Suffering For Compassion
Several years ago I took a group on a retreat to Costa Rica. During one of the group discussions, the issue of suffering emerged as a topic. It was fascinating to witness how difficult it was for the majority of participants to “admit” that they experienced meaningful suffering in their day-to-day lives. Many students only seemed capable of defining suffering in terms of issues like poverty or disease in third-world countries. For them it was as if the day-to-day struggles of being human weren’t credible examples of “true” suffering. I suppose this type of attitude isn’t difficult to fathom when one considers that we live in a society that idolizes the glamor of celebrities and athletes alike, and worships at the feet of youth and beauty. Suffering in all its many forms is fairly mundane and certainly not particularly chic.
The commonplace quality of suffering is what makes it so important and powerful. We all suffer and sometimes that suffering is striking in its magnitude – for example, terminal illness or the loss of a loved one. More often our suffering is more subtle in nature, emerging through the existential thingness of being a human – loneliness, fear of growing old, social anxiety, etc. Rich or poor, celebrity or Haitian orphan, we ALL suffer. To claim that we don’t suffer is like saying that we are somehow remarkably immune from being human. In so many ways suffering is one of the common threads that binds us together as humans regardless of location, age, station or class.
To admit that we suffer is to accept that we are just like everyone else, no better, no worse. More importantly, allowing oneself to work with suffering “is a tremendous affirmation that there is no need to resist being fully in this world, that we are in fact part of the web.”* Suffering, in all its forms, is the road to compassion and can lead to greater understanding and inner peace. Many spiritual teachers knew this; you need look no further than the teachings of Buddha or Christ for examples of how coming to terms with suffering can alter the landscape of self-awareness. The point I’m trying to make isn’t that we should all collapse into a heap and bemoan our existence. My point is that if we deny or try to avoid suffering, we are effectively cutting ourselves off from one of the most essential qualities of our humanity and in turn limiting our ability to connect with a partner, child, friend, or stranger. Suffering doesn’t have to be a negative particularly when we reframe it in the context of connecting compassionately to other people. Compassion and suffering are intimately bound together in what it means to be a conscious human. Denying suffering within ourselves is to deny our basic humanity.
The commonplace quality of suffering is what makes it so important and powerful. We all suffer and sometimes that suffering is striking in its magnitude – for example, terminal illness or the loss of a loved one. More often our suffering is more subtle in nature, emerging through the existential thingness of being a human – loneliness, fear of growing old, social anxiety, etc. Rich or poor, celebrity or Haitian orphan, we ALL suffer. To claim that we don’t suffer is like saying that we are somehow remarkably immune from being human. In so many ways suffering is one of the common threads that binds us together as humans regardless of location, age, station or class.
To admit that we suffer is to accept that we are just like everyone else, no better, no worse. More importantly, allowing oneself to work with suffering “is a tremendous affirmation that there is no need to resist being fully in this world, that we are in fact part of the web.”* Suffering, in all its forms, is the road to compassion and can lead to greater understanding and inner peace. Many spiritual teachers knew this; you need look no further than the teachings of Buddha or Christ for examples of how coming to terms with suffering can alter the landscape of self-awareness. The point I’m trying to make isn’t that we should all collapse into a heap and bemoan our existence. My point is that if we deny or try to avoid suffering, we are effectively cutting ourselves off from one of the most essential qualities of our humanity and in turn limiting our ability to connect with a partner, child, friend, or stranger. Suffering doesn’t have to be a negative particularly when we reframe it in the context of connecting compassionately to other people. Compassion and suffering are intimately bound together in what it means to be a conscious human. Denying suffering within ourselves is to deny our basic humanity.