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Suffering as a Door to go Through

Introduction

Oh, good morning everyone here in person. Good morning to those of you—hello to those of you online. Maybe for some of you it's not morning. I'm so happy to be here with you all. It's nice to be together in person. I think it is well recognized now that the lack of community has been a very big negative impact of the pandemic. Coming back together is pretty important for many people. Even if we're still wearing masks here—can you hear me okay? Is it loud enough for everyone?

We are discussing ending the mask requirement here at IMC. We're like one of the last big places doing this. Some people show up at the door with surprise, "How could this be?" But we still are, at least for this month of May. It's a work in progress, but we're considering ending the requirement in June; they will be optional and recommended after that.

A Door to Go Through

The talk today could be titled "Suffering as a Door to Go Through." Many of you know that one of the core aspects of Buddhism is addressing suffering. The ultimate idea is that it is possible to bring suffering to an end. To be fully enlightened is to bring suffering to an end. That's perplexing for some people. How could that really be? Am I still going to be human if I don't suffer at all?

Some of this has to do with how we define suffering. Dharma teachers like me seldom define it enough; we just assume everyone knows what it is. We use the word "suffering, suffering, suffering" until you suffer, wondering, "What does he mean? What's going on here?"

It's reasonable to question what we mean by suffering. For example, it doesn't mean all forms of sadness. Sadness feels uncomfortable. Because it's uncomfortable, does it mean we're not enlightened? If you're going to be a good Buddhist, do you have to stop being sad and stop feeling grief? Does it mean that you never get annoyed or irritated because that is also uncomfortable? Is that crossing the line into a kind of suffering that's not supposed to be there? Are you to never be heartbroken when you see things going on in the world? Are you supposed to just continue singing happy songs and smiling while Rome burns? Are all uncomfortable emotions supposed to go, or what?

Don't look to Buddhism to answer those questions. That makes you suffer more. You get more frustrated because you think, "Wait a minute, Buddhism is supposed to have answers!" I think what Buddhism is trying to do—at least the kind of Buddhism that I'd like to espouse—is encouraging us to take a deep, good look at life. It encourages us to discover for ourselves what's going on and to answer those questions for ourselves.

What is suffering? Is some suffering inherent and part of even an enlightened life? Or is all suffering going to go away? To answer that question for yourself requires stepping in and taking a good look at whatever you might generally consider to be suffering. As some of you know, the bumper sticker I think Buddhists should have for their cars is, "I stop for suffering."

To really take a good look is to enter into suffering—not to suffer better or more, but to do the opposite of running away from it. Do the opposite of avoiding it, the opposite of collapsing with it, or simply living under the burden and struggle of emotional distress, dismay, and pain that is so common to human life. Stop and take a good look at it.

I call it a door. Calling it a door that you go through is a paradigm shift for how many people address their own suffering, distress, stress, pain, and challenges. Often, we want to avoid it and make it go away. We want to push it away, cut it off, take a drug so we don't have to feel it, or be distracted. To stop, take a really good look, and think of it as a door means developing a lot of faith and confidence that this is a good thing to do.

That's a paradigm shift. I've known people who have heard this teaching—that you should turn around and be present for your pain, even physical pain, and really look at it—who get angry. "No, this is terrible! I'm here to get rid of it, not to have it! Not to look at it, not to have to feel it even more! This doesn't promise the end of it; I have to just be with it!" [Laughter]

But this paradigm shift is a radically different way of looking at suffering. We don't see it as a burden or an oppression; we see it as a door that we go through to get to the other side. As we go through that door and turn towards it, we can start looking more and more deeply to understand its nature. We can answer the question: which suffering is appropriate to live with, to accept, and maybe even appreciate as part of the richness of being a human being? And what part of the suffering is optional, unnecessary, and a product of the odd machinations of my mind and heart that don't really have to operate that way?

I can see the operating system of certain kinds of suffering that comes from the unfortunate, unnecessary functioning of my mind, and I am happy to let go of it. Maybe it's not easy to let go of it, but I see it now. We start seeing a distinction between them.

