I’m taking a 8 week course at the Chicago Shambhala Center on the four immeasurables: love, compassion, joy and equanimity. The course consists of a series of talks that Pema Chodron gave to a group of monastics staying at Gampo Abbey for the Yarne retreat earlier this year.
I really enjoy Pema Chodron’s teaching style. She presents the Buddhist teachings in a way that is very straight-forward and understandable to me. In contrast, many of the books and teachings written by Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of the Shambhala tradition, are a bit esoteric to me.
In the last talk that I attended, Pema spoke about suffering and there being three types of suffering. I’m starting to learn more and more that suffering and becoming familiar with the experience of suffering is an extremely important part of developing and cultivating the qualities of love, compassion and joy.
My last post spoke of our tendency to do whatever we can do avoid suffering in our lives. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this so long as we can notice this and use the opportunity to more fully connect with the experience at hand as well as using it as an opportunity to better appreciate what we do have, such as the fact that we are alive to experience all of this.
The three types of suffering that Pema spoke of are:
The Pain of Pain
This is what we typically know and truly experience as suffering. An example for myself is the experience I feel in my gut when I see an ASPCA commercial on animal cruelty. There’s a very direct pain that I immediately feel and along with that a natural sense of compassion that arises.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. I certainly can’t say that I’ve experienced the kind of cruelty that some of these animals have experienced, yet there is a definite sense of connection. Maybe it’s a shared connection with the feeling of being alone, vulnerable and scared.
I don’t think it’s necessary to have had the exact same experience as another in order to feel the suffering of another. In fact, it’s likely impossible that it will ever be the case as each of us has a very unique experience in the life that we are living.
What we do share are commonalities. We intuitively know the experiences and suffering associated with feelings such as fear, loneliness and neglect. Through that we can generate compassion and empathy.
The Pain of Alternation
Suffering is a normal part of our lives. So is pleasure. We have good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours, good years and bad years. This is the normal, alternating aspect of our lives.
As mentioned earlier, we have a strong aversion to pain. If we’re cold, we want to cover up. If we’re hot we want to take of layers off clothes or get inside where we can enjoy the coolness generated from our air conditioners.
This is the alternation of suffering that we should be aware of in our lives. Instead of our tendency to immediately alleviate the suffering, it would do us good to stay with the feeling and examine it. Where is the aversion coming from? Is it maybe a habitual response and we react without even fully understanding why? Explore it.
I noticed this pain of alternation when I recently returned from a vacation. The day before my wife and I left to come home for vacation we were out kayaking. It was a beautiful day and we were in nature, enjoying the scenery. The next day I was back home, catching up on all the e-mails that came in while I was out. Needless to say, within a 24 hour period my experience had seemed to take a complete 180. It went from joy, serenity and peacefulness to stress and anxiety. This is the pain of alternation.
There’s another example I’ll share, that’s rather strange, yet I think is interesting. I love planning for vacations. Even when a vacation is booked there’s a sense of anticipation leading up to the date I leave for the vacation. Packing, planning what I want to do, running errands to pick up items that I’ll need for the vacation are all part of the process.
As the date of the actual vacation approaches I notice a tinge of almost what I’d describe as sadness. There’s almost this aversion I have to that ‘anticipation feeling’ ending. Sort of the feeling that I know the vacation will soon be over. A bit weird as I’m feeling sadness of something being over before it’s even begun!
I think the above example is something that we all experience one way or another. We want to hold on to certain experiences and not let them slip out of our hands. Inevitably, we’re hit with the hard reality of impermanence and many times this leads to the suffering we experience.
All Pervasive Suffering
This is the suffering that kicks it up a notch…you’re going to 11, so to speak. It’s an underlying feeling that you simply can’t handle what’s on your plate. There’s a constant sense of struggle and a feeling of battling your way through life.
Although Pema didn’t mention this, I think that this kind of all pervasive suffering is linked to having a strong external locus of control. You feel like you can’t control your situation. There’s a lot of ego clinging to certain beliefs you have about who you are or how things should be.
I don’t have any personal examples I can share, but I think that depression would certainly fall under the category of all pervasive suffering. Relating back to the previous example of the pain of alternation, I think we can all remember some point in our life, whether it was for a day, a month or longer that we’ve experienced this kind of suffering.
So, how do you deal with it?
I personally don’t think there’s one easy answer or list of ‘tips’ that can be given to deal with this type of suffering. The one thing I’d say is that we should absolutely develop and cultivate compassion towards ourselves.
We often find it fairly easy to generate compassion towards others, but when it comes to generating that same compassion for ourselves, we run into difficulty. We’re so hard and critical of ourselves, which over time develops the kind of habitual patterns and ego clinging that is associated with all pervasive suffering.
Before you start your compassion practice for others ask yourself if you’ve generated compassion for yourself. Are there areas in your life where you’re being too hard on yourself? How can you generate a kinder and more positive attitude toward yourself? Keep these questions in the forefront of your mind if you experience the kind of closed off feeling associated with all pervasive suffering.
‘We are healed by suffering only by experiencing it to the full.’ ~ Marcel Proust
I’m Nate, a writer, mindfulness practitioner and student of the inner workings of the mind.
