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How To Stop Suffering: Learn From Buddha & Modern Psychology AudioChapter from How to Suffer Well AudioBook by Peter Hollins
00:00:07 How to Suffer Well
00:00:54 The Buddhists tell a story that goes like this
00:14:40 What Frankl brought to the discussion of suffering was the question of recovery.
00:22:08 The Buddha put forward his four noble truths, which go like this
00:35:16 A Buddhist parable tells of a young monk and his wise older teacher on a journey.
How to Suffer Well: Timeless Knowledge on Dealing with Hardship and Becoming Anguish-Proof (Live a Disciplined Life Book 12) By: Peter Hollins
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W1NCBQX
Your capacity to handle suffering determines where you get in life. How do you want to live?
Life is tough, so you better get a helmet. Life is not a walk in the park. You'll run into pain, anguish, and obstacles. But who says that they need to affect you?
Build immunity to emotional, mental, and physical discomfort and suffering. It can be trained.
How to Suffer Well is a literal guidebook to defeating the voices in your head that tell you to give up. Instead, they'll be replaced with voices that tell you it'll be okay, this will pass, and life goes happily on.
It might sound difficult, but this is all teachable. You'll learn how to become the most zen person you know. Wouldn't it be nice to only experience the positive side of emotions?
How to tolerate the rigors of life without collapsing. Increase your mental pain tolerance to that of superhuman levels.
Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.
Greatly expand your comfort zone and build layers of mental armor to ensure your happiness.
Guest chapter by acclaimed blogger Jason Merchey on the balm of humor to quell suffering.
Why suffering is life, but attachment is suffering
Tried and true paths to overcoming suffering
Defenses against negativity, expectations, and things outside of our control
How to live in the present, unhindered by the past or the future
How compassion and purpose assist in suffering better
#DisciplinedLifeBook #Hollins #JasonMerchey #Merchey #PeterHollins #SufferWell #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #PeterHollins #TheScienceofSelf #HowtoSufferWell #HowToStopSuffering
Transcript
How to suffer well? Timeless knowledge on dealing with hardship and becoming anguish-proof.
Speaker:Written by Peter Hollins, narrated by Russell Newton.
Speaker:There isn't a religious tradition or philosophy out there, modern or ancient, that hasn't
Speaker:attempted to tackle the problem of suffering. In fact, why people should experience pain
Speaker:and suffer at all is a fact of life that humankind has been wrestling with since, well, probably
Speaker:since the very first moment we suffered. While some have attempted to explain why it happens,
Speaker:others have focused on dissecting it as a phenomenon, trying to either reduce it or
Speaker:investigate whether pain can, to some degree, be put to good use. Some have even suggested
Speaker:that our resistance and wrestling with the concept of pain and adversity is itself causing
Speaker:us to suffer. The Buddhists tell a story that goes like this. Long ago, there was a farmer
Speaker:who had problems. He was advised to go and see the Buddha, who was wise and would help
Speaker:him sort his life out. The Buddha asked him why he had come.
Speaker:I'm a farmer, he said. I love farming, but the problem is that sometimes there's no
Speaker:rain, and we really struggle those years. Of course, sometimes we have other problems,
Speaker:and there's too much rain, and the floods destroy everything. But the man didn't stop
Speaker:there. I also have a wife, Buddha. I love her, truly, but sometimes we don't get on.
Speaker:To be honest, occasionally, she gets on my nerves. And my kids, they're lovely kids,
Speaker:they're great. Sometimes, though, they misbehave like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker:The farmer went on and on like this. His in-laws were bothering him. He had money worries.
Speaker:He often tossed and turned in bed at night, wondering about the meaning of life, and his
Speaker:left knee hurt. The Buddha listened patiently, smiled, and simply said, I can't help you.
Speaker:The farmer was astonished. The Buddha continued, every person has 83 problems, every one of
Speaker:us, and there's nothing you can do about it. Maybe you can do this or that to fix them,
Speaker:once the problem is gone, another one springs up in its place. More problems are coming.
Speaker:For example, you'll lose your family and loved ones one day, and you yourself will die.
Speaker:That's a problem you certainly can't do anything about.
Speaker:The farmer, probably beginning to regret his visit, couldn't help but ask angrily,
Speaker:well, I thought you could help. What's the point of everything you teach if you can't solve my
Speaker:problems? Well, I can maybe help you with your 84th problem, he said.
Speaker:84th problem? Well, what's that? It's that you want to not have any problems.
Speaker:This attitude underlies the general Buddhist perspective, which is that pain is inevitable,
Speaker:and it's our clinging to or resistance to that experience that causes us problems.
