness with all that is. This felt connection brings isolation and aloneness to an end.

With the end of suffering we flourish into the fullness of our human capacity. We flourish in a life that is characterized by an enduring and profound peace, happiness, and wholeness. This is how suffering comes to an end and we awaken into the natural fullness of life.

Working the Path

         Given these four progressively subtler aspects of suffering how do we start along the path of reducing and eventually eradicating suffering in our life? I will now overview five steps that will take us towards our goal of eradicating suffering and awakening happiness. They are both sequential and highly interactive. We begin with the most basic step and slowly progress to the most sophisticated approach. Each is essential to attaining our final goal.

Cultivating and Abandoning

            Let’s begin with the first step that accords with our most basic understanding of mental afflictions and suffering: suffering is caused by external and adverse circumstances. We address this in a way that at the onset is straightforward and clear. We simply avoid people or circumstances that cause suffering and cultivate those that bring peace and happiness.  When it comes to caring for our health, hooking-up our seat belt, or setting boundaries around difficult people this is quite simple.

            However, when it comes to more complex issues where simple avoidance is impossible – such as our supervisor at work or a circumstance that cannot be categorized as all good or all bad – we are called upon to be far more skillful in determining our choices. The wisdom that enables us to choose speech and actions that are most appropriate to a particular situation is matured over time through inner development. It’s easy to quickly act/react that are pushed by old patterns or intense emotions. This will only lead to more suffering. It is more difficult to begin to get some space, still the mind reflect, and act with clarity, skill, and appropriateness. This will diminish suffering and promote well-being.

            So we begin with a simple guideline that can be found in all the great traditions – avoid all actions that directly, indirectly, long-term, or short term cause suffering to you or to others. Examples are easy. They include: maintaining honesty, avoiding judgments about others, harsh or angry language, physical harm, taking what is not yours, engaging in inappropriate sexual activity, and so on. These are obvious. It’s a place to start. Following these simple guidelines alone will result in less suffering for you and others. As we progress in understanding our self and others we will be able to extend skillful behavior into more subtle and complex situations.

            The same can be said about cultivating relationships and circumstances that bring peace and happiness. Again, examples are easy. Cultivate friendships with kind and loving people that can see beyond themselves, open your heart in a loving embrace to others, cultivate activities that are health to body, mind, and spirit, and expand moments of stillness and silence in your life by taking breaks from an overactive life.  As we progress in inner development we will learn to cultivate increasingly subtle sources of happiness and health.

            So the question we must ask our self when confronting people and circumstances is, “How can I respond in a way that minimizes suffering for myself and others and maximizes peace and happiness?” What would be skillful in this situation? How can I handle this outer experience in a way that supports my goal of minimizing and ending suffering?

The Mind/Body Connection

            When we upgrade our understanding of suffering to include our mental attitude we expand our ability to work with suffering. We are no longer limited to choosing what works for us and avoiding what doesn’t. We have more flexibility. In addition to using skill in dealing with outer circumstances and other people we now can address the role of our mental perspective in the development distress and suffering. At this level of understanding there are two approaches that can be used. The first is psychology and the second is meditation.

            Psychology allows us to understand our mental attitude, our perspectives, the way we translate outer experiences according to our inner stories, and our reaction patterns. To accomplish this psychological work explores the history of our thoughts, emotions, and patterns. It illuminates how we color experience through interpretation, shape experience through our patterned projections, and needlessly and unconsciously cause suffering for our self and others. With this knowledge we are better able to understand how our mind and its mental activity collaborate with outer circumstances to create an amalgam of inner attitude and outer experience that results in suffering. With this knowledge we become more sensitive to our mind as well as our outer actions and are capable of approaching life with greater understanding, skill, and less suffering.

            Meditation works with the mind in an entirely different way. It neither concerns itself with the historical content of our life nor with the specific afflictive emotion (jealousy, anger, attachment, and so on.) Meditation concerns itself with providing an understanding of the mind itself and how it works. By understanding the mechanics of the mind we develop the capacity to undermine afflictive thoughts and emotions at their root source  – in the flawed workings of the mind.

            We begin by taming and calming the mind. There is nothing one can do with an endlessly out-of-control mind except follow it as it involuntarily drags us into recurring suffering. By learning to calm the mind we discover early on that we are more peaceful and less reactive to others and to outer circumstances. We gain some inner space that separates us from enmeshing our self in outer adversity as if it belonged to us and identifying our self with mental afflictions as if that is who we are. We identify less with our mental chatter and outer circumstances and gain a surprising new sense of ease and peace. Psychological investigation coupled with meditative training further  breaks the cycle of reactive suffering and sets the stage for an even subtler step in addressing suffering. 

The Mind

            We further upgrade our approach to suffering when we turn inward toward the recognition that transforming our mental life is a more direct, subtle, and effective way of approaching suffering. The great Indian scholar Shantideva said it in the following way. He says that one cannot control outer circumstances or other people. To do this he suggests is like trying to cover all the thorns in the world with leather. Isn’t it easier, he asks, to simply cover our feet in leather?  Then we don’t have to deal with all the thorns of life one-at-a-time. That is what this next step is about. We decide to focus our efforts on the mind rather than expend too much effort on trying to avoid or control what we cannot.

