I’ve been writing on this space for several years now. Throughout this journey, (if you’ve been with me for that long), you will notice that I was concerned with improving the human condition. How can we suffer less? How can we get better?
However, the more I go through life, the more I begin to realise that there is no way out of this suffering. Psychological tricks and methods of understanding may work temporarily, but to permanently uproot this inescapable human condition of suffering might just be impossible.
Buddha, of course said that life is suffering. But very quickly he proposed the eightfold path out of suffering. He thought that suffering can be escaped. This was his promise. And so you have monks and lay people embarking on what is usually a life-long journey of ending suffering. It would be unfair to say that the journey hasn’t brought any benefit whatsoever. I am sure it has some palliative effect – but we must be honest with ourselves and ask – “Are they fully and totally beyond suffering?”.
We can never know. But we can guess. At the level of the body, pain and suffering is inescapable. The monks die too. They fall sick, sometimes terribly so. But what about the mind? Here, we do not have objective ways to ascertain if they experience a permanent suffering-free state. Either we rely on their own account through conversation or, if you are a sociologist – questionnaires. Both these are unreliable. Because as a monk, or a follower of a religious or spiritual movement, you have a vested interest to say that the path is working for you. Otherwise, your entire life is a lie. The only sort of reliable indicator is to watch their behavior. How do they treat people with no power – the downtrodden, the poor, the powerless, the invisible? And in my own interactions with religious and spiritual people across the spectrum, I have seen unkindness. I have seen a misuse of power. This is of course not to say that all people on a path are bad or abusive. But we have to admit that there are examples of such people even in these domains.
Thus, if monks can suffer physically, and as we established, mentally, a permanent escape from suffering seems impossible – or at any rate exceedingly rare. It is akin to an olympian lifter being able to lift weights as heavy as a baby elephant. It is worthy of attention and perhaps even some amount of praise in on offer, but it is totally unrelatable. How does it matter if the champion can lift 250kg? After all, I cannot. Therefore, we accept a life of suffering, knowing that even though a life devoid of suffering is possible, it is highly improbable that I will have access to that life.
But what causes suffering? When situations and people behave contrary to our expectations and comfort, we don’t like it. If this persists and is unavoidable – we suffer. We want to be healthy, but we are struck down by arthritis – we suffer. We want a beautiful and loving relationship, but the other leaves us – we suffer. The problem here though is that we can never fully control nor predict our environment and the people in it. Thus, we are consigned to a life of disappointment and irritation.
But what about those instances when life does align? What about those instances when people are loving towards us? Yes, during those brief moments, we do feel elevated and happy. But these moments, as we all know, do not last. Our minds are tuned by existence in such a way that we feel suffering deeper than joy. This means that our minds seem to be programmed to receive suffering more than pleasure. Think of it this way. You are seated on an extremely hard bench. After a while the butt starts to hurt, until you get up and move away. But sit on a comfortable couch – you feel the comfort for the first few seconds, and then the mind tunes it out – even though the experience continues to persist. This is extremely unfortunate, and perhaps even unfair. We feel pain more than joy!
We have thus arrived at a conclusion that everybody, monks included, suffer. We have also seen that very few champions seem to escape suffering (if at all). We see that sensitivity towards suffering is ingrained in each of us by existence or evolution.
What is the solution?
Nothing. None. Accept that you will suffer. And there is no way out of it. This was perhaps what Kierkegaard meant when he said,
“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
Kierkegaard was of course talking about regret (the Danish word is fortryde). But he isn’t asking us to be indecisive. He says, even if you choose or suspend choosing you end up realising that you gave up another path. If you don’t choose, you give up certainty. If you choose, you give up the choice you didn’t choose. It is an acute, philosophical form of FOMO. And this is the predicament according to Kierkegaard – this is his human condition – that we are trapped in always wondering how it might have been. His solution (yes he has one) is – their is simply no certainty that you will be happy. You can never guarantee that your choice will be optimal. So we need “a leap of faith”. And that requires moral courage.
Schopenhauer echoes this sentiment, he says the minute we desire we enter into the realm of suffering. And desire is integral to the will – our sense of agency and personhood. His solution was the impossible – almost unattainable – total negation of the will. Or in other words, renunciation. But this again is akin to your olympian heavy lifter.
But among all these, my mind has always gravitated towards Viktor Frankl. He saw that he was powerless in most ways in the Nazi camp. But in that situation he did his best to be dignified and give meaning to his life. His appreciation of a small bird sitting on the barbed wire, or watching the sunset – not just brought moments of beauty into his bleak life, but brought in meaning. The appreciation of these beautiful things was something he could do and it could not be taken away from him. Therefore, the only true freedom was his ability to exercise and frame his choice in perhaps the darkest times in his life. That itself was meaningful. It was almost a rebellion – a moral act.
We cannot escape suffering. Those who try to, will fail. Those who pretend not to suffer – suffer the greatest. They are beset with a persistent feeling of restlessness and emptiness. The only question is whether we can carry our suffering with dignity – not to elevate it or even to prefer it, nor as a form of resignation – but nobly, with full awareness that I suffer, and I do not like it, but there is nothing I can do about it, and so I allow it to be and do what I can in this situation.
Let us carry our suffering nobly.
Journey of a thousand words 