This investigation of suffering is supported by taking a good look at three different aspects of things that could be called suffering. Some of it is the kind of suffering that Buddhists want to bring to an end, and some of it is maybe not something you can reasonably bring to an end and you have to learn how to live with. How do you live with it wisely? How do you live with the suffering that you can't get rid of in human life so you don't add suffering on top of it that is optional and unnecessary?

Each of you will have a different answer today, tomorrow, in a month, and in a year. Your answer will change over time based on how well you understand yourself, the mindset you live under, and the quality of your consciousness. The quality of the mind provides a very different vantage point for understanding our life, understanding ourselves, and understanding what's important. The way we see the world changes when we're more concentrated and peaceful. We see aspects of this world that are invisible to us otherwise. We keep asking these questions and seeing in new ways.

Three Areas of Investigation

The three areas I want to talk about are: plain and simple discomfort, emotional pain, and the complex of ideations that belong to "me, myself, and mine." To dip into these in a deep way, these are doors to really address and go through.

Discomfort

We start with discomfort. I'm sitting here right now, and I'm uncomfortable in my right leg. Somehow something shifted in my old age. I used to sit comfortably like this for years, and now there's a degree of discomfort and pain that I didn't use to have. I'm just kind of saying, "Okay, things change." I was very comfortable for many decades and that was nice, and now I'm not so comfortable. Maybe that'll last for a couple of decades. It's all shifting all the time. Actually, I've had all kinds of discomforts in my meditation career of about fifty years. They've come and gone at different times. Being with discomfort is part and parcel of meditation for me.

I would say that I have no suffering, or barely any suffering, from this pain going down my leg right now. It's just okay. I don't give it much attention. I give it enough attention to make sure that I'm not injuring myself, but it's just there in the background. It's cloudy today, and I can meditate with the cloudy sky; I can meditate with the pain in my leg without any issue. Discomfort and physical pain of all kinds come with human life. To the degree to which some of it is unavoidable, we need to look at it deeply.

One of the things we start seeing is not the discomfort itself, but the relationship we have to it. I just described that I have pain in my leg and I'm completely at ease with it. That relationship is possible, and it is very different than if I had reactivity to it. I could get angry: "I've been meditating fifty years, and by now I should not be uncomfortable! I should be in complete bliss; I should be floating! I thought Buddhism was the kind that floats in the clouds and everything is blissed out. Buddhism is a failure!" [Laughter]

That's one relationship I could have to the pain. Because you're laughing, you realize it's a little bit ridiculous and silly. Or I could feel really discouraged: "I shouldn't be feeling pain." Or I could be embarrassed: "I shouldn't admit it, I'm a meditation teacher, and they're going to think badly of me now." Or I could be angry at that leg of mine and try to get back at it. I had a friend who had knee pain in meditation, and he said that whenever it hurt, he'd hurt it back by pushing at it.

There are all kinds of odd relationships to discomfort. We are embarrassed, we feel it shouldn't be there, we're angry at it, we're trying to escape it. Some people are incapable of being with certain kinds of emotional discomfort and they'll run away. They'll go for alcohol, or sex, or Netflix, or food, just to get away from it so they don't have to feel it.

When we do mindfulness practice, one of the things we're learning to do is to take a good look at the relationship we have with discomfort and see that those attitudes are different than the discomfort itself. We learn to be without a judgment about the discomfort, without the idea that you have to end all discomfort once and for all through Buddhism. Rather, you try to understand that relationship so that it becomes one of ease and peace. We stop adding unnecessary distress and stress on top of our life through our reactivity to discomfort.

The slogan I like for this is: "We're learning to be comfortable with discomfort." That's a radical thing to do compared to what most people in our society know what to do. Some people have the idea that when they're uncomfortable, they've failed at something, or that to be a successful person you have to never be in pain and fix your discomfort at all costs. Life is a lot easier to go through if we're comfortable with discomfort—if we're not a slave to it, pushed around by it, and forced to react.

As we become freer around discomfort, we're in a much better position to look at it in an objective, clear way and decide, "Is this healthy for me? Is this appropriate?" Like the pain I feel in my leg sitting here, I give it some careful attention and decide, "Okay, this is okay for now. I don't think I'm injuring myself. Probably I should do more stretching or find a different posture." Because I'm studying it, I can come to terms with it. I can understand that while I'm comfortable enough having it, there are ways of fixing it that are appropriate. But now I'm going to fix it out of wisdom, because it just seems like a sensible thing to do, as opposed to fixing it because I'm angry, want to escape it, have aversion towards it, or am really attached to comfort.