            This turn inward takes us to a new stage in meditation. Having gained skill in taming and calming the mind and its endless chatter we are now able to explore the mind itself. This is not possible when the mind is endlessly active. It requires inner stillness. With this exploration we begin to discover that the mind has two aspects – the moving mind and the still mind. The first is our ordinary chatter that usually enslaves us, dragging us here and there throughout the day, ruminating on mental disturbances, and taking us away from life in the present moment. Through observation we discover that our thoughts, feelings, and imagery when left alone dissolve as soon as they appear like words written in the water with ones finger. When we grasp at them and expand them with our inner stories they expand, take on a familiar tone, become quite real, are solid like an etching in stone, and are quickly acted out in speech and action. All because we have not learned to just leave them alone and allow them to naturally dissolve into the still mind.

The still mind is merely our ordinary mind minus the noise. The still mind is calm, easeful, and at peace. Suffering cannot occur when the mind is still. It is a very important moment when we recognize that that there is a place in us, – a place of refuge – that is immune from mental afflictions and outer adversities. It is ours. Although covered over with mental chatter it has always been there. To know that we have an inner place of rest and peace that is always available is a great relief. It is a profound and transformative shift. The more we access and stabilize this inner stillness the greater our immunity to mental afflictions and outside influences.

Our focus on the mind does not cancel out our efforts at cultivating what is good for us and abandoning sources of suffering. Nor do we abandon psychological inquiry or our initial efforts to tame and stabilize the mind. We simply add a subtler skill – investigating the workings of the mind – to our growing repertoire. This allows us to further understand the mind. In this way gain in our capacity to undermine the dominance and influence of afflictive emotions. We move further towards defeating suffering and gain greater freedom from mental and external influences. Understanding and stabilizing the mind is what Shantideva spoke of when he suggested we place leather over our feet rather than trying to cover the entire world with leather. If we can overcome our runaway mind we overcome mental afflictions and  develop greater immunity to suffering.

Returning Home From Exile

            If we come this far and go no further we will have come very close to realizing our goal of eradicating suffering. To bring permanence and closure to suffering there is one final step. It is also the final step in the full development of human consciousness and the human possibility.

            This final step requires that we move beyond the confines of our ordinary mind to the open spaciousness, connectedness, and oneness of what we shall term naked awareness. Naked awareness is the simple and ordinary moment-to-moment presence in life as it is without the superimposition of our imagined mental life. It is being with what is as is rather than being involuntarily enmeshed in an imaginary and self-created world of mental judgments, preferences, perspectives, and patterns. We transcend an exclusive and hyperactive mental life and gain a direct presence in life itself.

            Naked awareness can also be referred to as bare awareness, pure awareness, clear awareness, or primal unconditioned awareness. However we name it naked awareness is stripped clear of our overactive mental life that obscures the natural and unaltered experience of life itself. We can experience tastes of this in meditation, nature, the peaks of athletic activity, the arts, sexuality and other activities. In these moments the mind stills, our usual sense of self drops away, and we rest in an oceanic ease and happiness. These tastes do not last. To stabilize and live in this immediate presence requires that we overcome the dominance of our mental life through inner development gained through insight and contemplative practice.
            There is no mental “I” or ego in naked awareness. And if there is no sense of “I” there is no one to suffer. Neither are their mental afflictions to suffer from as we have transcended the dominance of mental life. So with no one to suffer and nothing to suffer we have reached the end of suffering – finally and permanently.

            We will then discover that our mental life has obscured not only our natural and untainted awareness but also our innate peace, happiness, and wholeness. So we find that an expansive and enduring well-being awakens within us at the same time that suffering comes to an end. As we progress along the steps that bring suffering to an end we simultaneously experience the dawn of a natural state of joy and delight. This is the fruit of the path that takes us to the end of suffering. In actuality this journey is not as much about eliminating suffering as it is about awakening within our self the full potential of human life and human flourishing.

Intellectual Understanding and Direct Knowing

            In our journey through the steps that take us to a larger life freed from suffering and filled with peace and happiness we will find that there are two interweaving approaches: intellectual understanding and direct perception. It is important for us to first gain an intellectual understanding of the sources of suffering and the path and methods that take us towards freedom from suffering. This understanding guides and assists us in creating a context for the realizations that are gained through the experiential path of meditative practice - in both formal sessions and in daily life.

            Intellectual understanding sets the framework. Direct knowing through our own experience personalizes our understanding and makes it our own. We move from intellectual belief to a certainty of knowing. And when we know that we know with certainty there is no falling back. A ripened fruit cannot become unripe. So as we gain direct experience we place our self directly and firmly on the path that guarantees us freedom from suffering and an enduring peace, happiness, and wholeness.

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