Letting Go Of Unnecessary Suffering

Good morning,

Everyone.

Thank you for joining me today.

I appreciate all of you taking time out of your day to be here with us and to do this work which I know is not always easy,

But in my experience,

It's some of the most worthwhile work that we can do in this world to continue to know ourselves and each other and the world on deeper and deeper levels.

Last week,

I taught on the concept of mindfulness of speech,

Or as many in the Buddhist tradition will call it,

Noble silence.

For today's class,

I thought I would speak on letting go of unnecessary suffering.

And the two of these topics go well together because much of our unnecessary suffering comes from parts of the mind that are rooted in fear or pain,

Judgment,

Lack of accepting ourselves as we are and the world as it is.

Before we jump into it,

I think it'd be nice to take a few minutes to just do some abdominal breathing and become grounded in this moment with each other.

So wherever you are,

Simply relax into the physical posture of the body.

Gently close your eyes and observe the movement of the breath.

As you inhale,

Allow the abdomen to gently expand.

And as you exhale,

Allow it to gently contract.

Allow yourself to be fully aware of the felt sense of the body as a whole.

And when you are ready,

You can either continue with your eyes closed or gently and slowly open your eyes to take in the world around you.

In our busy lives,

It can be easy to get caught by the things that we feel we should do or have to do and to feel as though there isn't time.

But even taking two minutes to close our eyes,

Feel into the felt sense of the body and do some gentle breathing can help us to ground amidst the chaos and uncertainty that we often experience in the external world.

As I said,

The topic for today is letting go of unnecessary suffering.

Now many of you have heard me talk at length about how suffering is a part of life and how it can actually be one of the greatest gifts for transformation and growth.

And so it's important to distinguish that there are different kinds of suffering.

There is suffering that is inherently a part of being alive,

Of being embodied beings that live and grow and change and experience the world around us.

And then there's what can be termed unnecessary suffering,

Suffering that we end up creating for ourselves that often stems from parts of the mind and the ego that are based in fear and wanting things to be different than they are.

The first kind of suffering,

Which in Buddhism they would often say the first kind is really just pain and not just physical pain.

It can be emotional pain,

Other forms of pain,

And then unnecessary suffering they would often just term suffering in some traditions.

But I think that having this understanding that there are difficulties which are unavoidable and then those which are not necessary is vital to discerning how we act and how our actions and thoughts impact our experience of the world and our ability to work with the world as it is and ourselves as we are.

So I've shared this concept of the two arrows before,

But I'll read this short paragraph from an early Buddhist text.

As the Buddha talked about this and said,

When touched with a feeling of pain,

The ordinary,

Uninstructed person sorrows,

Grieves,

And laments,

Beats his breast,

Becomes distraught.

So he feels two pains,

Physical and mental,

Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and right afterward were to shoot him with another arrow so he would feel the pains of two arrows.

So the first form of pain is inevitable.

As I said,

It's part of life.

We're all going to experience physical pain,

Loss,

And various forms of challenge and difficulty that are beyond our control.

It's part of life.

It's part of being embodied individuals in this world.

And that form of difficulty is also the key to incredible growth and learning.

It's how we open the doors of the heart.

You know,

As Rumi wrote,

The wound is where the light enters.

Those unavoidable forms of suffering are what break us open,

That shatter our ego,

That shatter our desire to cling to some fixed form of reality,

Because we realize that everything that occurs is,

It's not something that is within our control or that we're supposed to control,

That life is impermanent and always changing,

And that we as limited,

Individuated beings are always changing.

And as we allow ourselves to experience those things just as they are,

We enter into this place within ourselves where we find the truth of being,

The truth of being human,

The truth of reality as it is.

And this allows us to cultivate a deepening in wisdom and compassion and love,

Because we see that all beings suffer,

That all that exists is impermanent,

At least in this material realm,

But that underlying that,

There is a deeper connection that everyone and everything maintains,

That there is a connection to this underlying unity that we are all a part of,

And that even as everything changes form over time,

Comes into being and out of being in this manifest reality,

There is always this underlying unity.

And so the inevitable suffering of life cracks us open beyond the shell of our ego that makes us perceive ourselves as separate from everything around us and connects us back into a felt experience of that underlying unity.

The unnecessary suffering actually prevents us from growing,

Because the unnecessary suffering arises from the desires of the mind,

The attachment and the aversion of feeling like we should be different than we are,

Or the world should be different than it is.

It comes from creating resistance to reality and trying to keep reality at bay,

Which prevents us from growing and learning from the experiences of reality.

And the inevitable suffering is something that we do not have any direct influence over for the most part.

The unnecessary suffering is something that we do have influence over,

That we have a great degree of agency.