As the attitude becomes simpler and simpler and non-reactive, we're in a better position to answer questions about the discomfort. This one I can live with; this one I shouldn't live with, it requires a change. Let's find a healthy way to do it. Just because I have leg pain doesn't mean I should go to the bar after this and drink away my pain. So what's healthy?

One of the things that's powerful for this investigation is beginning to appreciate the difference between an event—here discomfort, but it could be any event—and our relationship to it. We begin to look at that relationship and clarify it, purify it, simplify it, and free it, so that we're not caught in the grip of aversion, desire, and all kinds of other things that are controlling us.

Emotional Pain

Then we go to a deeper layer in this study and start looking at emotional pain. Is all emotional pain the Buddhist idea of dukkha^[1]? Or is some emotional pain just what comes with human life? You have to answer that question for yourself.

One of the ways to do this is to look at your relationship to emotional pain. That's a kind of discomfort too. What you learned to do with physical discomfort is now addressed in this emotional pain. You start seeing: "I hate it. I really want to feel some happy feeling, and I'm chasing that." Or, "I feel shame. I've been a Buddhist for a while now, and I thought Buddhists were supposed to be always equanimous, peaceful, and chilled, and here I am feeling a lot of agitation. I guess I'm an embarrassment to the Buddhist world."

That's a relationship, an attitude that we have to what's happening. We start seeing all these layers of unnecessary judgments and interpretations that are causing us distress or discouraging us. The same study we did with physical discomfort can be done in relationship to emotional pain. The lesson is the same: we can learn to be comfortable with emotional pain. We can just be peaceful with it, and then we can study it more deeply.

Lo and behold, one of the things you'll probably discover is that some of your emotional pain comes from deeper reactivity—because you're really attached to something, clinging to something. For example, a simple thing for me is wanting to get someplace on time. I wanted to show up at IMC to teach people how to be non-attached and relaxed with what is, but there's a lot of traffic. I'm going to be late, and I have to get there right away. If I'm late, people will go to sleep or go away, and no one will be here, and I'll be giving a talk to myself. I have to get there to teach them to be relaxed! [Laughter]

There's frustration and anger at the traffic, but I'm clinging to something. I'm clinging to what it means to be here, clinging to the fear that you'll all go home. If I'm mindful enough of what's happening for me there in the traffic—feeling hot and sweaty and in a hurry—I can say, "Wait a minute, Gil. You're really attached to layers and layers of things here. Do you have to stay attached?"

The lawyers of the mind come up and say, "Yes!" [Laughter]

But if I can offer counterarguments, I say, "No, it doesn't do me any good. The traffic's not going to change, and it's not going to help me to be stressed." Then I begin letting go and relaxing, and I feel so much better.

If we take an honest look at it, we'll discover that in these painful emotions, we're attached to something. If you don't see the clinging, there's no attachment to let go of.

Maybe there are some emotional pains that are not supposed to end. When someone dies and we feel grief, are we supposed to feel like a Buddhist failure? When I read the news and feel heartbroken at the things happening in the world, am I not supposed to feel that? I don't want to live in a universe where I don't feel sadness, grief, or heartbreak over what happens in the world. It feels completely appropriate to feel that. I don't think it's born from attachment for me; it just comes through me, but it doesn't get stuck there. I feel it fully and clearly. Sometimes I've read the news and started crying, but I have no thought that I'm not supposed to feel that pain.

If I stop and take a deeper look, I might see in the corners of that experience something I'm clinging to, but in the heart of it, it just seems very simple and clear. I don't add layers of suffering on top of it, like "I'm not supposed to be this way," or "I should get rid of it quickly; it's been thirty minutes, I should be finished with my grief."

We learn to simplify these attitudes, discovering that with some things, there are no attachments, and we learn how to be at ease with them. Being comfortable with feeling emotional pain is a phenomenal gift we can give to the world. It means that you can be a friend to someone who is in emotional pain. You can share in that pain, but you're not distressed, upset, or afraid on top of the heartbreak. You're able to be there in a full, honest, clear way to offer a safe listening ear and companionship.

