The End of Suffering

Fearless Living in Troubled Times

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Contents

Why Do We Suffer?

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.

—Mother Teresa

Suffering is part of the human condition. It comes from our own existence as separatebodies that react to our emotions and our rational mind. The principal cause of suffering isattachment. This is the Buddha's basic teaching of the Four Noble Truths. We crave anddesire fulfillment from people, places, and things, and we strive for cherished outcomes inthe so-called external world. We learn to fear life's impermanence; thus we cling to thingsthat are in themselves impermanent. This clinging to ever-changing externalities, rootedmainly in our personal story, results in our experienced separation from one another andfrom the Truth or the Divine.

Our sense of separation causes suffering by leading us to search for love or theexperience of the Divine outside the Self, just as in Marc Almond's well-known song"Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places." As his lyrics state, "Learn to love yourselfbefore anyone else." In the movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando cries out poignantly,"I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody." That's what we all longfor—the discovery of who we are. I (Targ) was once talking about Buddhist traditions witha group of Nashville songwriters. I described the familiar teaching that "the love we arelooking for is already within us." They agreed, but laughed and said that if this idea getsout, no one will listen to popular songs, whose main theme is "the IFD disease—idealization,frustration (because the ideal can never be found), and demoralization." Thisis the same path through life that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer describes as"striving, disappointment, and boredom"—utterly devoid of any internal spiritual life.

In his book on the Enneagram, psychologist and spiritual teacher Eli Jaxon-Bear makesthis important idea touchingly clear. He writes:

When identification shifts from a particular body ... to the totality of all being, the soulrealizes itself as pure limitless consciousness. This shift in identification is called Self-realization.In this realization, not only do you find that love is all there is, but you alsodiscover that this love is who you are [emphasis added]

The Hindu Vedas and other scriptures teach the critically important idea that we alreadyhave within ourselves the love and everything else we could possibly want. PemaChödrön, Buddhist teacher and student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, describes this as"the dynamic energy of the awakened heart." And the Gospel of Luke confirms that "thekingdom of God is within you." As physicist and writer Peter Russell says, "Love is thesecret sensation of the Self." Yet love is clearly more than just a feeling. It is a unifyingexperience and is spoken of as such in many of the world's scriptures.

One of the oldest and most profound truths is the Vedic teaching that Atman (the divinespirit or awareness within us) equals—is one with—Brahman (the whole undividedphysical and nonphysical universe). This equality of Atman and Brahman is also aprecursor of the twentieth-century physics discovery of nonlocality and our nonlocalawareness. In physics, nonlocality means that particles are connected with each other, orentangled, even though they are moving away from each other at the speed of light. Thisentanglement is inherent in the very nature of the space and time in which we live. Theexperience of nonlocal or spacious awareness is the gateway to the love and liberationthat lead to discovery of who we really are. Spaciousness of mind and nonattachment tostuff allow us to expand our awareness to experience oceanic connections with all ofnature. It is the pristine mirror that leads to what Jesus called "the peace that passesunderstanding." Spaciousness is an expression of unbounded love that allows ourawareness to fill the interconnected universe. And the Buddha describes the end ofsuffering in which we are finally liberated to experience the world with naked awarenessinstead of with the conditioned awareness of grasping, judgment, resentment, and the fearof impermanence. One could say that enlightenment is the state in which we experienceeverything for the first time; that is, our lives are a succession of many awakenedmoments of pure naked awareness.

Suffering, the Buddha taught, is caused when the freedom that is inherent to our nonlocalpristine awareness is obscured by the limitations of our ego and our physical body. Weforget that we are pure awareness, residing only for a time as a physical body. This doesnot mean that we should ignore our body. Bodies, we are told, are very precious and hardto come by; they are the seats of emotions, without which we would be missing ourempathetic connections with one another. Emotions are ubiquitous guides, leading towisdom along the path; thus the body is a valuable teacher. We are, however, more thanjust a body.

Most of us begin life with total love for and acceptance of the world around us, but as wegrow older we learn to constrict these feelings in response to the unpredictableexperiences of life. We experience both good and bad, and the meaning of theseexperiences is not always clear to us. We get caught up in the daily game of scripting androle-playing. We dramatize our ego, which is the story of who we think we are. Our so-calledbusiness card is really our story card. The more we think that our story,accomplishments, and recognition represent all that we are, the more we suffer, becauseit's not the truth.

