Why did the Buddha begin his teachings with the suffering of life? I personally feel he did this to help us reconcile our lives with how things truly are. In order to let go of suffering, first, we must admit it into our consciousness. If we are deluded about how things are, suffering will surely follow. How can we expect to see things clearly if we’re constantly shaking them up through struggle and resistance? How can we be at ease if we are always thinking that something’s wrong or missing?~Mark Van Buren
What a starting place for great spiritual teachings, eh? All is suffering! Don’t we know that? What is your first reaction to bad things that happen to you in your life? How do you respond?
I know what my old response used to be. My friends used to tell me I was like PigPen from the Charlie Brown cartoons. A cloud of dust surrounded me wherever I went. Gloom and doom and chaos encompassed me. Ask me how my day was going and you would get a treatise! No matter what time you had or where you were headed, a storm was going to rain on your head; the storm of my problems!
Every problem that happened to me was like a bomb hitting. How dare this or that happen to me! How dare you speak to me that way! What, a common cold on top of everything else I’m dealing with? Why? How? What Now? Life was a series of endless problems that rained down on my head and why was there no help to be had?
I was a victim.
No one could help me because the problems were so deep and I was so busy pointing fingers at the problems that I could not see anything inside of myself that could change. I would not take any responsibility for my part.
That was before sobriety. But I could equally say that was before responsibility. Before looking inside. Before ownership. Before action.
And here, I think, is the point of the Buddha’s point of entry in teaching that all is suffering. It is simply a fact.
Life is life. S**t happens. It’s what we do with it that matters.
In my active addiction, I was rendered a screaming, helpless robot. I was going through the same actions every day, unable to change my behaviors. I couldn’t see any way to change, so I kept repeating the same actions, louder and louder. I became more and more frustrated, but I was incapable of insight.
My addiction kept me encapsulated in myself, totally self-centered. Cut off from the world and help. Cut off from my own spirit and insight.
Life was indeed suffering.
But without a sense of connection to anything else, I was unable to see that you were suffering too. I could not see that the world is suffering. That I am not alone. That we are not alone.
This is the point of beginning.
Face that all of life involves suffering on some level. It’s part of life to have ups and downs, and that life never changes. It rolls like a wave. Learning to live is learning to roll with the waves.
We cannot do it alone. The beauty of life is that the whole world breathes together.
The Navajo say, May you walk in beauty.
As I have stayed sober, I have come to understand what that means. I have learned to ride the waves, to flow with life in its ups and downs, its highs and lows, its birth and death. To see the beauty in a newly opened flower, or a hummingbird lighting on it.
It is indeed exquisitely beautiful.
But first I had to learn that my pain was not uniquely mine. It was just part of that flow of life. All of life involves suffering. All of life suffers. I am just a small part of life. So I suffer too.
It is a great honor to be a small part of this immense universe and to suffer with it.
Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in, with the whole of creation.
Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out, along with all creation.
May all beings, including me, be free of suffering and filled with lovingkindness, just for today.
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