The Courage To Explore Pain & Suffering

Do you ever feel like there’s just too much going on, or too much has happened in the past, and it’s easier to just turn away? I feel that way for so many days. The world is a hard place right now.

But what happens if we turn towards instead of turning away? What happens when we face all that pain & suffering? Do we discover that there’s no remedy, and plunge into despair? Or can we discover strength we didn’t even know we had, and resilience, and love?

Trigger Warning: This practice may include references to death, dying, and the departed.

Transcript

Hey everyone it's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 404. Happy August. Today I wanted to say a little bit more about that space that opens up when we sit down to practice and how I understand Tuwere Selah's teaching on my recent retreat that I shared last time that in that space that opens up when we sit Wisdom Arises, Yes, And Also Suffering Arises. So first just reminding us all that in mindfulness like in law there's pain and there's suffering but in mindfulness the two are very different. Pain is the losses and failures and sorrows and frustrations the things that are unfortunately just part of life that are unavoidable because we're humans. You know we're going to have failures and people are going to say and do unkind things and we're going to lose things and and people and we're going to get sick and someday we're going to die and of course there's also a lot of joy and it's right here in this moment and and that's what we want to be pointing out whenever we can the joy the love the compassion in this moment but the pain it's also there and it's not avoidable. So suffering is what happens when we mistakenly believe kind of against all evidence to the contrary that the pain is avoidable and then we strategize to avoid it or reject to it and we you know cling to some sense of entitlement to not having pain whether physical or emotional right. It's it's the way we cling to that story about ourselves that we're fine instead of being with grief or frustration or anger or to the belief that we shouldn't be upset or unwell or to the belief that we should be farther down the path and more immune to the vicissitudes of life you know and then it's the things that we try to do to solidify those beliefs by pouring ourselves an extra glass of wine or doing some retail therapy to inoculate ourselves from the pain or judging ourselves or driving ourselves to be different so that we believe so that we won't have any pain you know that's the suffering that's the second arrow. So the first arrow is the pain which is part of being human and the second arrow is the one we shoot ourselves with by wanting things to be other than they are. So there we are we're sitting we're meditating we're creating space for wisdom to arise but we're also creating space for suffering to arise this is what Tewari said and I and so I'm asking myself well what does that mean and here's here's what I can report I'm not so much creating space for suffering as I'm creating space to investigate suffering right it's not like it's not there it's there but I'm turning towards it it's I'm thinking of it as a lab the laboratory of the mind right I sit down I follow my breath maybe I'm counting breaths and before I get to 10 or you know plenty of times before I get to 5 or 3 my mind has wandered I'm in story time and the stories are the stories of Judy right the stories about my past or my future and what I'll do or what I should have done or could have done and how everything would have been fine or will be fine if I had or when I do right so if you can relate to that and those stories the stories are the suffering because the stories are a cover the stories are a cover for the pain and it's the pain that sits underneath them and for me it's the pain that I'm afraid will subsume me it's the pain that I'm afraid if I look at it I might start crying and never stop but the truth is for me that that's just not true the truth is that if I look when I look I don't start crying and never stop when I look and if I'm gentle and loving with myself and this takes a lot of courage right then there's a kind of airing out you know the breath plays this role too it airs things out you know and then I can be with what's there and it's not always easy often it's not easy and it's not always pleasant often it's not pleasant right but it's possible and it gets easier over time so seeing suffering is seeing that my stories are just a cover for the pain the sorrow the anger the frustration and also seeing that those cover stories are what creates the suffering by taking me out of the present moment where yes there's pain and I can be with it where I can summon my courage and my love and be there instead of being in the cover stories which eventually two minutes later 10 days later 10 years later they'll dissolve because they never worked through being with the truth of things the truth of how things are when I can do that when I can be with my own suffering then I can be with the pain of others you know everybody else is suffering everybody else's pain I can see their pain I can see how they're creating suffering I can be with the pain of the world right and that's our whole practice so I'm pretty sure that's what Tueri means that when we sit down we're making room for wisdom but we're also making room to see how often like for me sometimes about every three breaths the mind is creating cover stories creating suffering to avoid being in the present moment in the mistaken belief that the stories will solve for the pain instead of developing