Speaker:In other words, if we practice non-attachment and stop fighting with reality, we can learn to
Speaker:live peacefully in a world that will always contain problems. The ancient historical Buddha
Speaker:would have likely found our current day obsession with happiness and success and ease quite amusing.
Speaker:All of Buddha's four noble truths are in some way about suffering, not blissful,
Speaker:perfect happiness that frees us from the troubles of the world forever.
Speaker:If you're a person living in the modern industrialized world, though,
Speaker:you probably view suffering quite differently from the Buddhists of thousands of years ago.
Speaker:You might not even believe that you do suffer. Isn't suffering something that
Speaker:poor starving children in Africa do? You might look at your own boredom, or malaise,
Speaker:or low self-esteem as a mere mental health problem, rather than call it something as
Speaker:dramatic as suffering. But that's exactly how the Buddhists would characterize it.
Speaker:They would call countless everyday experiences suffering, loving someone a little more than
Speaker:they love you, feeling uncertain about your job, getting old, looking in the mirror and
Speaker:not liking what you see, feeling disappointed that you didn't achieve more with your life,
Speaker:or quietly wondering what the point of it all is. All of this is suffering.
Speaker:When you're stressed out, frustrated, worried, depressed, annoyed, overwhelmed,
Speaker:resentful, or fearful, then you're suffering. Call it anguish, stress, unhappiness, dissatisfaction.
Speaker:All of this happens because we're grasping hold of something that is, by nature, impermanent.
Speaker:Importantly, in this worldview, suffering is everywhere and unavoidable. Since life
Speaker:is always changing, we will one day have to face losing what we have now. In other words,
Speaker:it's not possible to not suffer. Illness, death, confusion, relationship breakups, and conflict
Speaker:are all a non-negotiable part of life. The Buddhists would say that the way forward is not
Speaker:to fight this fact, but to work with it. The idea, then, is not that we vanquish suffering,
Speaker:or run away from it, but rather that we find deeper meaning and understanding in the inevitable
Speaker:experience. What is suffering? Some people would say that it's the tendency to wish that things
Speaker:weren't the way they are, i.e., to be like the farmer whose main problem is that he thinks he
Speaker:should have no problems. We can see this perspective on suffering in many different philosophies in
Speaker:worldviews, not just Buddhism. Imagine you're in love with someone and announce your feelings
Speaker:only to have them tell you they don't see you that way. It feels awful, but why?
Speaker:Some would say that the awful feelings stem from our faulty interpretation,
Speaker:not from the experience itself. Maybe we have a deep, unexamined belief that we don't deserve
Speaker:to feel bad, that we're required in life to get what we want. More specifically,
Speaker:perhaps we've told ourselves that this person loving us back is a condition for our own happiness,
Speaker:but is it? Is there anything in objective reality, however you define that, that suggests
Speaker:that your awful feelings are somehow a mistake? We arrive again at what some would say is the root
Speaker:cause of suffering, our attitude. We experience reality, i.e., we experience that it changes,
Speaker:is impermanent, and occasionally hurts, and we try to deny it. For example, we stubbornly do
Speaker:whatever we can to prevent aging and deny that we're getting older. When we lose something or
Speaker:someone dies, we rail against the fact and fight it, believing it is an injustice.
Speaker:When luck doesn't favor us, we call it unfair. It's all just many different ways of saying
Speaker:the way things are isn't right. They should be some other way.
Speaker:Right now, try to think of all the things you believe are missing from your life,
Speaker:money, a relationship, a good career, and so on. Now, imagine a person who has this thing you want.
Speaker:Look at them and ask yourself, honestly, is their life genuinely any better than yours?
Speaker:Are they spared any suffering that you aren't? Are they completely immune from disappointment
Speaker:and bad days and feeling ungrateful? Truth is, even though they have the thing you want,
Speaker:they too will have to say goodbye to it at some point.
Speaker:To summarize this perspective on suffering, we can put it this way.
Speaker:Pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. Well, what's the difference between pain and suffering?
Speaker:Aren't they the same thing? Imagine you're stung by a bee. It's completely unexpected,
Speaker:and the pain quickly fills your body, bringing tears to your eyes. In a flash, you're angry.
Speaker:Stupid bee. What's the point of a bee stinging you like that for no reason, and then it dies anyway?
Speaker:You start shouting and yelling, cursing your luck, and wondering what you did to deserve
Speaker:such a random bit of agony to come your way. You're in a bad mood for the rest of the day,
Speaker:even snapping at someone who asks if it's still hurting.
