Getting Curious About Suffering is the Antidote to Despair - and the Beginning of Joy
No one likes to suffer. That’s pretty universal among humans and animals, and so naturally we gravitate toward what feels good and push away what doesn’t feel good. Unfortunately, that very natural habit doesn’t solve the problem. Suffering always returns. The Buddha’s genius was that he did something very counterintuitive. Instead of pushing away suffering, he got curious about it and studied closely how it works, just as you might study closely a lock that is stuck. He studied it so closely that he discovered a way out, and he left behind all kinds of clues and tips to help us get our own doors unlocked. Here's the first clue: he noticed that there are three types of suffering. Staying clear about which one we're dealing with at the moment is really useful, because then we have an overview of how they operate and it helps keep us from making our suffering worse. It’s pretty down to earth, really. If you have a basic understanding of how a lock works, you’ll spray the keyhole with WD-40 rather than take a hammer to it.
The first type of suffering is the kind that all animals have, including human animals. It is the pain that comes from living in a body on the earth. We get hungry, or catch a virus, or get something in our eye, and it hurts. Seems obvious that this is inevitable, and yet people put so much energy into thinking they should always feel instagram good in their body.
The second type of suffering comes from change. We are totally enjoying ourselves and then the enjoyment ends. We take the last bite of a great meal, the engrossing film ends, the party is over and we have to go to work. This is really the suffering of pleasure, because pleasure always ends. It has to, so the next thing can happen. Pretty straightforward, that this is how it works, and yet people put so much energy into thinking they should be able to keep pleasure going and not have it diminish — be on a permanent high.
The third type of suffering comes from pervasive conditioning. It’s the suffering of not knowing any better. We are all swimming in layers and layers of misunderstandings that are nobody’s fault, really. We inherit all kinds of cultural ideas and survival strategies and family myths that are based on faulty views, unclear seeing, and misunderstanding. As children we also make our own interpretations of events and create dubious strategies to navigate life using our immature minds, and then those childhood decisions condition us into a certain limited behavior or view of things that doesn’t work all that well as we grow up. These become part of the invisible fabric of our world view and they are hard to see and change, especially if there is shock or trauma involved. This happens to all of us. It’s the human condition.
Nobody likes any of this suffering. We all want to be happy. That’s the one thing we all have in common. Whatever any of us are doing in the moment, however misguided or enlightened, is simply an attempt not to suffer and to be happy instead.
It all seems so obvious when I say it. So why does it matter so much to the Buddha that we pay close attention to this? Because when we truly take this in, we can dispel some of our most painful misunderstandings just by seeing the truth of what we are working with here on the hard ground of life. Recognizing the three kinds of suffering—not just intellectually, but in our own lived experience—brings insights that can heal. Here are a few to try on that came out of my own lived practice:
We are not suffering because we are bad. We are suffering because life includes suffering. Bad and good has nothing to do with it. While our actions may contribute to the suffering of ourselves and others, it’s not because we want to create suffering. It’s just because we misunderstand how to create happiness. This is the law of cause and effect. If you innocently hammer on a lock instead of lubricating it because you think it will dislodge the blockage, it has consequences. The result isn’t a punishment. It’s just what happens when you hammer on a lock. To see that what we are doing with our thoughts and behavior contributes to our suffering or the suffering of others doesn’t make us guilty or bad—it empowers us to do something different. Seeing means we can notice when we are hammering on the lock — and stop. When we do something different, something new happens, and this fresh start is possible in every moment. That’s power.
We are not to blame — and neither is anyone else. It’s not our fault that we are conditioned. It’s not anyone’s fault. This is just how human life is. It is conditioned. That’s what we have to work with. We are all partially blind because our conditioning distorts reality. No one can be blamed for their blindness. Not us and not the people we think are to blame for our suffering.