And in my experience,

Both as a medical practitioner as well as through life,

I've come to feel that the greatest healing comes from shifting how we stand in relationship to all that we experience.

Because this is where we have influence over the unnecessary suffering that prevents us from deepening into ourselves and our experience.

The unnecessary suffering is resistance to the truth of life,

To nature.

It creates concretizations of our stories,

Of our egos,

And concretizes our suffering.

Instead of allowing it to be as it is,

It hardens us.

And that hardening is a kind of shell that creates further separation,

When what we truly want is deeper connection.

I'll share a paragraph from Hazrat Anaya Khan,

A great Sufi master.

For the secret of all knowledge that one acquires in the world,

Whether worldly knowledge or spiritual knowledge,

Is the knowledge of the self.

For instance,

Music is played outside,

But where is it realized?

It is realized within.

A good word or a bad word is spoken outside,

But where is it realized?

It is realized within.

Then where is the realization of this whole manifestation,

All this creation that stands before us in all its aspects?

Its realization is within.

And at the same time,

The error of man always continues.

Instead of finding it within,

He always wants to find it without.

It is just like a man who wants to see the moon and looks for it on the ground.

And if a man sought for thousands of years for the moon by looking on the earth,

He will never see it.

He will have to lift up his head and look at the sky.

And so with the man who is in search of the mystery of life outside,

He will never find it,

For the mystery of life is to be found within.

This in its essence is the secret of happiness,

Of freedom that we all yearn for.

It's the secret of love.

And realizing that everything that we're experiencing,

We're experiencing within us,

That it is all a part of us and a reflection of us.

And yet,

Many of us,

Until we learn to shift how we stand in relationship to all we experience,

We're continually searching for happiness by changing the world around us,

Rather than searching for it within,

Softening into ourselves,

Into the pains that we experience,

Into the joys that we experience,

And allowing each experience to open us to deeper connection to others and the world,

To that underlying unity that is always right here,

Right now.

As I said,

What creates this hardening and unnecessary suffering can be said to be the ego.

And here I'd like to take a moment to distinguish between the ego and mind.

Ego can be thought of as one facet of the mind.

And that part of us,

Which is the ego,

Is always based in the past or the future.

It's rooted in patterns of being,

Of how we see ourselves,

Our sense of self-identity.

And it creates this separation because it keeps us from being present to reality as it is.

The ego is the accumulation of our opinions and beliefs,

Our values,

How we condition and habituate ourselves to see ourselves and others and the world.

It's an abstraction from reality itself.

Whereas the mind,

When it is clear and present,

Is without ego.

It serves as a filter between the unity that we are all part of and the duality that we experience existing as seemingly limited,

Individuated beings with boundaries between self and other.

The mind is that connection between the duality and the oneness.

And so when we are clear and present and beyond fears and judgments,

We sink into the moment of experiential awareness,

Where the mind acts as a pivot,

Simultaneously connecting and separating duality and oneness and allowing us to be fully present with reality as it is,

Allowing the pains of life to come as experiences and then leave,

The joys of life to come and then leave.

We experience everything fully in each moment and see how it's impermanent and continues to change.

To let go of unnecessary suffering,

We need to cultivate patience,

Purity of intention and a softening of the ego.

Purity of intention is necessary because we need to see our intentions and where they're coming from and start to understand when our intentions are arising from a place of fear or desire to control or change things or arising out of a judgment of good or bad.

This is where it really ties into the noble silence because taking periods of silence,

Of a sacred pause when we feel this urge to react,

To try to do something and change something,

Maintaining silence for a moment or a minute or an hour allows us to look deeply into where that intention to speak or act is arising from and to be present to it as it is.

This allows us to respond rather than react.

This requires patience.

We have to cultivate patience to have the spaciousness and steadfastness to sit with our experience as it is without reacting to it.

As I'm sure many of you know from the times I've shared this before,

The etymological definition of patience is the calm enduring of suffering because when we have strong emotion,

Strong feeling,

Strong thoughts and judgments and fears arising within the finite space of the body,

There's an intense urgency that we feel,

An urge to react,

To express it,

To do something and to not give into that,

To sit with it,

We experience the suffering within.

We feel how tumultuous everything is within us.

Yet,

As we sit with it,

We cultivate patience and greater spaciousness and we become more tolerant to greater degrees of suffering.

You know when we're young,

Every little thing can cause us to have a temper tantrum.

It can be overwhelming and feel like the end of the world.

But as we grow and we experience greater degrees and different forms of pain,

We end up with the ability to withstand,

To have greater endurance.

And that allows us to know ourselves more deeply.

Besides patience and purity of intention,

It is important to soften the ego.

This is a softening of our sense of self-identity,

Of the shell that we create through our stories and our traumas,

Through our relationships,

Our habituated ways of being.