Speaker:Let's pick it apart. The bee sting? Well, that was just life. Bees exist, humans exist,
Speaker:and occasionally, a bee will sting someone. Today, that someone was you. You're a flesh and blood
Speaker:body that can get damaged, so when a bee stings you, it hurts like hell. So far so good.
Speaker:We're looking at what the Buddhists would call reality. Life is impermanent, things change,
Speaker:and sometimes it hurts. We are in the realm of pain. In fact, your body can't help but
Speaker:automatically respond to pain, tears in your eyes, redness, and swelling on the skin,
Speaker:but that's not all there is in the story. There's also the big, complicated story you tell about the
Speaker:pain. It's unfair, stupid, why did it have to happen, etc. The anger you feel is not a direct
Speaker:result of the bee's sting or entering your flesh. You're the source of that anger, or more accurately,
Speaker:the stories you tell about that bee sting cause the anger.
Speaker:Long after the pain has faded, you're still in a bad mood. You snap at someone.
Speaker:You are now well in the realms of suffering. If you're alive, you will experience pain. That's
Speaker:inevitable. No escape. But we do have a choice about how much we suffer. The facts of life
Speaker:are what they are, but our experience is heavily determined by how we respond to and interpret
Speaker:those facts. So we can see that there are two ways to understand and deal with the fact that
Speaker:bad things happen to us. One, try to eradicate pain itself. Two, try to change our perception of that
Speaker:pain. The Buddhists would say that number one creates more suffering since eradicating pain is a
Speaker:metaphysical impossibility. You'll exhaust yourself just as surely as you would trying to argue away
Speaker:mountains or the sea. They exist whether we like it or not. Number two doesn't remove the pain,
Speaker:but it does remove the source of the suffering, us. We'll see some version of this big idea in
Speaker:several different forms throughout this book. The early Buddhists understood something powerful,
Speaker:that as much as we don't like it, there really isn't anything we can do about the pain in life.
Speaker:That leaves us to control what we can, our relationship to it, our perception of it,
Speaker:as well as our behavior and belief. Ideas like, the world is unfair and has victimized me, or,
Speaker:I don't deserve this, actually have no basis in reality, they come from within us. These beliefs
Speaker:lead to depression and anxiety and a world of problems, not the pain itself. Of course,
Speaker:proponents of this worldview would say that just because pain is inevitable, it doesn't mean we're
Speaker:doomed to sit down and take whatever life throws at us. We can take action, solve problems, and set
Speaker:goals for ourselves, and achieve them. However, you might notice that none of this constructive
Speaker:action requires us to suffer. In other words, suffering doesn't actually help. Pain is just
Speaker:pain, it comes, it goes. But pain plus our resistance equals suffering, and this can go on
Speaker:forever if we want it to. Buddhists and psychologists alike talk about the power of sitting with any
Speaker:motion rather than going to war with it, trying to run away from it, or clinging to it in the fear
Speaker:it will disappear. Hint, it will. Though it might seem like a defeatist attitude on the surface,
Speaker:accepting and acknowledging pain actually means you're able to let it pass. Hint, it also will.
Speaker:The burn of the beasting will fade, your hurt and surprise will dissipate, and the pain of
Speaker:unrequited love will diminish in time. This particular take on suffering is not the only
Speaker:perspective, though. In the much-loved book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes
Speaker:convincingly about his understanding of suffering, and how we can make sense of it.
Speaker:And he should know, being a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps, he lived,
Speaker:while his parents' brother and pregnant wife were all killed. Pain is one thing,
Speaker:but Frankl describes something most of us can truly not conceive of. He had everything stripped
Speaker:from him. In fact, this was what inspired him to write so passionately about what they couldn't
Speaker:take away, his dignity, his ability to choose his response to events that he did not choose,
Speaker:his conscious will, and the decisions he would make about what his experience meant to him.
Speaker:He says it succinctly, between stimulus and response there's a space. In that space is our
Speaker:power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Speaker:As a matter of urgency, Frankl discovered his own psychospiritual authority, his own strength,
Speaker:and his own power. We'll look at Frankl's perceptive in more detail in a later chapter.
Speaker:For now, basically, his life was evidence that growth and evolution were possible,
Speaker:even despite an unspeakable adversity, distress, and deprivation.
Speaker:So, he talks about it in terms of stimulus and response.