Of course, many of us try to move beyond reinventing ourselves externally—new clothes,new car, new face, new partner. Still, the powerful inner need for self-realization and theapparent lack of love around us can make life seem almost unbearable. And confusingyour story with your true nature leads to unsustainable inner contradiction and paradox.The actress Marilyn Monroe was an outstanding example of this problem—a person whoseemed to have everything—and nothing, not even a self. In spite of her beauty, wealth,and position, she became lost in the Marilyn Monroe persona of her own creation. As shewalked the alluring and profitable tightrope between innocence and sexuality, she was, inthe end, unable to internalize and discover the woman behind all the photos. For Marilyn,being seduced by her story produced negative thoughts that began to outweigh herpositive appreciation of life. It was this dissonance of story versus life that made her bothcrazy and sick. Over a long period of time, these contradictory thoughts, whether we areconscious of them or not, can become disruptive forces that bring disease to our mindsand our bodies.

Equally as important as surrendering one's story is not to expect or crave applause—oreven thanks. If you or I have done the job to the best of our ability, we don't really needthe standing ovation. If you want a reward, then Saint Matthew suggests saying yourprayers and doing your good deeds in secret (until the desire for reward passes). It's thehypocrite who prays loudly on the street corner and puts the Ten Commandments on thefront lawn, to paraphrase Matthew 6:5-6. The hypocrite confuses the experience with theform.

Disruptive forces abound. We live primarily in a world of competition, acquisition, andconsumption. Living with television, e-mail, cell phones, and the Internet, we rarelyexperience a single quiet moment. Constant exposure to television and other mediaplaces a tremendous amount of emphasis on who we "should be," which can lead todepression becoming a "normal" part of life. In his epic book on contemporary shamanism,Daniel Pinchbeck writes, "We live in a world of data overload and media smog, whereeverything distracts from everything else. Yet underlying this noisy assault, our cultureoffers us nothing transcendent. No deeper meaning, no abiding hope." The goal ofadvertising is to make us feel unhappy and needy and then promise relief. Its purpose isto create suffering that can be relieved only by purchasing a product that will fulfill a needthat we never knew we had. Living in a multimedia environment, we are also exposed to adehumanizing atmosphere, where we build up a tolerance, even an indifference, to theviolence and hardship experienced by others. We begin to view the televised suffering ofothers as separate from ourselves, as though this media saturation has overloaded our"empathy chip."

Although we all experience suffering in our lives, many people store up their emotionalpains and resentments—suppressing instead of expressing their feelings and emotions.Others act out the pain through anger and rage without being aware of the root cause.Whether repressing or acting out, our culture spends millions of dollars on psychologistsand psychiatrists, often without ever fully exploring the "fundamentals" of why we are nothappy. Quieting our minds is never easy and is certainly more difficult without deeperlevels of awareness and inner development to determine the source of our suffering.

Whenever peace tries to be present, chaos also attempts to gain control. For example,you have just finished your meditation, then you turn on the radio and hear a terrible newsreport about this group killing that group. It is essential that we overcome the ubiquitousand poisonous "us versus them" mentality fostered by the media. Each of us can breakout of our dualistic worldview by changing the way we think and act in relation to eachother. We will be happier if we work together as a collective force, because we are all onein consciousness.

Exploration of life can transcend the illusions of a separate self trying to find answers inthe material world, where money can never buy the love or the happiness we are seeking.We cannot relieve suffering by replacing one ego-centered story with another—or seekinganother "I" outside ourselves to find fulfillment. The idea that I am a pretty good half-a-personseeking a similarly fractional partner to complete me is never successful. Thiscreates an unhealthy codependence that frequently leads to resentment when the otherhalf quits doing whatever he or she did to make me feel whole. This is why codependentlove can so quickly turn to hatred. When the other half-a-person, or some material thing,does not fulfill our needs, we convince ourselves that we are indeed alone, believing thatnobody understands our pain or fears. This situation often leads people to explore alcoholor drugs to relieve their pain. The point is, by transcending the illusion of a separate self,you can contact your own loving nature before you start searching for a partner to travelwith you on a spiritual path.

