Suffering is Optional

Q: You were talking about your normal everyday life and said that no suffering results from any of it. If my little boy died, there would be suffering. I think what you were saying was that suffering still can arise, but there is no one to take hold of it anymore. Is that what you meant?

A: Suffering does not result from events of my life. But we need to define our terms:

Grief: An emotion automatically arising in the mind of a seeming person as a result of things that came before.

Suffering from grief: The taking “on board” of the emotion of grief by one who believes him/herself to be a separate, vulnerable individual who has lost something.

The difference is that the grief is automatic, or reflexive, while the suffering is optional.  There will be emotions that automatically arise when certain conditions in the seeming life are met. But the suffering is not automatic. Suffering only happens when there is the belief, “I am a person who can lose something.” When that belief is not present, suffering is not present.

And why not? Because it is known that awareness never changes, regardless of what emotion passes through it. No matter what grief, what pain, this awareness is always the same, always peaceful. Is it ever gone? No. I can return my attention to it any time, and here it is, never having moved an inch. Solid, steady, sure, eternally unaffected by pain. Here it is. I don’t need anything else. I don’t need to make the life’s pain go away, because when I return my focus to this awareness, awareness will not have changed. The pain can increase and decrease, and when I return my attention to this awareness, it is the same. I start realizing that no events in the life have any effect on anything; I start realizing I don’t need anything in the life at all. This peace is always here.

Even in the case of tremendous pain? Yes. All suffering is the same, all suffering is equally unreal. What do I do if I have a little pain in my lower back? Right now, I notice there is awareness. Awareness is not affected by pain. The pain gets better, it gets worse. I look again, and awareness has not changed. My whole personal story of “it’s good, it’s bad, poor me, it hurts so much,” changes, but when I look at that which is noticing, that is not changed by anything in the personal story. I look right now and here it is: noticing, peaceful, needing nothing. No matter when I look, it is the same. It’s been this way my whole life. 

Now take that back pain and multiply it times a million, and move it to your heart. It’s the same thing. Even that degree of pain, or grief, can’t touch the awareness. So, what difference does it make if that pain goes away? There is only one thing I know for sure, and that is “I am aware.” And nothing has ever changed or will ever change that. Pain is free to be. It’s automatic. I can’t help it. But I don’t have to suffer. Suffering is only the result of believing in a separate, vulnerable “me,” and I don’t.