Speaker:The pain is a stimulus, but what will our response be? Pain is a purely physiological
Speaker:response. Your body has evolved sophisticated mechanisms to keep it safe, and that typically
Speaker:involves an involuntary neurochemical response. But Frankl talks about that little space beyond
Speaker:what's automatic. When we are aware, we can decide what we will do next. We choose whether that pain
Speaker:completely destroys us, or whether it catalyzes a deeper transformation in us. We decide whether
Speaker:we're going to grab hold of annoyance, or outrage, or disappointment, or whether we're going to move
Speaker:on and focus our attention elsewhere. We can decide to blame or forgive. We can decide what
Speaker:stories we want to tell about what's happened to us and why. What Frankl brought to the discussion
Speaker:of suffering was the question of recovery. We can endure, tolerate, and accommodate adversity,
Speaker:but what if we could also grow from it, and be stronger and better than before? What if crisis
Speaker:and pain were an opportunity to learn? Those inspired by Frankl's writings took a very
Speaker:empowering and dignified approach to the fact of pain. They looked at things like anxiety,
Speaker:guilt, shame, depression, hopelessness, loneliness, and existential suffering, and saw that much of
Speaker:it came down to the meaning we ascribed to the experiences. Our beliefs, our mindset, our personal
Speaker:myths and narratives, all of these things allow one person to see a catastrophe as a new beginning,
Speaker:and another as a complete failure. So rather than asking what suffering is, we can also ask
Speaker:where it is. The Nazi captors who imprisoned and tortured people in concentration camps
Speaker:undoubtedly inflicted incredible pain on those people, but in truth, the prisoners themselves
Speaker:took that pain and did very many different things with it. Some collapsed and gave up hope.
Speaker:Some were defiant. Some deliberately chose to believe in the goodness of human beings,
Speaker:forcefully asserting their will to something greater, despite the atrocities around them.
Speaker:So is the suffering out there or in here within us? If we're depressed, what portion of our
Speaker:experience comes from events outside of our control, and what portion is explained by our
Speaker:expectations, interpretations, self-talk, narratives, beliefs, and biases? Today, cognitive
Speaker:behavioral therapists will say the process goes a little something like this. We experience pain.
Speaker:For example, we fail an important exam. In that brief moment afterwards, we begin to have negative
Speaker:thoughts or entertain beliefs and assumptions about this pain we experienced. Maybe we think,
Speaker:I'm an idiot, or we start to blame ourselves for not studying harder. These thoughts then
Speaker:lead to feelings like shame, anxiety, and self-doubt. They may also, at the same time,
Speaker:lead to physiological changes in our bodies, higher cortisol levels, muscle stiffness.
Speaker:These feelings and sensations then feed on themselves and spiral out of control. You feel
Speaker:bad about feeling bad, and so on, and so on. In time, these thoughts and feelings may even
Speaker:start to manifest as behaviors and actions that further deepen your suffering. You give up studying
Speaker:and don't bother on the next exam either. The thinking goes, however, that if we are aware
Speaker:of the above process and can consciously step in to change it, we can go a long way to reducing
Speaker:suffering. Basically, anything that happens after the second bullet point. In this way,
Speaker:this perspective is similar to the Buddhist approach in that suffering is not dealt with directly,
Speaker:but indirectly. We reduce the problem of suffering by addressing how we respond to
Speaker:inevitable pain. We're not in charge of the pain, but we are in charge of how we deal with it.
Speaker:This book considers countless different approaches, tactics, and techniques for making
Speaker:suffering work for us, but you'll notice that even though they come from vastly different
Speaker:theoretical underpinnings, they each acknowledge that we're never really able to remove pain from
Speaker:life completely. In fact, trying to do so will likely win us more suffering, not less. We might
Speaker:find this basic premise echoed in many different philosophies and ideas around suffering, including
Speaker:the now increasingly popular ancient school of the Stoics.
Speaker:Thinkers like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca have offered their version of a healthy constructive
Speaker:approach to the inevitability of pain in life. Their view can be nicely encapsulated in the famous
Speaker:serenity prayer, which says, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Speaker:the courage to change the things I cannot accept, and the wisdom to know the difference
Speaker:They too understood that the good life is one that's lived with a healthy and realistic attitude
Speaker:towards external limitations that we have no control over. While they acknowledge that there is
Speaker:also scope for action, and we can always take personal responsibility for our lives, we need to
Speaker:understand what we can influence and what we must simply learn to live with, accept, or embrace.
Speaker:As with the other theories we've considered here, life is improved not because suffering and pain
Speaker:are eradicated, but because we become better at understanding, accepting, and overcoming it.
Speaker:Summary
Speaker:There are countless theoretical approaches to understanding the universal problem of suffering.