None of us are to blame, but all of us are responsible. There’s a big difference between the two. To be responsible means we are in charge of our response to the situation we are in, and once we can see the situation clearly, we can respond to it in a new way. This means that looking closely at our own behavior and that of others with curiosity and without the need to blame is absolutely essential to releasing our suffering. Until we fully commit to doing what it takes to see clearly, and especially to see what we are doing that is contributing to the persistence of our suffering and the suffering of others, we are powerless. We can’t stay the same and change other people. We don’t have that power. All of our power is in our own ability to respond in a new way. Our main contribution to life is the quality of our own consciousness.
Joy is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure depends on certain conditions — the food is hot, the movie is compelling, we like the view, the neighbors aren’t using their jackhammer. Joy does not depend on conditions. When we are joyful, the food can get cold, the movie can be dumb, the view can be of a parking lot, and we can dance to the beat of a jackhammer. Trying to end all pain and make pleasure last, when pain is inevitable and pleasure always changes, is a waste of our energy and leads to despair. It makes much more sense to give up on pleasure and get curious about joy.
The first requirement of joy is that we accept things as they are. We don’t fight what can’t be changed. We don’t say all pain is bad and must end, or all ignorant people are bad and must be made to understand things the way we do (or pay), or all pleasure is good and must last forever. We give up on these impossible projects that lead to constant frustration and despair. We accept that this is the way it is: there is pain, there is change, and there is conditioning. We don’t have to like it. We just have to accept it. The ramifications of this acceptance are vast and profound. Acceptance allows us to give up our crippling idealism in favor of an inspiration that has a real chance of fruition.
No true spiritual practice allows us to skip this step of dealing in detail with the rawness and density of our own suffering and confusion. There are different densities to the spiritual life. One is inspiration, which is light and expansive, full of possibility and openness. Another, which includes pain, is heavy and dense, and can feel unbearably constraining, but it is just as spiritual, just as important. The light, expansive place is where we experience the love and joy that is the birthright of every baby. The dense, constraining place is where we make compassion out of suffering. It’s where we dispel darkness and open to greater understanding so that the joy of spirit can incarnate in us and in the world.
This means we have work to do here, and sometimes the only thing we can manage when things are solid and tight and sad and painful is to notice which of the three types of suffering we are experiencing. Just doing that gives us a bit of fresh air, because in that moment we are witnessing our experience instead of being wholly consumed by it. Keep returning to the witness and relief will come, because it is the nature of everything to change, and seeing clearly makes it more likely to change in a positive direction. Witnessing also means that at some point we will likely put down the hammer and consider trying WD-40 on our prison lock. Just don't expect immediate results. Transforming the mind isn't easy. It takes time. The Dalai Lama says it is helpful to think in terms not just of a few weeks or months or years, but be willing for it to take a thousand lives, a million lives, limitless aeons. That's a Buddhist way of thinking.
But we can’t just toil in the dense world of suffering or the whole thing gets grim. We are here for joy — to become joy, to spread joy, to know what it is and how to cultivate it. That is the whole point of our project. And so we need balance. We need to embrace both lightness and heaviness, inspiration and humility, our big self and our small self, so we don’t get stuck in deflation or inflation. To paraphrase Rumi, the hand opens and closes like bird’s wings. If it were a fist or always stretched open, we would be paralyzed.
As we accept this pulsation between openness and contraction, understanding and ignorance, pleasure and pain, and see how it operates in our own life, our heart opens to others — even those we’ve blamed or disliked. It becomes clear through our own work with suffering how hard it is for us to deal with this dense layer of conditioning and ignorance, and when we recognize that others have the same things operating in them but may not even know it, or don't have the tools to work with it, our heart opens in compassion—not because we are trying to be good, but because we genuinely see and understand. And this authentic compassion that arises from our lived experience becomes the fuel for our awakening. It opens up the whole path and in time, becomes the source of tremendous energy and joy.
That's why the hard work of dealing with our own suffering is crucial. To turn toward our suffering with curiosity is to take a momentous step toward bringing the lasting, unconditioned joy of spirit to earth.
And that seems to be what we are here for.
