(Quote from Ram Das)“And here is where we come to suffering, because what suffering tells you is where the mind is clinging. Now, I am talking about your suffering. I am not talking about somebody else’s suffering. Let’s just deal with us. For me, suffering is telling me where my mind is clinging. If I experience suffering because I am getting old, it’s because I have a model of myself that’s other than what this is. This is what this is, including dying, pain, loss, all of it.
The models in our heads about it, and the way we cling to it, is where the root of suffering is. So when you wanna get free badly enough, you begin to experience your own suffering as grace. You don’t ask for it. You don’t say, “Give me suffering,” but when it comes you see it as something that’s showing you a place where you are holding. The place to release. “
Interesting.I would however like to address the word”suffering” as I believe it causes a lot of confusion, especially amongst Buddhist thinkers and people who listen to them..Pain ,physical or psychic,IS suffering.Let’s not start corrupting the meaning of words.The right word here might be”dissatisfaction” or “non-acceptance”.But suffering is suffering.I categorically reject the Buddhist assertion that they can end suffering.They may however have a way of embracing it.So do we in the Western religions btw! We call it the Will and Wisdom of God!
3 thoughts on “Suffering”
Yes! The existence of suffering is the firat nobel truth. It is a reality. ..it is pervasive and it is not going to go away when we close our eyes to it or numb ourselves to pain.
Yes! The existence of suffering is the firat nobel truth. It is a reality. ..it is pervasive and it is not going to go away when we close our eyes to it or numb ourselves to pain.
It is also not going to go away if we practice the 8-fold path!
hope that doesn’t fail when we set our hope on God?