Speaker:We start with the Buddhist conception, which sees pain as an inevitable and natural part of life,
Speaker:which is transient and always changing. Therefore, if we attach to what is impermanent,
Speaker:we will suffer when it changes. The parable of the farmer and the Buddha shows that our biggest
Speaker:problem is that we believe we should have no problems. In these views, suffering occurs because,
Speaker:paradoxically, we think we should not be suffering. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.
Speaker:Suffering is pain plus our grasping, resistance, attachment, or identification.
Speaker:Thus, we can greatly reduce our suffering by changing how we deal with pain.
Speaker:The serenity prayer teaches us that we need the wisdom to discern between what is in our power
Speaker:to control, our mental reaction to pain, and what isn't, the pain itself.
Speaker:According to Viktor Frankl, in the brief moment after pain, we have a gap where we can pause
Speaker:and decide what response we would like to have. We may evolve mechanisms to respond automatically,
Speaker:but we also have the power to choose our response if we are conscious.
Speaker:Cognitive behavioral psychologists recognize a similar principle and explain how our minds
Speaker:can trap us in suffering. We experience pain and then immediately create a thought about it.
Speaker:This thought creates our feelings and a physiological reaction, for example, stress and
Speaker:tension in the body. In time, these feelings spiral out of control and manifest as behaviors that
Speaker:reinforce our original thoughts. Let's dig a little deeper. Though the Buddhists had a lot
Speaker:to say about suffering and though will return to their conception of the problem again and again
Speaker:in truth, their perspective is not especially unique. What's great about the Buddhist approach
Speaker:is that it has a clear and defined explanation for why we suffer, i.e., where it comes from.
Speaker:It's a little like understanding the etiology of a disease. In this case, the disease broadly
Speaker:being the human condition. We start here because once we know why we suffer, we're arguably
Speaker:better prepared to do something about it. The Buddha put forward his four noble truths,
Speaker:which go like this. One, dukkha. Suffering exists and is an unavoidable fact of life,
Speaker:at least in this realm of existence. Two, samudaya. There's a cause for this suffering,
Speaker:which is desire, craving, or attachment. Three, narodha. We can let go of suffering by
Speaker:renouncing our attachment. Four, marga. We can do this by following the Buddhist eight-fold path.
Speaker:Though we'll not dwell on the philosophical details too much, it's enough for now to understand
Speaker:the noble truths in this way. Suffering happens and it happens because we are attached to what is
Speaker:transient. Though there is a solution, we can let go of suffering if we relinquish this attachment.
Speaker:So it's the nature of reality to change. When we cling and form attachments, we're in opposition
Speaker:to this natural order and this causes us to suffer. To be released from this suffering is not to
Speaker:eradicate the change inherent in reality, but to cease our attachment to it. An example will explain.
Speaker:Imagine you're walking in the woods one day and it's beautiful. It's warm and bright. The birds
Speaker:are singing and you're having an amazing chat with your walking companion. It's like paradise,
Speaker:but it doesn't stay paradise. Life always changes and so too does this day. Maybe clouds roll in
Speaker:and it starts to drizzle. The birdsong stops and your walking companion suddenly becomes grumpy
Speaker:and uninteresting. Suddenly there's an annoying car alarm in the distance that goes on and on
Speaker:and on. Just like that, your lovely walk is not so lovely anymore. But if we're attached to one
Speaker:expression of reality over another, we might tell a story that goes, this is a problem now.
Speaker:It's supposed to be sunny and nice and it's not. The truth is rain and shine both belong to the
Speaker:natural order. Sometimes birds sing. Sometimes they don't. The people we love today may be
Speaker:annoying and difficult tomorrow. So we have the first noble truth. There is dukkha or suffering.
Speaker:And the second noble truth is that the cause of this is you, or more accurately, it's your
Speaker:clinging and attachment. For the Buddhists, nothing is permanent. Everything living will die.
Speaker:Clouds come and go. Things shift and change and evolve. Everything is always moving. However,
Speaker:if we cling and form attachments, we grasp hold of something and behave as though this
Speaker:weren't the case. We say, I wish this day would last forever. It won't last forever.
Speaker:And expecting and wanting it to is what causes the pain, not the fact that it changes.
Speaker:The fourth noble truth says that suffering is reduced when we let go of attachment. For example,
Speaker:you look up and see the drizzle and accept it. You see that your companion is grumpy
Speaker:and you hear the car alarm and realize that there's nothing innately better or worse in it
Speaker:when compared to a bird song. You don't push against it and you don't grab hold of it.