Let's go for a walk together. I'm willing to feel uncomfortable. I know how to do this, and I'm just here with it. I'm not trying to fix anything; I'm not trying to fix you or myself. Some people who think they are compassionate caregivers are really trying to avoid being uncomfortable themselves. They're so uncomfortable with the discomfort in the world that they're trying to get everyone fixed so they don't have to feel it. That often leads to unhealthy behavior.

The ability to feel our emotional pain, separate out the extra layers of reactivity and attachment, and just be with ourselves is a true gift.

Me, Myself, and Mine

The third layer I want to talk about is the layer of "me, myself, and mine." As we turn towards the door of suffering, we see that some of that suffering is happening to me. It's my suffering.

With the pain in my knee, there's no question it's happening to me. But there's also the ideation: "I'm suffering. I feel so sorry for myself! Fifty years of meditation pains, enough is enough. I deserve a vacation to Hawaii!" Now we're entering the world of "me, myself, and mine"—how I think about the impact on me and what I need.

Some of that is innocent. Earlier I said, "I'll consider this pain and whether I need to change my posture." That use of the word "I" is innocent and simple. But, "Oh poor Gil, I hope I can really let you know how horrible it is that I'm suffering so that you'll feel sorry for me. We'll have a Gil pity party!" As if that's going to help anyone.

This "I" thing can get really activated. I want to suggest a little exercise. You're all sitting here on chairs or zafus on the floor. Say you have to go to the bathroom. You happily get up, go, and come back five minutes later, and someone is sitting in your place.

"That was my chair! That was my cushion!" But you didn't bring it with you. If you had just stayed here to the end, went home, and came back next week, you would have no memory of which cushion or chair was yours. As soon as you leave, it's not yours anymore. The idea that it's your chair or your spot does not exist in the natural world out there.

That belongs to what I call the ego-sphere, or the I-sphere, the me-sphere. It's an invisible world of mentality, thoughts, and ideas that creates "me, myself, and mine." It doesn't have weight, color, or shape.

If all of us who took our shoes off went home today with different shoes than we came with, your shoes wouldn't care. Unless you wrote your name on it, the shoes don't have any idea that they belong to you. But boy, if you leave here and your shoes aren't on the rack... "Someone took my shoes!" It happened to me once many years ago. My Birkenstocks were not there. But there was another pair, the same size, and newer. So the next week I came back to IMC and discovered there was actually a three-way exchange for Birkenstocks that happened. [Laughter]

The idea that things belong to us is somewhat arbitrary. It's an ideation imposed on things, and it doesn't belong in the natural world out there; it belongs to this thought-sphere. We're swimming in it as a society, and laws support the ownership of property, so it has intense pressure. But does that make it true?

The lands that we live on—we're now appreciating more and more that many of us in the United States are living on land that was stolen from indigenous people. Given that it was stolen to begin with, does the fact that I bought the property mean it's really mine? Do descendants of the indigenous people still have a claim? What happens if an indigenous family came to the property I own and said, "Our family lived here for generations, so we have a relationship to this land." Would I say, "This is my property, I'm going to put up a bigger fence to keep you out"? Is that the right thing to do?

We bought a house up here many years ago. In the basement, they left this huge, ancient desk from the 1920s. I liked it, but the top was warped, so I put a new top on it. Some years ago, someone came to our house and said, "My grandparents lived here in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We used to visit all the time, and we just wanted to see it." I showed them around, and in the basement they said, "Oh, that's the desk!" No one had ever taken it out because it was hard to move. I asked, "Would you like it?" "Oh, yes!" It had an emotional connection to their family. Did it belong to me? It was just left there. Legally it was mine, but did it really belong to me?

Then we have identity. Identity is a hot topic these days. I feel like I shouldn't even use the word; as soon as I say it, I'm going to upset someone. But it's an important topic to address. For example, my identity as a teacher. It seems to work okay here at IMC, but if I go home with the identity of a teacher, it's a problem. [Laughter]

It works here until the identity of being a teacher becomes what my value as a human being depends on. If my value depends on what everyone else thinks about me in that identity, now we're getting into dangerous territory. "Now I have to give a talk that's brilliant!" The pressure is on.