With only a small change in perception, we can release ourselves from our constrictivespace of personal isolation and from feeling that we are victims of circumstance. Forexample, we can begin to perceive that we give all the meaning there is to everything weexperience. This is why we hear that "The coward dies a thousand deaths" (of the ego).We all have the power to take back control of our lives and experience our higher selvesrather than just have things happen to us. When we are stopped in traffic, for instance, wecan pound the steering wheel and experience our ego reacting with impatience and anger,or we can welcome the opportunity to slow down and appreciate our surroundings orspend a moment in gratitude. This teaching is another example of the very importantBuddhist teaching on emptiness (sunyata), where nothing at all is happening, except forthe meaning we assign to it. This is one of the many strong parallels between Buddhismand the twentieth-century spiritual guide called A Course in Miracles. Also, there is aBuddhist newspaper, called The Dot, whose motto is "Nothing happens, and we report it."

Developing compassion is a step on the path to the end of suffering. From thisperspective. Western philosophers like Kierkegaard and Pascal argued that good workscome only from suffering and the pressures of life, and that greatness derives from griefand pain, poverty, destitution, and a thousand other obstructions. The great EastEuropean mystic of the last century, Gurdjieff, also speaks about voluntary suffering,which is when we choose to bear the unpleasant manifestations of others. Difficultrelatives are the usual opportunity for this practice. Acknowledging difficulties is a spiritualexercise to recognize the ego, which wants to strike back or push away, instead ofremaining centered in the face of unpleasant inner turmoil. This is similar to the Buddhisttonglen practice, the meditation practice of sending and receiving, in which you give awayall your joy and goodness with each outbreath, then take in resentment and foulness ofthe world with each inbreath. The objective of all the practices is to let go of attachmentsand develop compassion and loving-kindness for yourself and others. Compassion is thekey. Letting go of attachment does not mean disinterest. Our goal here—that which givesmeaning to our lives—is to understand and experience the truth, and then to share thatopen-hearted and unitive experience with others. Meditation is the path providing themind-quieting opportunity to practice what Pema Chödrön calls the four Limitless Qualitiesof loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

There is, however, genuine suffering connected with profound sadness and grief that wefeel in our heart, for example, from the loss of a child or loved one. Often crisis causes acomplete change in our reality structure, which can bring us to the point of paradigm shift.The shift that occurs as a result of suffering can lead us to the experience of love andcompassion—the oceanic connection to nature and all life. Compassion, love, and theexperience and understanding of egolessness are essential ingredients that facilitate theend of suffering. Nonjudgmental emptiness is a primary requirement for true compassion.

For the most part, our everyday suffering is not caused by tragic events of the heart, butrather by insults—real or imagined—to our ego story. Suffering is the response to theseimagined attacks that interfere with what we want and what we feel we need. Fortunately,we can learn to let go of these conditioned responses and view suffering as a delusionalidea. We can choose not to collect suffering memorabilia to paste into our scrap-books.Since our personal story is only made up of ideas, we can learn to release these ego-insultsand let them float away like helium balloons. Or, as Ken Wilber would say, if youdon't want to suffer, "ditch the small self." We the authors would say, "Give up the story—thestory of ME."

We are spiritually asleep if we allow the regrets of the past, the worries and fears of thefuture, and the expectation of others to guide our lives. In the midst of the panicky feelingsand beliefs and the distractions of this spiritual sleep, it is most difficult to summon intuitionor to hear the voice of inner wisdom. The combination of guilt from the past and fear of thefuture prevents us from experiencing the present. This projection is what DzogchenBuddhists call conditioned awareness, and it profoundly interferes with the timelessexistence we are describing in this book.

With regard to fear of the future and guilt over the past, the great screenwriter and directorWoody Allen has made a career out of his lifelong suffering. In a recent Associated Pressinterview, he describes his view of life:

Most of life is tragic. You're born, you don't know why. You're here, you don't know why.You go, you die. Your family dies. Your friends die. People suffer. People live in constantterror. The world is full of poverty and corruption and war and Nazis and tsunamis....

This is New York existential angst, where basically everything sucks. This stance,however, has served Woody very well—through several Academy Awards and more than20 nominations. Of course, we notice that much of his suffering is either in the past or inthe future. He is not presently in pain, as far as we know.

Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and several concentration camps and went on towin a Nobel Peace Prize, admonished a Jewish writer friend on the subject of forgiveness.He said you should never be silent, but that if you don't let go of hating the Nazis, thenthey have won and you are still in the camp.

If we were to begin talking with Woody Allen, we would invite him to the StageDelicatessen on Seventh Avenue. And after he had bitten into a big fat corned beefsandwich, with the juice dripping off his chin, we would ask him to tell us about hissuffering. We would respectfully investigate whether it is possible to get him to focus hisbrilliant mind on the present moment where nothing at all is happening but sandwiches. Orare we doomed to forever share our table with Nazis and death?