Speaker:You simply say, okay, and accept the fact that, well, it is. And just like that,
Speaker:you're not suffering anymore. When we hear the term desire or attachment, we need to remember
Speaker:that this actually covers every instance of us wanting reality to be something that it isn't.
Speaker:Every time we have an expectation for what should be or a demand on reality, that is a desire.
Speaker:That is a wanting inside us. Whether that takes the form of greed, lust, avoidance, fascination,
Speaker:hope, despair, or anything else, it is essentially us wanting to control reality
Speaker:and make it behave in the way we think it ought to. It is this orientation to reality that causes
Speaker:suffering rather than reality itself. It's as though the eternally changing nature of life
Speaker:is a flowing river, and we are fallen tree branches in that river.
Speaker:When we align ourselves with the flow and position lengthwise, the river flows easily
Speaker:past us, and there's no issue. But when we position ourselves against that flow and when
Speaker:we lay at right angles and resist it, there is suddenly friction. This friction is akin to suffering.
Speaker:Imagine a person who stands outside in the rain and shakes their fist at the sky yelling,
Speaker:this is wrong, it's not supposed to be like this. You'd probably find such a person
Speaker:faintly ridiculous. But in truth, we do the same thing all the time in life. We're always
Speaker:attached to what we think should be the case, which brings us into friction with what is the case.
Speaker:We have expectations as though life should arrange itself according to the whims and
Speaker:preferences of our ego. Why do we have expectations of life? Well, because we tell ourselves stories
Speaker:about the way things are. We say, I can only be happy if things are such and so. Take a look at
Speaker:each of the following examples and see how the cause of suffering is not the event or situation
Speaker:itself, but rather the expectation that reality should have been something else.
Speaker:Someone disagrees with you on an important topic and you're outraged by their stupidity.
Speaker:You get treated rudely by a colleague at work and feel really upset and hurt.
Speaker:The old lady in front of you in the supermarket is walking really, really slowly and you want
Speaker:to pull your hair out in frustration. Let's look closely at why you feel this way.
Speaker:You have the expectation that there is no disagreement or conflict in the world and that
Speaker:others should agree with the wisdom of your opinion or at least come around after you explain
Speaker:things so clearly to them. You hold the belief that everyone deserves respect and that you
Speaker:don't deserve to be treated poorly. You expect everyone else to be like you and if you're walking
Speaker:at a certain pace, they should walk at that pace too and not get in your way.
Speaker:Can you see how this is not all that different from standing out in the rain and yelling,
Speaker:this isn't right. The suffering lies in the gap between what you demand, expect or desire
Speaker:and what actually is. The easiest way to see this is to imagine things from someone else's view,
Speaker:someone who doesn't have the same expectations as you do. Imagine that the person you're arguing
Speaker:with is exasperated with you and cannot imagine why you're so stupid. Imagine that the person
Speaker:criticizing you sincerely believes that you should not be doing what you're doing and that
Speaker:they have to fix the situation by pointing out why you're wrong. Or picture that the old lady
Speaker:looks at you, shakes her head and thinks, these people who rush around supermarkets
Speaker:make me want to pull my hair out in frustration. The fact of reality sits there as it is, but
Speaker:it is us and our ego and expectations that makes up stories about what that reality is,
Speaker:what it should be and what we think about it. Arguably, this is precisely why there's conflict
Speaker:in the world. Our expectations not only fail to align with reality, but they also fail to align with
Speaker:other people's expectations. We suffer because we're like little children who pout and cry because
Speaker:we can't have ice cream for dinner. We fail to see the bigger picture and we only look at events
Speaker:according to our own very narrow, very uninformed vision of the world. We sit and sulk and declare
Speaker:that broccoli is disgusting and that we shouldn't have to eat it, but even as adults we can continue
Speaker:to do this, rating and judging reality according to the whims of our ego in the moment. Do we honestly
Speaker:have enough knowledge and understanding of the universal mechanisms we live within to proudly
Speaker:say what should and shouldn't be? It's as though we have unconsciously declared ourselves the CEOs
Speaker:of the universe and are incensed when life happens without our permission and in ways that we don't
Speaker:approve of. What we have in life is a series of unfolding moments, a never ending, ever unfolding
Speaker:now. It's always changing. Sunshine turns to rain, turns to sunshine again. In the middle of that is
Speaker:us and what we want. If we had planned a day at the beach, we would say that sunshine is good and
Speaker:rain is bad. If we're gardeners or farmers, we say that rain is good and sunshine is bad.
Speaker:These perspectives on reality, however, are not reality itself. Rain is not good or bad.
Speaker:Sunshine is not good or bad. It is us and our ego, our expectation and our desire to control
Speaker:that assigns labels to neutral reality, which is always just being what it is.
