The Path Beyond Suffering

A Story by Valette

Everyone suffers. Moderation of the eight primary human attributes- including the moderation of thought and action - create the path to happiness and human excellence.

Suffering is a natural part of life. Everyone suffers. At its best, suffering can guide us towards becoming better human beings. At its worst, it can consume a person and create an existence filled with pain. Much of the suffering we experience as human beings is self-inflicted, and serves no other purpose than to ensure an endless cycle of self-perpetuated suffering. You alone have the key to ending this cycle of needless suffering within yourself. That key is the understanding of what the Buddhists call the “Four Noble Truths of Suffering.”

Why end suffering? Ending our own suffering serves not only to achieve happiness within ourselves, but also to reduce the overall suffering that is present in the world. A person who suffers endlessly not only suffers himself or herself, but also inflicts suffering on others through harmful responses and actions. Understanding how your own suffering affects the world and the people around you serves to strengthen your resolve to end your own suffering to the best of your ability.

The purpose of suffering is to teach us life lessons that we need to learn, to correct our mistakes and actions. It is the disguised seed of enlightenment, and serves to eliminate illusion and ignorance. Suffering is a guiding and correcting mechanism, and will show us the way to becoming better human beings. However, when left unchecked, suffering can become very harmful.

The first Noble Truth of Suffering is that everyone suffers. In Buddhism, suffering is known as Dukkha, and its basic translation is that life is suffering. However, the teachings of the Buddha states that Dukkha is a pervasive dissatisfaction and suggests “that much of our unhappiness is self-inflicted. It comes from misapprehending the nature of reality and the self.” [3] It is our perceptions about the things we experience that lead to suffering. “Often, it is our own reinforcement of those negative emotions that make them so much worse. To a large extent, whether you suffer depends on how you respond to a given situation.” [1]

The second Noble Truth of Suffering is the truth of the origin of Dukkha, which can be translated into craving. Craving can be divided into three parts. The first is the craving for sense-pleasures, known in Sanskrit as kama-tanha, and is the craving for sensory pleasures. The second is known as bhava-tanha, and is the craving to be, and the third craving is known as vibhava-tanha, which is the craving not to be. [5] This can also be understood in what is known as the three poisons: Ignorance, which is the misunderstanding of the nature of reality; Attachment to pleasurable experiences; Aversion or fear of getting what we don’t want or not getting what we do want. [5] These are the main culprits of self-created suffering. The two major causes of Dukkha are Anicca, which is translated as impermanence, and Anatta, which is translated as not-self or no-self. [3] By its very nature, everything in this universe is constantly changing. One major cause for self-inflicted suffering is the desire to keep things the same. When things cause us to feel content and happy, it is a natural desire to keep them the same. Suffering arises when the reality of impermanence comes to pass, and those things change.

The other major cause of self-inflicted suffering is the personal identification of a false self, or ego. This is an identification of self with something that does not exist, and a great deal of energy is given to maintaining this false sense of self, which cannot exist outside of its perceptions of the past. This false self encourages a person to identify themselves by their past experiences, and expects the future to be like the past. This alters our perceptions on the experiences we have in the present, shading them so that they are perceived as expected by experience, causing a person to identify themselves by their suffering, which gives strength to this false sense of self and ultimately increases the suffering a person experiences.

When left unchecked, every emotional pain you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives within you. This is the emotional pain-body. “The pain-body wants to survive, just like every entity in existence, and it can only survive if it can get you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, “become you” and live through you. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness, hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, even illness. So the pain-body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your life that reflects back its own energy frequently for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain.” [6, pg. 37] Identifying ourselves by our suffering gives it strength and power over us, and actually becomes a form we believe as ‘self.’ Denying this false ‘self’ the suffering it needs to survive empowers us to find our true selves and our true Being. The ego does not know anything but the past, and cannot survive in an unbiased present. Learning to live in the present, or the ‘now,’ is one way to ease suffering because it obliterates this false self, by denying it the false reality it requires to survive. “So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice [of this false self] to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormenter in their head that continually attacks and punishes them and drains them of vial energy.” [6, pg. 18] This is the truth behind self-created suffering. The mind becomes the self, like a tool that controls the wielder. In order to gain back control of your mind, you must work to control this powerful tool so that it does not control you. The key to gaining this control is understanding this:

“As products of an imperfect world, all of us are imperfect. Every one of us has done something wrong. There are things we regret " things we have done or things we should have done. Acknowledging our wrongdoings with a genuine sense of remorse can serve to keep us on the right track in life and encourage us to rectify our mistakes when possible and take action to correct things in the future. But if we allow our regret to degenerate into excessive guilt, holding on to the memory of our past transgressions with continued self-blame and self-hatred, this serves no other purpose other than to be a relentless source of self-punishment and self-induced suffering” [1, pg. 160]

The third Noble Truth is the cessation of Dukkha. This means that once we have reached a genuine understanding of the causes of suffering, such as craving and ignorance, we can eradicate the cause and become free from self-inflicted suffering. There are four universal truths about suffering: 1.) Suffering is a state of mind, 2.) Suffering is self-created, 3.) Suffering may serve as a teacher, and 4.) Suffering can be overcome. [4] Suffering only exists in our minds " different people suffer differently in the same circumstances because of their beliefs, attitudes, and thinking. “We suffer because of the way we think and act, the way we look at things, interpret our experiences, respond to them, and form opinions about them.” [4] For example, if you are talking to someone who is annoying you, if you examine the true cause of that annoyance, you will find that it is your own perception of that person that you find so annoying, and not the person in question.

The fourth Noble Truth is the path to the cessation of Dukkha. This is the Eightfold Path, and is considered to be the essence of Buddhist practice. This path consists of a set of eight interconnected factors that when developed together, lead to the cessation of Dukha. The Eightfold Path consists of: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. [5] The right in context to each of these eight factors means that they are right insofar as they reduce suffering and promote happiness. The overall sum of this path is known as the Middle Way, which is a practice of moderation in thoughts, feelings, and actions. The message is that suffering can be overcome with time, practice, and hard work on each of these eight aspects.

You alone have the power to end your own suffering. You alone hold the power to find love, joy, and peace, which are the deep states of Being. By training your mind to think positively, you gain control of your own suffering. In gaining control of your own suffering, you diminish the amount of suffering in the world by one and become a light onto others, showing the way through suffering by your own actions.

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Works Cited

[2] Thera, Nyanaponika “Why End Suffering?” Hindu Website 2000-2010 http://www.hinduwebsite.com/Buddhism/essays/why_end_sufferings.asp Retrieved 11/09/2012

[3] Kozak, Arnie, Ph.D. “The Buddha’s Teachings” Netplaces. http://www.netplaces.com/buddhism/the-buddhas-teachings-the-four-noble-truths/the-first-noble-truth-the-truth-of-suffering.htm Retrieved 11/09/2012

[4] Jayaram, V. “The Four Universal Truths About Suffering” Hindu Website 2000-2010. http://www.hinduwebsite.com/divinelife/divinelaws7.asp Retrieved 11/09/2012

[5] “Four Noble Truths,” Wikipedia. Last modified 11/13/2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_noble_truths Retrieved 11/14/2012

[6] Tolle, Eckhart. “The Power of Now.” Novato, Ca, Copyright by Namaste Publishing and New World Library, 1999.