the courage and resilience and love to be with what's there and you know I keep saying we're making room for wisdom and suffering but actually this is the wisdom is to be able to see that this is happening right so in other words we're making room to see that we're creating the suffering by clinging to the cover stories we sit down we make room for wisdom and the wisdom is to see this process to see how we create suffering how we shoot that second arrow and I'm thinking this is maybe the most fundamental task of mindfulness for me anyway is to have the courage to see how my cover stories create suffering and how I don't have to keep making these cover stories and how when I stop I can be with my own pain and then I can be with others pain and the pain of the world in the teachings in the classical mindfulness teaching this is all explained very logically so remember suffering is defined as clinging clinging to the belief that we aren't suffering or shouldn't suffer and when you get right down to it clinging to a self-image of being invincible especially as a lawyer right so in the teachings this is explained very logically and here's here's what they say or one of the things that they say with contact as condition feeling comes to be with feeling as condition craving comes to be with craving as condition clinging comes to be and it's all written like that so what does it mean so I'm going to explain just the word condition today and then we'll look further into this next time but that way you can play with condition for a little while so condition just means whatever is happening or when this is happening so in other words when it's raining if I go outside with an umbrella I'll get wet the rain is the condition or when I enter a meeting angry or anxious whether I'm aware of my emotions or not that's what I bring into the meeting those are the conditions and of course the rain and my anxiety are only some of the conditions right millions of conditions exist in any given moment and you know we have to include things like everything the weather emotions everyone's histories and hopes and fears so millions of conditions so when the teachings say with contact as condition feeling comes to be with feeling as condition craving comes to be with craving as condition clinging comes to be with contact as condition oops sorry clinging comes to be the first thing they're pointing at is just that in any given moment millions of conditions exist and four of them are contact feeling craving and clinging all right so for now I just want to invite to explore what conditions are present in any given moment for you and we'll do that as we sit right now and then if you want you can do it over the next week and just keep it very simple so what's here maybe heat maybe joy maybe hunger maybe anxiety whatever you can identify and the next time we'll explore those four that are mentioned in the text okay so thank you for listening and let's sit taking a comfortable posture whatever your posture is that's most supportive for you paying attention in the present moment and taking a few breaths just to settle ground yourself feel the body sitting or standing or lying down and once things have subsided a little bit or as much as they're going to for right now then starting with the body what conditions are present in the body could be relaxation could be tightness could be heat coolness hunger same way of asking how's your body feeling right now what's the condition of the body you can also investigate what is the condition of the mind are there a lot of thoughts is it agitated is there emotion emotion is probably in the mind and body or is there calm in the mind ease and we're not investigating so that we can change anything or so that it will change we're just looking and probably noticing that the minute we look it changes right because the minute we look in the mind there's curiosity too we can also investigate what conditions are happening around us and if you have your eyes closed you don't even necessarily have to open them because you might be able to hear that there is noise in the environment maybe the noise is joyful maybe the noise is stressful or you might be able to sense that there is heat in the environment or coolness or there might be a smell in the environment like someone making coffee or cooking food and in each case where there is a condition we're making contact with the condition by knowing it in some way seeing it smelling it tasting it hearing it touching it or thinking about it or having an emotion about it otherwise we're not aware of it so with each condition we're making contact with it through one sense or another one of our senses so see if you can play with that through the next week if you want to thanks very much for being on the wake-up call today i just want to dedicate today's wake-up call to wes nisker who we who died earlier this week we lost a great dharma teacher and somebody who i had the pleasure to teach with at one of the lawyers retreats out at spirit rock and just to say that a long time before that when i was a teenager in san francisco wes was a newscaster on ksan radio which was the coolest station in san francisco and played all the great bands like the dead and the airplane and janice and wes had the coolest sign off of any news person ever at the end of the news wes and he went by scoop nisker in those days he would always say if you don't like the news go out and make some of your own and i think that was some of the best advice i ever got as a kid so thanks for the memory scoop and wishing you well on your next journey take care everybody be well see you next time