Speaker:So let's cut to the chase. What's the cause of suffering? We are. But here we're faced with
Speaker:something quite tricky. The fact is we are individual people with unique interests and goals.
Speaker:We only have our own limited perspective and, of course, we have a preference for all those
Speaker:things that favor us. This is, after all, what it means to be alive. We're not enlightened,
Speaker:egotist beings. We're not angels or abstract entities. We are imperfect people living in an
Speaker:imperfect world. Importantly, the Buddhists and generally those who teach mindfulness and awareness
Speaker:don't want us to abandon all expectations. It's not possible. The idea is not to become
Speaker:completely apathetic, shrugging your shoulders and having no opinion about the outcome of events.
Speaker:It's not possible to avoid having a point of view, a judgment or a goal. It's not possible to avoid
Speaker:being impacted by events around us. In other words, there will always be people we disagree with,
Speaker:insults, and things that get in our way. But we can have awareness and acceptance.
Speaker:We'll explore the way out of suffering in more detail in the following chapter, but for now,
Speaker:it's important to note that we're not asked to pretend that nothing bothers us or that we
Speaker:don't care what happens either way. This is just more clinging, more ego, and more expectation.
Speaker:I should be more accepting, or a truly enlightened person does such and such, so I must do that too.
Speaker:For now, let's acknowledge and understand the cause of suffering. That's half the problem.
Speaker:Suffering does happen, and it happens because of our attachment. We can call this attachment
Speaker:many different things, desire, craving, clinging to, positioning, searching, wanting, seeking,
Speaker:needing, thirsting, or hungering for, resisting, obsessing about, being addicted to, grasping,
Speaker:identifying with, needing, whether big or small, or profound or trivial, and whatever the object,
Speaker:this attachment is our active relationship to neutral reality. According to our identities,
Speaker:it's the personal narrative we tell about impersonal events. It's like a contraction. We
Speaker:interpret events which requires a certain narrowing of perception, but this is not the full story.
Speaker:We also attach to and identify with neutral fleeting events when we push against reality.
Speaker:It seems counterintuitive. Such resistance is also a way of holding on to things and failing
Speaker:to appreciate their transience and impermanence. For example, we can tell ourselves a complex
Speaker:story about our enemies or adversaries and how much we hate them. We can get carried away with
Speaker:anger and blame for something that happened to us, or we can constantly position ourselves in
Speaker:opposition to something else, either because we see ourselves as victims or perhaps as rebels
Speaker:who gain our identity from what we aren't, or consider the person who cannot even acknowledge
Speaker:the deep unconscious beliefs that, nevertheless, control their every move. They resist these
Speaker:ideas to such an extent that they don't even know they're there, but their resistance and
Speaker:avoidance, nevertheless, colors everything in their life. A Buddhist parable tells of a young
Speaker:monk and his wise, older teacher on a journey. The pair arrive at a river and encounter a young
Speaker:woman having trouble crossing. The teacher thinks nothing of inviting the woman to jump on his back
Speaker:so he can help her cross over. The young monk, seeing this, is disturbed. He knows that, in
Speaker:their religious tradition, touching a woman is forbidden. They continue on the journey for
Speaker:some time before the young monk, unable to remain silent, speaks up.
Speaker:Master, I'm deeply troubled. You carried that woman across the river, but you know that this is
Speaker:completely against our faith. The master smiled and simply said, well, I carried that woman across
Speaker:the river, and then I set her down again. Why have you been carrying her for the last three hours?
Speaker:This story shows us how clinging to and resisting are really two sides of the same coin.
Speaker:The young monk is both resisting reality. His master should not have carried the woman,
Speaker:but he's also clinging. It should be this way, not that way. Here, clinging and resisting are
Speaker:really different manifestations of identifying with something to such an extent that we keep
Speaker:carrying it with us long after the fleeting event has passed. Existence is impermanent,
Speaker:but when we cling or attach, we hold on to things long after they fade away.
Speaker:It is our stories about things that keep them alive. The master, in the story above,
Speaker:is in the moment and can let the past go. It's the young monk who suffers because he
Speaker:clings and resists. He is privileging his expectation about reality above what is actually
Speaker:happening. The master might pause and draw the young monk's attention to the moment they are
Speaker:actually in. Where is the problem? Nowhere. It's only in the mind of the young monk.