We are talking about an invisible world that most people can't clearly see. I do this exercise sometimes—I don't know if it will be meaningful for you—but just look around the room. Look at the ceiling, the walls, the lights. Where do you find me in it? Where's I and all that? Where's mine? Have any of you had the thought that the chandeliers are mine, or I'm the chandeliers? No, it's just lights, just walls, free of that sense of self.

To what degree can you turn that kind of attention inward? Look at parts of yourself inside, your experiences, and see: "No, that's not me. That's just phenomena happening."

I'm going to have a thought arise in your mind that you didn't put there. You're going to try to resist me. "Don't have this thought."

The hills are alive with the sound of...

At least some of you of a certain age probably couldn't help your mind finishing that sentence. Is that thought you? Does it define who you are? Is that me making this thought? It's just conditions coming together. It doesn't quite make sense to claim that that's you. It's just a response the brain has to me saying something.

When the wind brushes against your cheek, is the sensation itself "me, myself, and mine"? Do you want to claim ownership of it? Did you orchestrate it and design it? No, that's not me.

What we learn in Buddhist meditation is to begin questioning and looking deeper into this I-sphere, this ideation-sphere that we swim in. We begin seeing how much of it we don't have to do. The thinking mind that creates "me, myself, and mine" is a wind drag for the mind. As we slow down and get quiet, we begin letting go of that wind drag, and it can be blissful and beautiful. So much of this "me, myself, and mine" comes with attachment, resistance, and tightening up.

Our thoughts of "me, myself, and mine" are a primary source of our reactivity. When we react habitually for or against things, it has a lot to do with this identification with self. We start seeing how much is not part of the natural world, but part of our constructed ideations. We see that clearly in meditation because having these thoughts requires processing activity in the brain. As the mind gets calmer, we do less and less of this thinking.

I see that if I start thinking, "Those Birkenstocks out on the shelf are my Birkenstocks," just that thought itself agitates my mind. Why would I want to agitate my mind when I'm so peaceful? Let's not have any more Birkenstock thoughts in meditation; I can do that later.

Going Through the Door

The topic of today is how to study your suffering. The vantage point of studying your suffering without the ideation of self is a radical, revolutionary change. There are whole layers of reactivity and emotional pain that belong to that ideation around "me, myself, and mine." If you can really see that, it changes your whole understanding of what emotional pain is the ordinary part of human life, and what is unnecessary.

A lot of people want to justify their emotional pain because they think, "It's just natural, this is part of life." But it's not really that natural, because you see it's part of the reactivity around this created construct of "me, myself, and mine." That construct has been built up over a lifetime with the help of society, family, life experiences, and desires. It feels so natural to be yourself that it's very hard to see how much of it is a construct. Very few things can help you break through that.

Meditation is one of them. Another is psychedelics—which we're not supposed to encourage here. [Laughter] I think meditation is more powerful in the long term. I lived in the biggest psychedelic hippie commune in the country back in the early 70s. Because of legal issues, they decided to stop using psychedelics, and they wanted to find the next best thing. The next best thing was honesty, and that's why I stayed with them. I'd never been around people who were so honest; I was so inspired by it.

Honesty, meditation, and looking clearly at what's going on help you see suffering and the end of suffering. It's for you to discover what suffering you can end, but suffering is always a door to go through. Have confidence, skill, and build up the capacity to be willing to stop and look at suffering, to go through that door. It's really worthwhile, because one way or the other, you can get to the other side.

What that other side should look like, no one can tell you. It's not supposed to be floating in the clouds; it's going to be your own way. No one can answer these questions except yourself. That's why mindfulness and deeper looking are so important. Your answers will probably change over time, especially if you get a handle on this whole I-sphere.

I hope you are inspired to do this work. I hope you come to a time where you enjoy doing it, where you are delighted and inspired by it. It's such a wonderful thing to have the good fortune to have a practice and a means to step into this. I think of it as a way of stepping into being fully human. If we're running away from our pain and discomfort, we're actually shutting down part of our full humanity. Step in through that door of suffering, and you'll be much happier.

Thank you.