As long as we cling to that sense of self-identity,

We will always have more unnecessary suffering.

Which is ironic because that aspect of us,

The ego,

Is there as a defense mechanism trying to protect us from suffering.

But it actually is what creates more unnecessary suffering.

As we soften that attachment to a sense of self-identity,

As we soften the ego,

It allows us to be with things as they are to greater and greater degrees.

You know,

There's a book called Walking Between the Worlds,

The Science of Compassion by Greg Braden.

And I don't have the exact quote with me.

But in there he says something to the effect that the most compassionate thing we can do is to allow people to be just as they are.

This applies to being compassionate towards others,

But it also applies towards being compassionate with ourselves.

You know,

It can be easy to think that to be compassionate is to see someone suffering and immediately try to help them.

But we try to help them by taking away their suffering.

This often is not skillful because it's not creating the space for them to learn how to transform their suffering themselves.

We all have our addictions to suffering.

And that is unnecessary suffering.

We need to make space to be present with ourselves as we are,

In the world as it is.

As we do so,

We will ground more deeply within ourselves.

You know,

When you see a tree in a storm,

A really strong tree that's well grounded,

Within the storm,

Its branches and leaves will be getting blown all over,

Moving around thrashed.

But the trunk of the tree remains steady and stable,

Solid.

As we ground within ourselves,

We have this ability to stay steady and stable,

Even as the storms of life are continually swirling around us.

So for the practice today,

We will work with cultivating patience,

Purity of intention,

And softening the ego.

If you will,

Please find a comfortable posture for meditative practice.

Can be seated or laying down.

Most important thing is that you are stable and the body is supported in ways that allow you to completely release any unnecessary tension.

Become aware of the breath,

Observing it as it moves in and out.

Practice patience with the breath.

Being present with each moment of the inhalation and exhalation.

Walk in balance.

As you continue to practice patience with the movement of the breath,

Bring awareness to the physical body.

Gently scan the body,

Noticing if there's areas of tension or guarding,

Areas that have a fullness or an emptiness.

And just allow it to be as it is,

Without fidgeting,

Trying to change it.

Cultivate patience with the felt sense of the body as a whole.

As you observe the movement of the breath,

Begin to notice the feeling of the breath and the sensations within the physical body.

Begin to observe the fluctuations of consciousness,

The movements of the mind.

As each thought arises,

Look beneath it to its source.

Notice if it's arising from a place of fear or judgment,

If it's from an experience in the past or concern about the future.

And just hold each thought as it is,

With patience.

As each thought arises,

Look beneath it to its source.

Now,

As you continue patiently observing,

The breath,

The body,

And the mind,

Begin to consciously soften into the experience.

Softening the breath,

Softening the physical body,

Softening the mind.

Allow yourself to soften into the core of your being.

As you begin to notice,

The breath,

The mind,

And the mind,

Begin to notice the feeling of the breath.

As you soften,

Become aware of the stillness within.

S soften into the stillness.

S soften into the stillness.

S soften into the stillness.

S soften into the stillness.

Within the stillness,

Become aware of light.

Allow the light to expand within the stillness.

Allowing the light to expand,

Filling your whole body.

Continue softening into the light as it expands beyond the bounds of your physical body,

Into the air around you,

Into the ground beneath you,

And the sky above you.

Feel the deep sense of safety,

Security within the purity of this light.

Know that this is your true nature,

Which is always right here.

Beneath the ever-changing play of manifest reality,

In all of its forms,

Creation,

And destruction.

This light is behind and beneath all that we experience.

Start to become aware of the felt sense of your physical body.

Feel the stability beneath you,

Supporting you,

Holding you up,

And the air around you in which you are immersed,

Like a fish in water.

Become aware of the gentle movement of the breath,

Connecting within and without.

Notice the still,

Spacious quality of your mind.

When you're ready,

Maintain a connection to the stillness and the light within.

Just gently and slowly begin to open your eyes,

Taking in the world around you,

This play of manifest reality,

Letting it wash over you and through you,

Knowing that everything you see and hear,

You touch,

All experiences are occurring within you.

We are all one.

Being born as an individuated being,

We will all experience moments of pain and suffering and eventual death.

But through it all,

We are always connected to this unity,

To the light,

To each other.

The greatest thing we can do for ourselves and others is to continually soften into our experience,

Cultivate self-compassion,

Patience with all that we experience and purity of intention.

In so doing,

We begin to see the truth that we cannot control the choices that others make.

We can choose to have the compassion to love them just as they are,

To allow them the spaciousness to experience all that they are going to experience,

And to know that beneath it all,

We are always connected to this oneness.

As you go throughout your day,

Try to be mindful of the quality of your thoughts,

Of the experiences within your body.

Soften into them.

That's what I'm going to be doing today.