Speaker:We don't need to beat ourselves up about any of this. Human beings have evolved
Speaker:brains that seek out patterns and try to make theories and models of the world
Speaker:to control whatever emerges in the present moment. Your brain evolved to help you survive,
Speaker:not to make you happy. Its job is to look for problems, which is not necessarily a problem in
Speaker:itself. However, it would help to notice how seldom this need for control actually succeeds
Speaker:in getting reality to behave as we wish. Here's a clue it never does.
Speaker:This is because life is changeable and ungraspable. Like water, in the very same instant we reach out
Speaker:to try and grab it, it's already flowed past. Even if we could grab hold of a moment right now,
Speaker:there's another one immediately on its tail, and the previous one whizzes by never to be seen again.
Speaker:Our perception, it would seem, is always colored by our interpretation and judgment.
Speaker:We can't hear a sound or see a sight without deciding whether we find it pleasant or unpleasant.
Speaker:We can't help but insist that if something good is happening,
Speaker:that it should stay that way forever and never change. So we build up our egos and stories
Speaker:and routines and rituals, then when life smashes them to bits, we suffer.
Speaker:There's a more practical way to look at the First Noble Truth, and that is the profound fact of,
Speaker:well, shit happens. We'll all die. Many, if not most of us, will experience injury and illness.
Speaker:If we're in a relationship, one of two things will happen. We'll either break up,
Speaker:or one of us will die. You will sometimes have an accident. You will hurt yourself or hurt others.
Speaker:You will have something that you love and cherish that you will nevertheless lose.
Speaker:If you're lucky, you'll grow old and experience the indignities of an aging body.
Speaker:There'll be storms and unexpected bills and arguments and nasty surprises.
Speaker:Seeing as all these things will happen, what's the use in arguing with them?
Speaker:On the other hand, even the best experiences in life are transient.
Speaker:No matter what peaks of pleasure you attain, they eventually stop, right?
Speaker:Even that delicious cookie you're eating right now will, in a minute, be no more than what?
Speaker:The good comes and goes, and the bad comes and goes. Everything is transient.
Speaker:But the idea is that suffering enters the picture when we strenuously try to hold on to the good
Speaker:and run away from the bad. There are different types of craving and attachment.
Speaker:We might crave pleasure. For example, we have a food addiction, or we might cling to an
Speaker:ego-driven idea of our own identity. For example, we become self-obsessed and seek fame or to
Speaker:dominate others. Or we could work hard to avoid experiencing things we don't want to experience.
Speaker:For example, avoiding conflict, being in denial, or indulging in escapism.
Speaker:They all amount to the same thing, though. A faulty relationship with reality.
Speaker:Tough, because it's hard to swallow. Even the suffering attached to life's greatest losses,
Speaker:death, divorce, etc., are a result of our failure to accept the impermanence of everything.
Speaker:Our clinging and craving are endless and never satisfied.
Speaker:Unlike reality, which shifts and changes, our attachment can keep going forever,
Speaker:going round in circles. Our seeking could turn into greed and materialism,
Speaker:and we find that, no matter how much we have, we want more. Or our vanity causes us to build a
Speaker:bigger and bigger ego for ourselves. We can even find that our spiritual seeking becomes a kind of
Speaker:bottomless ambition, and we end up craving endless enlightenment experiences.
Speaker:Summary In the Buddhist tradition, the four noble truths explain
Speaker:what suffering is, its cause, and how to deal with it. The first truth is that suffering exists
Speaker:and is unavoidable. And the second is that the cause of suffering is our desire, craving,
Speaker:or attachment. The third is that suffering can be released if we renounce this attachment.
Speaker:And the fourth truth is that we practice this way of being by following the eightfold path.
Speaker:When we are attached to one outcome or another, the Buddhists claim we cause suffering. It is
Speaker:our perspective, preference, narrative, and expectation about what should be that causes
Speaker:our unhappiness. In life, everything is transient though and always changing.
Speaker:In the parable of the two monks, we see that resistance is also a form of grasping and allows
Speaker:us to carry suffering with us long after the initial moment has passed. In this philosophy,
Speaker:we cannot achieve happiness by trying to remove suffering from life, but rather by changing our
Speaker:attitude to it. We can use the four noble truths as a starting point for reducing suffering in our
Speaker:own lives, or rather learn to suffer better. To do so, we have to understand our own tendency
Speaker:to identify with, cling, resist, or tell stories about reality and learn to simply appreciate
Speaker:reality for what it is, neutral and impermanent. This has been How to Suffer Well, Timeless
Speaker:Knowledge on Dealing with Hardship and Becoming Anguish-Proof, written by Peter Hollins,
Speaker:narrated by Russell Newton. Copyright 2022 by Peter Hollins. Production copyright by Peter Hollins.
